Converting old PC to PMS. What hardware is good and what could be upgraded?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
,
1

Hey all. I was considering buying a new build altogether but figure I’ll just use an old PC for now since it’s collecting dust and still works. I know I’ll need to upgrade the memory to at least 16GB and I’m going to add a 512GB SSD probably - will also shuck an 8TB drive and add that. Not worried about RAID in this build or anything. Not sure if the motherboard would be a bottleneck of sorts so appreciate any input on that.

Hardware

Case: Cooler Master N200
CPU: i5-4690
Motherboard: GIGABYTE H97N-WIFI
RAM: 1x8GB, DDR3 1333Mhz
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 - 550 or 650 (haven’t opened up the case in a while to confirm - used to have a GPU in it hence the big PSU)
Storage: 1TB HDD

I’d probably have two or three VMs on it doing different things. I’m not sure if I want to run ESXi or KVM for virtualization. If I do KVM, not sure if I’ll have Plex on the host or on a VM. One VM would be for Windows, the others would be headless Linux installs.

99% of my library is 1080p, x264-encoded - nothing 4K on this build. Ideally I’d like to be capable of streaming to two devices without issue. The CPU has QuickSync and a passmark score of 7674, so I assume that should be more than sufficient, correct? Would the motherboard be suitable as well? Anything else I should keep in mind?

Thanks in advance.

1 Like
2

On my haswell cpu (e3-1225v3) plex servers I found ubuntu worked well with hardware transcoding enabled. I had a few issues with windows I could never solve (hw transcode only kicked it about 1/2 the time, even on the same file) and a few files were very blocky at points (specifically the jellyfish 20Mbps HD HEVC test file.
direct play work great all the time as expected.
RAM didnt seem to make much difference.
if you can make do with docker vs VMs then its a lot easier on the system resources. I understand they are not the same thing, but… an old SSD is nice forr the OS and Plex install, it will make it a bit snappier, pulling up covers and meta data.

3

Ubuntu Desktop would be the best/lightest on your hardware. Especially if you want to be running some VM’s in the background. In that case I would suggest getting a matching 8GB stick of ram so you can run in dual channel which is way more efficient. You can save yourself some money on the SSD by just getting a 256/250GB especially if you run Ubuntu. Since your 8TB is going to be your storage drive. If you need more storage you can always add USB 3.0 drives. They work fast enough for PMS. Half my storage is external!

As far as actual CPU/Hardware load and PMS it really matters how much transcoding you will be doing including simultaneous streams. Most phones, tablets, Roku’s, etc. Can all run most video codecs naturally. You just need to make sure the hardware acceleration box is ticked in the PMP App settings. I find on the rare occasion my server does have to transcode processor will jump up to 80-100% load briefly 30 seconds to a 1-2 minutes and then drops down to around 15-20% sustained load.

My personal setup is a i7490k @4.6ghz on all cores on closed loop water. 32GB of Patriot Extreme XMP 2400, a 512GB Samsung 960 Pro system/programs drive with an 500GB Samsung 860 as a cache drive, a GTX 1070 Founders Edition, and an Enermax Platinum 800 PS… My current storage pool is around 112.5TB. I am down nearly 18TB more due to a bad power supply and an older internal drive coming towards its end of life.

This is a Windows 10 Pro machine I do a lot of I.T. work, home automation programing, photoshop post processing and video remastering. All while PMS hums along in the background Serving over 6K 1080p BD Movies, A few hundred 4K BD’s, Several complete or up to date TV shows, (Mostly old school Sci-Fi, classics (MAS*H), Nature Docs, etc., approximately 400GB of FLAC music and 300GB of photos.

I use to take full BD & DVD’s and just remux them into MKV Containers with their original video and audio files. A couple of years ago I started converting my entire collection to H.265 video. This is the only reason I am running the video card I now have. I was quite content with my GTX 960, but with the increase in CUDA cores conversions are literally twice as fast. I also bought the card on a very special deal! Just an FYI unlike many of the H.265 “rips” you may “find” on the web are not what I actually do. I. I take the entire BD, including the extras, and convert only the video and only by reducing it to about half its original size. I do not over compress the files, and leave all main & commentary audio tracks as they are presented on the BD. Point being I just wanted to save some space.

