# Encoding 4k movies for plex

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/encoding-4k-movies-for-plex/906744>\
**Category:** General Discussions\
**Tags:** hardware\
**Created:** [February 24, 2025, 12:51pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/encoding-4k-movies-for-plex/906744 "2025-02-24T12:51:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mike4939](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/db5fbb/32.png) [@mike4939](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mike4939)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2025, 12:51pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/encoding-4k-movies-for-plex/906744/1 "2025-02-24T12:51:45Z")

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I have a few questions here. I’m starting to rip some 4k discs. I have a kinda old system that doesn’t support hardware encoding and transcoding. its Has a Gigabyte AM4 board from 2019, a Ryzon 2700x CPU, 15 GB of ram, 500GB SSD and multiple other drives for media storage but only a Nvidia GT730 video card. the system is running win11.  
I been using Handbrake the encode movies and shows in H.265 for a while now and the computer seems to handle playback fine. mostly I’m playing video locally on firestick 4k max that I have on both our tv sets at home, they can direct play HEVC video.  
When I play remote on my phone there is sometimes some lag im thinking its using software transcoding.  
The other issue I have is encoding A UHD movie. I’ve been trying to do the movie Top Gun in 4k with the Handbrake preset " Amazon Fire 2160p60 4K HEVC surround". seems like its going to take over 8 hours to process. when I do blu-ray movies at 1080p they only take about an hour and a half which is more acceptable. I probably need to tweek my settings some as well and am looking for suggestions to make quality and file size optimal.

I’m looking at the possibility if getting a GPU that can do some of the work with Plex and handbrake.  
I seen this Intel ARC A310 and A380 can work with plex for transcoding in a youtube video and they are Affordable. Will its abilities also help in Handbrake too? If not what are some other GPUs I can install in my current system to get faster encoding that don’t cost a house payment?

Edit:  
I found 2 PNY NVidia Quadro K620 cards in the recycle pile at work. Looked up on Google and these cards seem to support NVENC encoding. Where the GT730 does not.  
I think I will give this a try and see if it’s any improvement. Both cards are pretty old So I still may want something newer but ideally want to stay in the Range of $100 to $200 USD for a new GPU.

Edit  
I found this

> **[Video Encode and Decode Support Matrix](https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-support-matrix)**
>
> Find the related video encoding and decoding support for all NVIDIA GPU products.

Looks like the K620 only supports h.264 not h.265 hardware encoding so that’s not really a lot of help.  
So, now I am back to the Arc A310 or a used Gforce GTX 1650,

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/encoding-4k-movies-for-plex/906744/2 "2026-04-22T13:56:24Z")

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