Hello Forum, I’m finally getting around to building my Plex library but first I want to thank byte my bits (Jason) and EposVox for all the information they have posted. I’m sure there may be a post like this but I’m going for a quick help here as I’m going to buy the items around cyber Monday.
This week I signed up for a lifetime pass and I have narrowed my components. I was going to just buy the latest NUC (byte my bits review) but then I thought about building my own SFF PC, giving me more flexibility.
My component are:
MB: ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming ITX/AC -or- Gigabyte Z39 I Aorus Pro WIFI
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K
HD: Plextor M9P3 M.2 2280 512 GB
Ram: 16GB -or- 32GB Corsair LPX Vengeance
Chassis: HDPlex HE v2
PSU: HDPlex upcoming 200w
OS: Windows 10 (I really tried Ubuntu and Mint but could not get the coding to work, besides I’m more familiar with Windows)
I have an old Synology NAS (2413+) with 14tb of storage and still have 6 free bays. The NAS will house all my data.
I plan on adding a 4k external player in the future but the whole point of Plex is to avoid physical discs. I already have an OTA antenna connected to all my TV and also running PlayStation Vue (kids needed Disney). So instead of the external 4k player I may go with a HDHomeRun Quattro (or 2).
I welcome your feedback, suggestions and recommended changes or add-ons to my planned setup.
go with the gigabyte motherboard. It’s at least a semi-reputable brand. ASRock is known for being very cheap and breaking. It’ll work, sure, but not for long, and everything will throttle because its bandwidth claims are mostly all bogus.
My family is basically all computer people, server admins and techs, etc… We have dealt with every brand you can imagine at some point or another, and ASRock is just plain garbage. Good for a cheap emergency “get this operating while the good part is shipping”, but nothing to actually run long-term on.
16gb will get you going, but I’d shoot for the 32gb. Plex is mostly CPU driven (transcoding), but you still need enough ram to cover the video files its working on, since it loads it completely into RAM to work on it – not a huge deal if you’re mostly working with 200-500mb video files (1080p TV shows, etc), but when you get into the 6+GB 4k and 8k video files, you’ll feel it right away once your ram caps out.
you dont really have any massively power consuming modules in there, but remember the 9700k is a 95w cpu at designed load (under 50% load) and intel chips “turbo”, which makes them take more.
so you have:
60-130w CPU
0.4-2w SSD
5-30w MB (depending on onboard usage, remember ethernet ports and onboard video still takes power)
RAM is about 1w per 1GB for DDR3, and between 0.7 and 1.4w per 1GB for DDR4 depending on if you get low power or performance
11.2-44.8w RAM depending
so… your power consumption will float from 78w to 206.8w at full load. I’d shoot for a 300-350w just to be on the safe side.
REMEMBER – Just because its an 1100w psu doesn’t mean its USING 1100w CONSTANTLY… thats just its MAXIMUM CAPACITY. I have an 1100w psu in my gaming rig, but under idle it only draws about 220w, and under load it draws about 600, and at max load draws about 800. I just oversized to give myself a buffer so it doesnt peak and shut off.
Hi Liestenn. Was thinking of building a PC myself. I’m into tech, but I don’t know much about computer parts. Not a whole lot of info out there, on building a computer for multimedia, using plex. Mostly gaming rigs. I know you have to take different things into concentrations building for multimedia vs gaming.
My goal, is to start build for 4K media, and multiple devices within, and without my network, running at 1080p at the same time.
Was thinking of build my media rig around a amd ryzen 7 2700x, or on the cheaper side, a amd ryzen 7 1800x. Was even thinking of a threadripper. That would most likely be overkill. Do you think I can’t go wrong with either the 2700x, or 1800x?
I have no idea where to start with RAM. 32Gb’s is expensive.
our plex server is running on a 10 year old processor
and serves 4k media just fine, as long as they’re all optimized first. chokes if i dont optimize first tho.
Note, transcoding only runs on ONE core at a time… so having multi-core processors is only really for serving multiple files or using the server for other things in the meantime. if you’re looking to serve only one or two 4k files you really want a high GHz vs more cores. so for 4k video, the 2700 would be great., the 1800 wouldn’t really be any different, but for an extra $40 for the slightly higher turbo speed, its worth it for the 2700.