And, that this computer setup I’ve been running for 4-5 years now is quite capable of multitasking while serving as a PMS and SMB server.

As soon as I can afford to build a new computer I will be converting this computer to a Linux OS system. HDHomeRun should have their Prime 6 (Single cable card six tuner unit). It will then server primarily as a PMS and Cable TV server for my entire household.

4

This cpu is an old Haswell.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-4690+%40+3.50GHz&id=2236

As such, it has only support for MPEG2 and H.264 hardware transcoding. But it won’t have the same visual quality as newer QuickSync revisions or even software transcoding.
And hardware transcoding is only available with a Plex Pass.

You will have to avoid HEVC (H.265)-encoded video files. There is no way to have these transcoding fluidly.

With only 8 GB in it, I don’t think this machine is suited to run several VMs and a Plex Server on top of it.

In general, in my opinion you should not re-dedicate old hardware to Plex. New hardware with plenty of horsepower will do the job much better – particularly if you plan on running it virtualized.

1 Like
5

There is some HEVC support in haswell, I see it kick in quite often.

Here is an example
image


It is partial (IOW 8 bit and decode only)
and Plex always uses 264 for the encode side, so that is there.
If you use linux, it kicks in consistently.

As for the quality, I find little difference between it and my HD630 8100 and 9600 CPUs for day to day usage. I am sure if you took screen shots and compared them there would be a difference, but for most cases I find it equally good.

PS hardware transcoding is still relatively immature and currently under development in Plex. There are differences between server platforms, there are cases where things don’t work as perfectly smoothly as software decoding.

6

Darn, I used a different source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

7

To The Original Poster:
1: Operating System Ubuntu Desktop, Since you are talking about VM’s and such
2: SSD’s: Sata SSD Samsung Evo Pro 860 256GB M.2 Samsung Evo 970 Pro 256GB
If all you are going to do is run some VM’s and PMS you won’t need more than 128GB SSD! That’s even if you were running Windows 10.
3: Memory, as I originally stated take the money I saved you from the SSD and use it to purchased a matching pair of 8GB memory. They will be matched and running in dual channel. The more VM work you do the more important this issue will become.
If you were just going to run Ubuntu Desktop and PMS a single 4GB stick would be fine.
4: the internal 8TB drive is a good idea. Though there are some options to think about as I believe that MB supports them. Say like 4 3TB drives in raid 5, 4 4TB drives in raid 10, and so on.
5: Just remember your server should only be connected to your network with a wired connection!
You’ll be able to stream to two devices all day long with your current list of hardware.
Keep in mind that many Smart TV’s, Phones, Tablets, and Smart Players & even BD Players all can direct stream what you’ve said your content consists of now.
And, if setup properly at those individual device settings, you will be using their own hardware to decode and play your library items.
6: Have fun and enjoy your entry into the Plex experience!

Ok only read my rambling below if you are so inclined.

My i7 4790K supports Intel QuickSync Technology.
Additionally my entire library has been converted to H.265 (For space saving just video size cut in half with zero quality loss and all original full audio i.e. Atmos & DTS-X left intact.) so any player on my network that doesn’t natively support it has to be transcoded from my server. I have a Roku 3 that plays everything on my server with the exception of my 4K content.

My PMS is running on a Windows 10 Pro Haswell machine I also use for re-encoding/ripping BD content for my library. So you are attempting to say His Haswell processor is not capable of performing better than an Arm/Atom/Celeron based NAS?

