Building a Stand alone Plex Media Server

General Discussions
1

Ive read many articles on the Best CPU etc for a Plex Media Server and I would like to know from the experts on this forum the best choice for a processor as this seems to be the key to everything. I know this subject has been beaten, died and was buried, but I would like to resurrect it one more time as hardware changes seem to be a constant in the industry.

My requirements are simple I would like to know the best CPU, Xeon or i7 for streaming and transcoding to multiple external clients at the same time. The other parts of the system I have got covered and shared what I am planing to purchase below, but its that main brain called the CPU which has me perplexed.

I’ve tried to answer some of the basic questions below so that we can get right into it and would love to see your recommendations on the best CPU and why.

1 - Do you need transcoding? How many concurrent streams? - 6-10 external users will be connecting to the box from different parts of the world. mainly wired but some wirelessly as I do when i travel.
**2 - How many clients you need to serve on direct play? What kind of client? **Four clients on the same network wired and another four via wireless. Main player runs on mac mini with Plex media player
3 - How much space you need? Storage is on Synology Nas boxes so the server will only store the very basics like the OS.
4 - OS ? Windows 10 for the server
5 - Budget? open

**Motherboard: **
ASRock X99M Extreme4 or Asrock X99 WS-E/10G
Internal Storage: Samsung 950 PRO -Series 512GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 (for OS)
Secondary storage: Samsung 850 PRO 512GB
Memory: DDR4 or ECC depending on the final CPU chosen.

Nas Storage
Synology DS2015xs or DS1815+
Network: Gigabit, (considering 10GbE connection between Switch and Synology DS2015xs)

Processor
The Need: No gaming, only Streaming of media, HD content and music
Uptime: On 24/7 365, 99%
Access: As fast as possible
Processor choices: i7-5830k, i7-5960k or Xeon E5-2630 v3 2.40 GHz

When it comes to Xeon I have no clue which to go for, i am not looking to run a dual CPU board only one CPU, there are so many Xeon processors its really a minefield in choosing the correct one for my needs.
If the Xeon processor chosen above is not correct please suggest a more suitable one.

What i know for sure is I will not do any gaming on this machine or overclocking of the CPU, i also don’t mind if the board does not come with graphics on board as cards are reasonably priced these days. What I am looking for is performance and reliability with ample head room for steaming to many clients without their access buffering or slowing down, I know this also depends on their connection but I don’t want my server to be a bottleneck or run out of steam.

Looking forward to your suggestions.

2

Good place to start is here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

For transcoding the rough idea is a minimum recommended score of 2000 per stream, so if you say 6-10 users, then you need to assume that it is possible for all of them to need trasncoding at the same time at one point.

6 users x 2000 will give you a minimum benchmark score of 12000 to 20000 for 10 users. Look for a CPU in that range and build from there, keep in mind that you need to have CPU resources to run the OS as well so you may want to go up a step from the minimum for Windows, if you go with linux (I prefer this because of low overhead in the linux server OS) then not much overhead is needed.

Also need to consider your connection to the server. If you do not watch the client settings you could overwhelm most broadband connections with enough HD streams running from your server.

3

Hi Mikee404,

Thanks for your swift response and the recommendations in terms of what to look for in a processor, but I have seen all the i7 processors I quoted pass the 12,000 passmark and even a few Xeon processors pass it as well, What I am not clear on is does this mean the i7 processors are better as their performance on the passmark is better although the Xeon seem to have more cores.

4

For raw horsepower on a basic consumer single processor system, an i7 will usually be fine. Xeons are designed “beefier”, with support for things like ECC RAM and multi-CPU systems. As PMS is indeed a “server” and many of us then in turn prefer to run PMS on a server-class OS with the stability and reliability that comes with it, this can then lead to requirements (or at least strong desires) for a different class of hardware, such as ECC RAM.

And once you go from the E3 to E5 line Xeons, that carries with it its own new hardware requirements.

