Till now, I’ve had my plex server in my office, and because of the crappy bandwidth in Belgium, I want to move my plex server at home.
I’m planning to watch 4K content only through my Xbox One X, and occasionally doing some 1080p streaming to my laptops (max 2 at the same time).
The PMS and the Xbox will be directly connected to the router with RJ45 cable.
So 4K stream will be wired but the 1080p streams will be trough wireless.
Here is the config I would like to build for this:
Intel Core i3-8100 (3.6 GHz) ASRock Z370M-ITX/AC G.Skill Aegis 8 Go (2 x 4 Go) DDR4 2400 MHz CL15
The case will be a Chinese model from Alibaba (Here)
And the power source: FSP FSP250-50GUB 80PLUS Bronze
I have already 3*4TB WD RED and SSDs for the OS, so the total cost for me will be around 500€
(SATA ports is not an issue for me because I’m planning to add an LSI SAS2008-8I SATA 9211-8i 6Gbps 8 Ports HBA PCI-E RAID Controller Card for additional ports when needed)
I will run Open Media Vault as the OS and it will mainly be used as PMS and file server, I’m also planning to run from time to time some VMs for DEV and testing but no heavy loading.
So here is my main question, do you think this I3 processor could stream at least one 4K stream and a 1080p one?
Based on PCMark, I could run 3 to 4 1080p streams.
Kaby lake and coffee lake CPUs support hardware acceleration on transcoding of 4k hevc 10bit files, so you should have no issues. I run a i5-7500 and can transcodes anything easily.
Also, of you make sure your files are encoded the thought way for your xbox then they’ll be direct played and that’s is very easy for any computer… So don’t worry.
@KarlDag said:
Kaby lake and coffee lake CPUs support hardware acceleration on transcoding of 4k hevc 10bit files, so you should have no issues. I run a i5-7500 and can transcodes anything easily.
Also, of you make sure your files are encoded the thought way for your xbox then they’ll be direct played and that’s is very easy for any computer… So don’t worry.
Hi KarlDag!
Thank you for the reply!
So you think it’s better for me to re-encode my 4K files so I can do direct play on my Xbox?
Well test it first, im sure that rig will have enough power for what you said. But if eventually you wish to share to a few people who require transcoding, then yes, optimizing your files for your clients makes it much easier on the server.
@KarlDag said:
Well test it first, im sure that rig will have enough power for what you said. But if eventually you wish to share to a few people who require transcoding, then yes, optimizing your files for your clients makes it much easier on the server.
I’m also looking at a budget Plex build right now, with a secondary goal that it will mirror the contents of my NAS (to serve as a backup copy, and to give Plex a local data source). Nothing crazy, just Windows 10 with Stablebit and Plex with hardware transcoding. After researching the bang for my buck, I’m looking at nearly exactly the same hardware you are. The Coffee Lake i3 is the best budget option for Plex right now IMO. Here were the reasons I debated waiting:
The current Intel CPU bugs. As far as I can tell, they’re unlikely to be fixed in the next fab, and I don’t feel like waiting a couple generations just for a budget build. And both a newer CPU and Windows 10 help mitigate some of the effects. It doesn’t seem to be hitting Plex hard anyway, nor does it seem to hurt hardware transcoding.
Upcoming improvements to codec support. Coffee Lake supports 10-bit HEVC in graphics hardware, and I’m curious if the next generation will support 12-bit. But I haven’t found any sign of that on the roadmap, and I’ve just accepted that it’s not worth waiting on.
I also have to second @KarlDag: The biggest thing you can do is to identify your client hardware, and encode your videos with codecs and containers that will direct-play, whenever possible. I purposely upgraded a few locations to the 2017 Roku Streaming Stick, just so I could use HEVC without worrying about transcoding. Obviously there are exceptions, such as a client on a mobile network, but that’s why you get a current CPU with hardware encode/decode to make things easier. I had significant frustrations with hardware encoding on previous generations, have had no such issues with Kaby Lake graphics so far. Also, I had a hard time telling the difference between hardware and software transcoding, even on mobile, and that’s good enough for me.
@g_man_be said:
So here is my main question, do you think this I3 processor could stream at least one 4K stream and a 1080p one?
Based on PCMark, I could run 3 to 4 1080p streams.
That processor can stream 20 streams or 50 streams just so long as you use a decent client that doesn’t need to have the files transcoded. Rather than spend all your time converting files so they are easy to transcode just make sure to use a decent client that will Direct Play. It looks like the Xbox One X will be suitable. Provided that your WiFi performs adequatley then there should be no need for transcoding if running PMP on your laptop either
Yeah, I don’t want to wait for newer version of the processor and I can’t find any AMD processor as powerful with the same cost and a mini-ITX motherboard.
So my concern is not much regarding 1080p streams but 4K.
And my Xbox will be wired to the router, so I don’t think I will have problems of bandwidth.
I have read somewhere that 4K require 4 time the PCMark score, so it should be 8000?
HEVC support on the processor mean that at original quality there is no transcode?
@g_man_be said:
Yeah, I don’t want to wait for newer version of the processor and I can’t find any AMD processor as powerful with the same cost and a mini-ITX motherboard.
So my concern is not much regarding 1080p streams but 4K.
And my Xbox will be wired to the router, so I don’t think I will have problems of bandwidth.
I have read somewhere that 4K require 4 time the PCMark score, so it should be 8000?
HEVC support on the processor mean that at original quality there is no transcode?
2000/8000 is just an estimation, depends on codecs, bitrates, etc… But gives you an idea.
Hevc hardware support means it has dedicated hardware to do the Transcoding, so it can do it faster/easier/more of it at once.
@g_man_be said:
I have read somewhere that 4K require 4 time the PCMark score, so it should be 8000?
HEVC support on the processor mean that at original quality there is no transcode?
Transcoding is all to do with the client not the server. As I already pointed out if you use the right clients which can Direct Play then transcoding is not necessary. If the client can Direct Play then whether the processor has support for HEVC in hardware is irrelevant.
Transcoding is something you don’t want to do unless you really have to. You should always want to Direct Play at full original quality.
Nevermind. Sorry, @nigelpb … I might have had too many tabs open. I’m a dolt for forgetting the conversation is regarding 4k. Of course you’re advising to avoid transcodes. Please disregard my query.
