I have a Plex Pass and my QNAP 673 doesn’t have enough horsepower to transcode anything. I am debating to buy a higher end QNAP (872XT) or build an intel based server. Question - Will the plex server utilize the GPU at all if I build either the NAS or server with one?? I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere other than “stick with intel CPU” :). Thanks!!!
I’m working on filling in this list (External GPUs). (waiting on info from QNAP plus what I can find time to do myself)
Chuck, you are my hero sir! So if I buy a 872XT and toss in my 1080ti GPU, it will perform significantly better than just utilizing the i5 processor alone? Again, I have plex pass and will turn on hardware transcoding. Are there any other settings I need to change?
On QNAP,
- Install the NVIDIA_GPU_DRV package from QNAP
- With the card installed (after driver install)
- Set the graphics card to
QTS mode. - Restart PMS
PMS detects the card and mode as it starts. When a valid card, valid drivers, and QTS mode are found, it enables its use by PMS.
Be careful of:
- Subtitles must still be performed by the CPU.
- Audio is always done by the CPU.
If you can mitigate the use of subtitles, you’ll go a long way.
An i5-7xxx CPU is just as good as an external GPU. Those QSV ASICs are solid.
I believe the problem here would be getting one in a QNAP. I have an i7-7700 in my TVS-1282 and it was special ordered from Taiwan. The stock models have SkyLake (i7-6700 == no HDR video)
Thanks for the help…looks like they are still only 7600 passmark scores? I thought I needed at least 17000 to transcode anything?
When transcoding video, with the hardware, CPU passmarks do not mean much.
The internal QSV ASIC (app specific integrated circuit) does all the heavy lifting.
The only thing you need passmarks for is audio and subtitles in addition to running PMS itself.
A 3000 passmark J3455 can hardware transcode 5-6 streams of 2160p -> 1080p yet it can barely transcode 2 audio streams of 7,1 -> stereo.
Awesome. Sounds like upgrading to a 872xt would be a huge jump over my 673 even without a gpu
Thank you for the assist. Different forum topic prob but the built in Plex client for a new LG OLED tv is really slow compared to using appletv or even my Samsung. Any idea? Thanks dude
TV processors are never the fastest. The AppleTV cpu is quick and I know the Samsung are too. I guess it depends on the model.
Thanks again Chuck…it sounds like a 872XT is a giant leap from my 673 and plenty for transcoding a few 4k streams (minus audio) just fine and adding in a 1080TI to an 872XT doesn’t really add any additional benefit if I hear correctly? I think I have my direction vs building a new box. I am streaming home cameras also for security as well. I will load it up on memory
be certain to consult:
Another thought was to just use my existing 7700k desktop and do fc or iscsi back to my 683 qnap where the moves are stored. Thoughts on this vs just buying the 872xt as an all in one. I am a lifetime pass holder
If the NAS itself can’t “cut the mustard” then let the host do the work but maintain the NAS as the primary media storage as it was originally intended.
Getting fancy with iSCSI isn’t necessary.
- A linux host (not a docker or VM) to run the native package
- Media mounted from the NAS onto that host.
My experience has taught me to keep things as simple as possible and this is as simple as it gets.
- The i7-7700 will run a great deal of transcoding. I happen to have one in my QNAP (TVS-1282T).
- I can easily pull 6 HEVC high bitrate videos (50+ Mbps) to stream to lesser players. through that CPU while converting audio.
- I make certain to keep subtitles from messing up the works (curate the media carefully)
I have an i7-8809G as my desktop. It will run PMS. It connects to the NAS at 10 GbE but there’s no need unless I’m testing or developing something for PMS on Linux/NAS platforms.
Does this help?
Makes a lot of sense. Sounds like just buying a QNAP 872XT with the i5-8400T alone will be a massive upgrade for me compared to my existing QNAP 673, correct??? No need to get fancy?
May not even be worth swapping processors out in the new system?
I am like you, keep it simple. I have a full cisco switching system in my house with 10G to the NAS with 1G links everywhere else, just tired of buffering and other less than desirable performance issues!
I have also considered this NAS. Here is my take:
I use common formats. h.264 and h.265. Pretty much any client will direct play my files, provided there is sufficient bandwidth. With 1080p files there always is, so no need to transcode.
Now 4K is another story. Every now and then I wish I could transcode these. But I dont see the point of 4K without HDR, and HDR can not be transcoded by Plex no matter how beefy cpu/gpu youve got. Tonemapping HDR has been an open request here for what? 3 years and is still not a feature. To make matters worse, to get HW assisted HDR transcoding - from what I understand - you will either need a nvidia, or an 11th gen Intel (tiger/rocket lake). The latter will not work in your NAS.
In the end, this has put me off the idea of transcoding anything. I do wanna rid myself of the monstrosity of a 19» 16 bay datacenter box i have in my basement, but Im not gonna spend extra for a less than ideal transcoding sollution.
Understand…my challenge is also that I have older 1080p films that I am playing on my LG OLED that tend to flake…If I play 4k natively on that TV, never a problem.
If I may offer a spin in another direction?
Why not offload the CPU entirely?
I have an Nvidia Shield Pro 2019 – using it as a player.
- PMS does everything DirectPlay. You won’t need a beefy NAS to do that.
- The shield does all the heavy lifting including excellent tone mapping in the Nvidia hardware onboard.
- With their latest update “Shield Experience 8.2 (?)” , all the audio is working perfectly with the Onkyo (RZ series). Currently setup for 5.1 (no room for the extra speakers (yet))
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To figure out whether you should use CPU or GPU for transcoding, you first need to ask yourself, how many people am I serving with my Plex server?
If it’s only for you, then CPU is honestly the easiest answer. Get a reasonable quad core CPU from the last 4 years and you’ll be all set.
You won’t be able to transcode 4K HDR for remote streaming but anything else should be fine.
But if you’re serving multiple users, and there’s a reasonable chance people would be watching at the same time. Then it’s better to get an Intel NUC for GPU transcoding. You don’t need a discreet GPU or a desktop PC. In my experience, Intel iGPU quicksync is the most stable GPU transcoding option.
IMHO, I’d advise against transcoding on your NAS machine where you host PMS. Your options are limited, and they are all expensive. It’s much better to get a dedicated NAS for file serving and use a NUC to run PMS.
There are options that will cost you a fraction of the qnap that will work with 1080p. But since you allready have a NAS, Id take Chucks advise and solve this at the client level.
If i buy the 872xt. Can i swap the i5-8400t chip with any other socket 1151 chip for even better performance? Anyone done this?
QNAP Forum is the place to ask that.
They will know all there is to know
