Looking for advice for intel CPU with windows to handle at least 4-6 simultaneous transcodes of 7.1 FLAC (or other lossless audio) to lossy 5.1 or 2.0. I bought a small Beelink PC with a (weak) 12th gen CPU, which does a great job with video but I notice the CPU is at 99-100% (edit see below this is not totally on Plex) with just one movie, even if direct streaming the video when it is going to a device (such as a Roku or web browser) that cannot handle lossless audio. With two streams requiring audio transcoding (but with direct streaming of video) it leads to buffering. I am not interested in advice of avoiding lossless audio or having multiple audio tracks on every single file as I use the lossless tracks on my home equipment.
Task manager shows the transcoders are not doing much work. PMS is doing something else. Stop the playback and let PMS settle down first, then try testing again.
I understand. I’ve been playing with it for a few weeks. The huge majority of the time the CPU runs at 100% when it is streaming, even for longer periods. I just checked it now and there are two streams and the CPU is at 100%. One of the streams is direct play for both A/V. The other is 1080p transcode (HW) and audio going from AC3 5.1 to AAC stereo. “System” is at 50% for whatever reason. It only runs Plex (and remote desktop when I am connecting to it). But I will get some buffering even when I am not using a remote desktop. I never had that kind of usage on my 4790k with a 1660ti. I just bought this so I could run it 24/7 at lower power but it doesn’t seem to run Plex with anywhere near the capacity.
I bought the same exact mini pc and ended up returning it. I was only using it as an HTPC client rather than a server but I saw the same type of thing
A direct play and the CPU and iGPU were using way more resources than seemed appropriate. Much higher than a 10-year-old laptop that I had been using before that
4k SDR content had a lot of skipped frames and 4k HDR failed miserably.
I use a NAS with a J4125, and it hardly uses any resources so I don’t get it. On paper the n100 should be much better
I appreciate that feedback. I wish I had realized the issue prior to the return window closing. I’ll likely need something else, which is mostly why I started the thread. I’d like to know what type of CPU I should aim for as the integrated GPUs are well capable of the video transcoding I would need.
Maybe it would be worth doing a fresh OS install…
That’s unfortunate. For me, it was all apps I tried even Youtube or VLC so I’m afraid anything you do for Plex isn’t going to make a great impact
You can increase the power limit which is set pretty low. I did this and it did help, although not enough to overcome my problems
This is a decent tutorial if you want to try that
Something in general seems off to me though. It just doesn’t make sense that it seems so bad
I’d be curious to hear from someone running one of these using some kind of Linux build to see if it’s any better
Does it make a difference if you turn off subtitles. In your image above for “The Equalizer” it shows it is burning in the subtitles. That is done in the cpu so a low-powered device may have trouble.
That was SRT. I have discovered one issue, though. I usually run this headless (chrome remote desktop). I tried today connecting to a monitor and it it did help some. I also adjusted the max wattage in the bios from 20 to 25 watts. With those two changes I have successfully been able to run at least 3 simultaneous plays (2 of which had forced pgs subs) for about 15 min though I did have one brief buffer. Still not great but my use case is typically two streams max. 3 would be very uncommon. Still not nearly as good as my old system but hopefully I can keep it and make it work ok.
Edit - of course right after I posted one stopped with the message of the server not being powerful enough.
No changes since last post. It is an uncommon use for me to have several simultaneous transcodes (usually it is one or at the most 2), but if I could do it over again I wouldn’t have bought it as I expected it to be able to handle several transcodes (which implies to me the ability to also do subtitles and any audio transcoding as well).
With the single channel RAM and Realtek Ethernet this thing is seriously gimped. Intel always limits the GPU’s on these chips in some undocumented way that breaks things, safest to stick with i3 or above.
