4K Plex Server and File requirements

General Discussions
1

Hi All,

Currently I run PMS of a 2012 Mac mini, connected to a Synology 1515 NAS which has served me really well over the last 2 years. Now that 4K is starting to become a big thing and more movies are being released in this format, I am now looking at upgrading the hardware to handle playback.

From what I have read that 4K is incredibly CPU intensive if it requires transcoding, obviously it would make sense that I convert the file types to be compatible with the clients I use in the house (Samsung Smart TV, Chrome Cast, Apple Devices).

As of late, the Mac mini is struggling with certain 1080p transcode streams and i often experience buffering especially on the Samsung TV. This has no prompted me to reevaluate my Plex setup.

So a couple of questions:

  1. Does Plex Support HEVEC 10bit
  2. Would it be worth upgrading the Mac Mini to an Intel NUC Skull Canyon i7-6770HQ Quad Core 2.6GHz or would it be worth building a home built server with a dedicated GPU?

Thanks in advanced

2

@mcoliver88 said:

  1. Does Plex Support HEVEC 10bit
  2. Would it be worth upgrading the Mac Mini to an **Intel NUC Skull Canyon i7-6770HQ Quad Core 2.6GHz ** or would it be worth building a home built server with a dedicated GPU?

Thanks in advanced

I have your #2 as server and 1815+ for data.
I have a 4k TV and as a matter of fact watched Deadpool today in 4k with Shield Pro as client.
Nice but really for me 4k is overrated.
It is 8bit and I don’t think I have any 10bit so cannot answer about that.

But I can stream 7 movies/shows remotely (almost all direct play or direct stream) to a variety of clients with CPU usage hardly above 10%.
All my media is MP4 with all movies (e.g) usually around 1-2gb with a mix of 1080 and 720!