Its easiest for me to attach the reddit thread I made about my issue. I have one specific client that the CPU and GPU max out when I play a movie on the Plex desktop application.
The whole point of the desktop app is to avoid transcoding on the server.
If your PC cannot handle its default quality settings, change the playback quality on the client to a lower setting. I am not talking about bitrates here, but about the actual video quality setting. (The one that has one of its selections called “Make my GPU hurt”.)
Put that to the lowest setting. The higher ones demand a dedicated GPU chip that is not of the oldest generation, nor a total budget model – because they perform additional filtering and processing that regular clients won’t do.
If that still doesn’t ease system load, use the Plex web app instead.