Additionally as I and others have pointed out this is where running Linux as the OS for the server may be key. If you have an Nvidia Video Card that supports H.265 NVENC like say a GTX-960. And are obliged to learn about this new to you OS (Linux, and excuse me for making assumptions…) You can do some custom compiling of PMS, or within the Linux build, that uses the power of the video card for decoding and encoding of H.265 if necessary. Using the cards engine in this manner is exactly how I am able to obtain between 350-400fps conversion speeds from H.264, VC-1, MPeg2, etc. to H.265 on my Haswell machine that runs my PMS for everything except my Live TV setup.

I wish we had more control over such things within the PMS settings to take advantage of the additional hardware, specifically the power of graphic cards, to decode and re-encode on the fly. They are far more efficient at performing such tasks with multiple lanes than CPU’s.

As for the Ram comment. Once again the premiss that 8GB is not enough is wrong. It is the way the memory is installed that makes a larger difference. If he has two sticks of 4GB ram running in dual channel it could make the machine run far smoother at multitasking than a single big stick.

And once again we suggested he run a Linux OS.

Even with my top heavy Win 10 Pro machine running PMS and several other major programs I’ve never ran into any transcoding issues. What I have found is when something does need transcoding there is a processor spike to 85-100% for 30-120 seconds or so and once it has kindo of synced into what it needs to do the service itself drops down to 10-15% of CPU utilization.

I have a second PMS it is on a NUC6CAYS Celeron J3455 quad core, 8GB of Ram 2-4GB sticks dual channel, an onboard 100GB SSD, and a 4TB USB 3.0 external HD for recordings dedicated to only being the PMS TV interface, DVR and HDHR backend software/tuner setup anchor device on the network. I have an HDHomeRun Prime with a FiOS cable card. and am putting the setup through its paces. I was having issues with the actual HDHR setup software on my main PMS computer and had already setup the Nuc as an Ubuntu desktop with PMS running on it for this exact reason months ago. Since switching over to the NUC for TV only things have been much more stable as far as the HDHR hardware and connectivity. I am recording only HD channels most of which have 5.1 audio, and I have them set to record with the delete commercials setting on. This means post processing. And where I thought it may cause some hiccups with the NUC so far it has taken everything in stride. It did take a little while for it to decommercial a 2 hour program, but I was being antsy wanting to see the quality of the recordings… The commercial removal seems to have worked quite well. And, on the second program I applied it on went much quicker.

All of this newest testing was just completed yesterday!
My Test System Players Are:
2015 NUC i3 with 4GB’s of Ram and 65GB SSD running Plex Media Player Embedded version 2.29.0. A Roku 3 on the latest Roku OS build with having both the public and latest beta releases of PMP for Roku. Windows 10 PMP app on the same computer running PMS.
Interestingly, and not happily so might I add, PMP on the Windows App in TV Mode or the standalone PMP NUC there is no way to view the guide when attempting to watch live TV!
The Public Channel Roku version has the identical layout as the other two with the difference of having a “Guide” button. Where you can actually open up a TV Guide?!
In both the Windows and Ubuntu PMP Apps They only do this in TV layout mode. This does not happen in their normal screen layouts.

So bottom line his hardware is way up to the task for being able to transcode to multiple users more than a Nas with an Intel Atom and 1GB of ram.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking Nas’ Heck I sell and install plenty of Synology systems as small business servers and if I ever had the spare money to build the Synology system I would want for myself, family and friends that would be awesome! (which means it’s an if I win the lottery…) But you know what? I still wouldn’t be using the Synology hardware itself for PMS or for what would end up being a 10-20 person array about half family and half friends with 3-5 on site users. There are a number of things that would be relegated to the Synology system. And my PMS would definitely be run from a Linux distro.

And Yes I know there are other manufacturers offering more robust processing power in the past 3-5 years leading up to today where they basically have desktop processors. While Synology actually went the other direction to some degree on some of their line. You know why? Because their software is that efficient it’s that simple. And yes if you get into their enterprise stuff…

8

Yup. When I read your response I thought “well that’s not what I see” and Dr. google took me to your linked article, and then I thought, “am I thinking of something else?” thankfully I have that screenshot from another recent thread to convince me to dig a bit deeper :slight_smile:

9

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.