$200 in memory is expensive when you’re considering dropping $800-1800 on a threadripper? or were you going to go with the gen 1 for like $300? even so, $200 worth of RAM is cheap. couple years ago, 32GB would have run you $500+ thanks to certain digital currencies…
Considering dropping $800-1800 on a threadripper. It was more of a thought. Just can’t justify spending the money on it, with very little benefit, vs the other two. Have my eyes set on the 2700x tho. Your right in either case.
I’m not trying to be cheap, I just don’t want to go overboard if not needed. Plus I’m going to be doing this week by week, buying each part, which is more of a factor then spending the money.
$80 here, $80 there not to bad, $200 here, $200 there, little more heavy on my weekly budget, along with weekly expenses.
I’ll have to box with the wife too. lol
It’ll prolong my build, is more my concern, and she has more stamina.
I’ll probably end up buying 32Gb’s, because I want this thing to run smoothly.
I’ll be using this rig as a daily driver, plus using it as a plex server.
well instead of dropping the $200 on a 4x8 pack, you could just buy them in 1x8 packs, those are only $50-60 each. 8gb WILL run the OS and the server, but you might see a lot of buffering. 16GB should really be minimum so the OS has stuff to work with and it can load at least a 1080p movie. you could do 4k on 16gb if you had to, but honestly there’s no really good reason outside of budgetary constraints not to just go for 32.
2-4 of these would do nicely ($60/ea - $240 for 32g)
or to leave room for expansion later, one of these ($245 for 32g)
if this is also your daily use PC, then definitely go for 32 in the end, and the ryzen 2700x. i really do wish plex had native CUDA transcoding support tho – would be nice to just throw an old 700 or 900 series card in the rig, dedicate it to transcoding, and watch the CPU go unused.
Hello Liestenn, thank you for your input on the motherboard, I initially was going for the Gigabyte but saw that ASRock has more USB 3.1 Gen 2. I don’t really need that much as the only items I will have connected to my HTPC is a TV and Optical Drive. These are both big “Ifs”. I could set the HTPC aside and let it run in the background and use the Plex apps for the TVs and any other device. And if I really wanted to watch a movie off a physical drive, I can have that connected directly to the TV. So, I appreciate your input on the quality of the boards.
I am aware of the larger PSU to ensure enough watts but not really using all of its load, I am waiting for the company to release their 200W series as I was basing my information on 2 things: a video I watch on how well the 160W PSU can handle 4k video playing with a GTX 1080i graphic cards (don’t remember the rest of the specs) and per PC Part Picker. I am drawing less that 130W (https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jmoricone/saved/NxLfHx). I figured if I wait for the 200W unit I would have way more than I need. The company does not make a 300W but they do have a 400W PSU (https://www.hdplex.com/hdplex-400w-hi-fi-dc-atx-power-supply-16v-24v-wide-range-voltage-input.html). Also keep in mind that I have extra RAM in my parts picker that I need to remove, they are there for comparison.
Speaking of RAM, based on what you said, looks like I could go with the Corsair 2x16 DDR4-2400 (32GB) at $199. However, I have watched a few videos by Jason on Byte my Bits and he only uses 8GB of RAM total? Although these are budget builds that he is doing.
In reading Kodiak’s post and your reply, I am choosing the Intel i7-9700k CPU due to its PassMark score of 17669. Per Plex (pun):
• 4K (60Mbps, HEVC) file: 4000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
• 1080p (10Mbps, H.264) file: 2000 PassMark score
I too want to be able to stream 4k content and don’t really see a need for more than 4 simultaneous streams at any given time. Based on the PassMark, I could stream up to 8-1080p streams. I will not have a GPU so it will all be CPU / RAM transcoding. Reason for no GPU is based on lack of space w/in the Chassis (https://www.hdplex.com/hdplex-h3-v2-fanless-computer-chassis.html). The company does make a slightly larger case (H5) that can house a 2-slot GPU but I am trying to go as small as possible with this build.