5

@Mikeee404 said:
Good place to start is here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

For transcoding the rough idea is a minimum recommended score of 2000 per stream, so if you say 6-10 users, then you need to assume that it is possible for all of them to need trasncoding at the same time at one point.

6 users x 2000 will give you a minimum benchmark score of 12000 to 20000 for 10 users. Look for a CPU in that range and build from there, keep in mind that you need to have CPU resources to run the OS as well so you may want to go up a step from the minimum for Windows, if you go with linux (I prefer this because of low overhead in the linux server OS) then not much overhead is needed.

Also need to consider your connection to the server. If you do not watch the client settings you could overwhelm most broadband connections with enough HD streams running from your server.

This is not always very accurate. The transcoder itself throttles after your set transcode time. For my servers, the transcoder throttles after having transcoded 2 minutes of a section, and then starts the transcoder again at the end of the transcoded 2 minute section.

On an Intel Core i7-3930 i have been able to run 15-20 transcodes at a time, with no slowdowns simply because they dont all actively use the CPU at the same time.

6

@sremick said:
For raw horsepower on a basic consumer single processor system, an i7 will usually be fine. Xeons are designed “beefier”, with support for things like ECC RAM and multi-CPU systems. As PMS is indeed a “server” and many of us then in turn prefer to run PMS on a server-class OS with the stability and reliability that comes with it, this can then lead to requirements (or at least strong desires) for a different class of hardware, such as ECC RAM.

And once you go from the E3 to E5 line Xeons, that carries with it its own new hardware requirements.

Sremick,

Your post got me looking at the new line of Xeon E5 processors, but boy they are not cheap especially if you compare the specs with some of the i7 processors. For example the i7 5960X retails for just under $1,000 whilst the E5-1680 V3 is around $2,000 huge difference yet on paper at least they seem similar in performance.The E5-1660 V3 seems to be a similar price to the 5960X but with not as good a passmark. Then the i7-5930k ($600 retail) and the E5-1650 V3 seems to be around the same price, similar performance and about the same passmark, is it worth going for this instead?.

Also the Passmark of the i7’s seems to be generally better than the Xeon’s. So I’m back to being confused on which is the best Xeon to go for if i want similar if not better performance than the i7-5960X (which i heard by the way will go down dramatically in price once the new i7 10 core is released).

Motherboards: since this system is now going to be server grade I started looking at server motherboards, the ASRock link seem very good, I narrowed it down to three All ASRock;
EPC612D4U-8R, EPC612D4U-2T8 or EPC612D4U, what are your thoughts on these?.

I was originally going for the ASRock X99M Extreme 4, the server boards seem to be twice the price.

7

One other thought in looking at the E5 line up of processors, was to go for the E5-2650 V3 but the clock speed seems slow, will this make a difference for a PLEX server over a standard i7-5960X or E5-1660 V3 and ultimately which of the three processors would run better as a server. I understand the E5-2600 line can be used for dual CPU config’s which I am not planning on doing, but on their own will it be as strong as the E5-1600 V3 processors?

8

hope someone could help building a dedicated plex server , i’m looking into the Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz but would like to match it with the best mini itx motherboard , already have a case , so can someone help me finish it , all i will be doing with is stream it to at least 8 devices in the house . thx again

9

@newguy09 said:
hope someone could help building a dedicated plex server , i’m looking into the Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz but would like to match it with the best mini itx motherboard , already have a case , so can someone help me finish it , all i will be doing with is stream it to at least 8 devices in the house . thx again

please create your own subject.

10

Thinking about building a stand alone plex with these components. Any thoughts? https://pcpartpicker.com/list/C2fZm8

11

@tbonnesen said:
Thinking about building a stand alone plex with these components. Any thoughts? Part List - AMD Ryzen 7 1700X, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, Fractal Design Define R4 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

That will work REALLY well…if this is a PLEX only (i.e. no gaming or other graphic intensive tasks) you really don’t need the GTX1050 video card, that is overkill, IMO. At least until GPU transcoding gets a little further along.