I am a long time Plex user and Pass member and after may years of hard work i am contemplating upgrading my main PMS machine.
My Plex instance is curretnly running on i7 - 4790K with an 1050 Ti GPU. Very capable machine and nothing really wrong with it but recently i started adding pure 4K MakeMKV rips (no conversion).
My 8 year old processor is showing its age…
At the time having that processor meant i could do 4 1080p transcodes at the same time but now it can barely manage a 4k Transcode remotely. Locally on my Nvidia Shield it plays beautifully but remotely is a diferent issue unless you reduce the quality sometimes as much as 720p depending on connection etc and even then buffering is an issue.
I am contemplating an overclocked build of AMDs Threadripper 3970x with perhaps a 1650 Super. Is this overkill for now or do you think the Intel i9 10980 XE will be a better bet? The Intel option with a 2080 Super is working out cheper as well by a good £400. Looking at benchmarks and Plex’s own guide at https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/ i am lead to believe that the AMD is a better option as it has double the passmark of the Intel.
At the moment, 4K trancodes are typically a challenge with Plex. You can do some searches on the forums, others have seen this problem. See this post for more:
Your server setup seems quite reasonable. The 1050Ti is a perfectly fine transcoding GPU.
An alternative idea: You could encode a second copy of those 4K movies down to 1080p using tone mapping. It’s not easy though, there are a number of discussions about how to do it. Here’s one thread.
If you’re successful, keep the transcoded file in the same folder as the original 4K file. Plex clients are far better now at choosing the best video file for a given client. So if your TV doesn’t support 4K, it’ll (hopefully) select the 1080p by default and skip transcoding.
your 1050 should be fine for HW transcoding, but, the cpu may still get pretty loaded after more than a few, trying to keep up with the HD audio transcoding.
for a new server, all you really need is a 7000 series (or newer) intel cpu, with a 600 series integrated gpu, sufficent ram, ideally a decently large SSD system drive for plex and its data (especially if you enjoy chapter/video/preview thumbs).
no extra gpu is required (less electricity/noise/cost)
you could go the AMD cpu route, but then you need a gpu and its better to stick with nvidia gpu, they are better supported.
Hi @Cafe_Diem - my TV supports HDR and 4K and i use an Nvidia Shield as my client so we are all good on that front. it is mostly for when i travel for work…or used to!.. that i occasionally have issues outside the house. I am not sure tone mapping is a route i want to go to. I sometimes use DVD fab to re-encode movies that produces decent results. Maybe i can create a 4k profile that converts to SDR but then space becomes a premium. The better advantage to me would be the faster sync speeds for loading the family’s tablets.
@TeknoJunky i noticed earlier today when a friend was testing a 4K film that the CPU was peaking at 45% but the 1050 was barely going above 4-5%. I have activated hardware support in Plex and i was expecting the GPU to take more of the load. At the end my friend had to downgrade quality to 1080p medium settings on his Samsung OLED tv client. is this normal?
I am not desperate to change over my server but if i do i would like to keep this configuration for a good few years…my current config is 8 years old so typically my choice of choosing the best processor at the time has served me well and the 1050Ti was a later addition. Hoping to replicate that strategy now if there are benefits to it.
are you using windows or linux? on windows the task manager should give you options to see decoding/encoding loads.
(this screenshot is not transcoding, it is folding at home load)
on linux you will need to use the command line nvidia-smi to see transcoding load.
gpu are much more powerful for video transcoding, so the load will not be so much for individual streams.
that cpu is pretty old, if the cpu were doing the transcoding it would be 100% and constantly buffering.
the gpu only helps with the video transcoding.
the cpu still has to do all the other work, including converting the TRUEHD/DTSHDMA audio, which is not trivial for older cpus.
plus, there is all the IO and bits moving in/out of the disk/ram/cpu/gpu, all that takes processing power and you are simply seeing the limits of age on the system.
as far as your friend, its hard to say, could be internet speed related, you need very fast connection on both sides and everything in between to keep up with high 4k bitrates.
you would need to post a lot more details about both the remote client/connection and your connection, along with logs and a screenshot of your plex server dashboard ( Plex Web > settings > dashboard) with the video playing.
@TeknoJunky Thanks for the FreeBSD link but sadly…way outside budget
I am using Windows 10
I know the connection to my friend’s house is not that great but he was just testing it for me and as i said it works great locally so may just stick with it for a little bit longer.
My conenctions is 300Mbps / 50Mbps so i am good but the weak link is the Synology server is connected to the PC via a wireless Synology Extender instead of Ethernet on my end. It should be fast enough however. The Synology NAS itself is 8 years old as well.
In my opinion a CPU upgrade is probably due and although i would like the AMD, my gut tells me Intel is the best option for my use case.
if this is for dedicated plex server (not used for gaming or regular desktop), then yeah intel cpu+igpu = best bang for buck and simplicity, for plex.
if its going to be an all-purpose machine with pms on it, then well you will need to weigh the cost/performance needs of the other stuff you want to do.