Kodiak, I hope my build and anyone’s input will help you too.
Most motherboards come with a few extra pinouts for auxiliary USB (frontpanel, sidepanel, etc), and an extra USB card is fairly cheap ($20-50 for a 4-8 pin hub card) so lack of onboard USB is not really an issue.
Partspicker tends to only show low or median usage based on idle benchmarks, they don’t really show 100% usage power, also, it seems to only be counting the CPU and RAM and SSD, and not the motherboard which does take power to run the onboard and peripheral components like ethernet, onboard video, the frontside bus, any sata-raid controlers – there’s a reason theres a nice thick 20.4 pin power connector going into the motherboard as well as separate power for each component and the cpu – these things take power. (granted thats also to power the PCI/PCIE 5v and 12v rails as well, but you get the idea)
Our general rule of thumb is whatever the estimated maximum a computer will draw, put at least 100w in front of it. If it says 162w draw, do 250-300+ just to be safe – you also never know whether or not you’ll want to upgrade or throw more cards or drives in there, and those will draw more power. Better to just drop the extra $20 now, rather than having to drop a full 'nother $100+ on a new PSU just for it to lie around collecting dust.
Easily. As long as it fits in the board, i’d say 16 is the minimum, 32 is ideal, and anything more is just buffer.
So passmark scores kind of but not really play into how well it’ll run. Since passmark counts ALL CORES used at once, and Plex Transcoder can only use one thread, a massive passmark score means basically nothing. what you want is a high core speed. a 4-core at 4.2GHz will out perform a 32-core 2.8GHz rig in plex transcoding any day. the 9700k should be fine, but dont expect it to just sit at capped power rendering one video at a time since i7s are primarily “thread count over thread power” processors.
if you want my honest opinion, grab a ryzen over an i7. They run colder (needing less cooling as long as you have good airflow in the case) and they’re a good middleground between thread count and per-core speed.
Hello Liestenn, now I am confused on the whole CPU selection as I was using the suggested PassMark score x the amount of streams to gauge which CPU to buy. I was okay with a 3 streams but when I found the 9700k able to do 4, I figured why not. Yes this is an 8-core chip at 3.6Ghz. Based on what you stated, then an i7-7700k, which is 4-core at 4.20Ghz (PassMark 12041) would be able better and could transcode 4-4k streams?
What would be the ideal Intel / AMD chip to stream 4-4k videos both in/out of network?
My first computer (custom build by local dealer) had an AMD chip, which lasted about 2-3 years. 2nd computer was top of the line Alienware with Intel chip lasting me 10yrs before the MB / CPU / HD died on me. I did not care as I had it for 10 yrs and I figured it was a good excuse to build my 1st PC (2016). I went with Intel and its going great (https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jmoricone/saved/GnjsZL). My luck with AMD (and my brother) have not been great but I keep hear they have improved so I would consider for this HTPC but I would like a choice between the 2 brands for my needs. Thanks again for your feedback.
My current gaming rig is running an AMD Phenom II x6 1090t, and we originally had the plex server on my rig before moving it to a dedicated blade and it could run 3 4k streams at once, yes 4k would buffer a little bit because this isn’t the best single-core speed.
We have 3 machines with intel, and 12 machines with amd. In 15 years, we’ve replaced 2 AMD cores, and 19 intel cores. (counting direct death replacements, not oo shiny upgrade replacements)
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Average CPU Mark Socket: AM3 Clockspeed: 3.2 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.6 GHz No of Cores: 6 Typical TDP: 125 W
Other names: AMD Phenom™ II X6 1090T Processor
CPU First Seen on Charts: Q2 2010
CPUmark/$Price: 14.11 Overall Rank: 665
Last Price Change: $396.08 USD (2017-01-29) 5586
Single Thread Rating: 1219 <-------- this is the number to look at.
1000+ will “run” 4k streams (buffering if not optimized)
1200+ will run 4K streams (minor buffering if not optimized or super high bandwidth rips)
1500+ shouldn’t buffer at all with 4k
2000+ you want for 8k video
also take this with a grain of salt – this is just from OUR experience. My personal selection would be the Ryzen 7, 2700x. It s a LOT cheaper than the i7s, and will do 4k, and even 8k video just fine.
general rule for 4k+ is just optimize it. even if you think the hardware is beefy enough, just do it. if nothing else than to save your power bill on the transcoding lol
optimized 4k video on my x5570 (that i put there for reference because thats our server) serves nearly perfectly streaming to multiple devices, but even not optimized, doing 1 or 2 at once shouldnt flinch a 1900x… tho if its a dedicated rig, the ryzen 7 2700x is slightly better for a little less… and it takes almost half the wattage (105w mid load on the 2700x vs 180w mid for the 1900x) and runs much cooler, while having a higher average all-cpu score, in case you want to do something else with the unused cpu time, or even if you want to just run a lot of simultaneous optimizations to get your whole library up to speed.
Is a GPU needed, required or recommended. Is there a benefit of a GPU in helping the transcoding? My device will only have PMS installed, while my TV (or other device) I would use the Plex app to watch the movies… so maybe instead of calling this device a HTPC it’s more of a server that I can place anywhere in my home as long as there is a hard wire Ethernet. Therefore, maybe I should just get a 1 or 2u server case instead of the “fanless” case… Any thoughts…
dont go with fanless, because this thing will push your cpu hot, and youll want the air flow.
ours runs on a 2u blade server with no gpu, and before ran on a gaming rig with two video cards – ive yet to notice any difference in single play transcoding.
it SAYS it supports hardware accelerated transcoding, but that limits what it can send to. using NVENC to transcode wont let you play it back on say, a phone or an xbox or ps4 (both use AMD chips), so if you have an nVidia playback device like a shield, or another small media PC next to the TV sure, go for it.
I’d still put a low-profile card in there just in case, as you can use the same rig for ripping the disks initially, and using CUDA processing to reencode the mkv is a lot faster than doing it with the cpu alone, but i wouldn’t really make use of it with plex until they get it to not always select NVENC.
Hi Liestenn, thanks again for your feedback. You threw few new terms at me that I had to google the meaning (Blade Server… WOW). That will be a little over my technical experience. So, I reset my expectations and started looking at my options are:
Case:
1 - Norco RPC-250 2U Server Case
6 bases for HD/SSD. Although my media will be on my NAS, I have been reading in other posts within the form to have the OS and PMS on 1 drive while the Cache on a separate drive. I was thinking of doing 2 Raid 1 so if any of the drives fail, I can swap it out for another. Thinking about this, I may be able to just get away with a 4 drive bay and even add in hotswap capabilities.
I can have 2 separate drives and utilize a heatsink w/fan for cooling (most likely noctua) and in this setup I can place in the living room and add a graphics card in the future
Not sure if I had mention this before, I will be using Windows as my OS as I had trouble learning Linux (well at least accessing my NAS w/in PMS) on a NUC I was given to test / configure. So, I do not think option 1 will even be an option as I would have to setup remote access before installing it into my rack as once inserted, I will not be able to connect a monitor to do any diagnostics afterwards. The other 2 options, I could connect a Bluetooth keyboard and connect my tv as the monitor to see what is happening. I guess I could even consider Streacom’s cases (e.g., F7C). I have a desktop, which I previously shared the pcpartpicker link that I will be using to rip my media.
As for the ripping, a few other posts I have read suggests ripping the file into multiple formats. For a Blu-ray, I could rip with MakeMKV the full disk (1080p at ~15GB), then use Handbrake to convert that format (1080p) into a smaller format (~5GB) and then a 3rd option to be of lower quality w/in Handbrake (720p at ~<1GB). Yes, this will require more storage but I may not do this for my entire collection and would minimize transcoding by the CPU. Besides, I currently have 12 TB available and still 6 more bays free. Therefore, I have room to grow. Phase 2 would be to swap out my desktop NAS for a custom-built rack mounted NAS if I can get Synology’s DSM as the OS (again due to familiarity).
Also what would be best situation:
Having PMS on save device that had all the media (1 large server).
Having PMS on a dedicated device (like a the SFF computer) and the media on a separate device like a NAS.
