Hardware Acceleration and Intel Atom X5-Z8350

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Hi,

I have a mini pc which I use only as a Plex server.

It works very well, mostly because I never need to transcode videos, all my videos are H264.

Right now I don’t have a Plex Pass, I preferred to buy iOS and Android apps without a subscription, but I read that Plex Pass activates the hardware Acceleration feature.

I wonder if it would make my mini pc able to transcode (again, I don’t need it but it could be useful) or if it would be useless because the cpu is not powerful.

Anyway, my mini PC specifications:
X5-Z8350
4gb ram ddr3
Hard disk 1TB

2

Personally I would suggest Handbrake or use the auto convert function within plex to auto encode to more friendly file type such as .mp4 most if not all of your files are h264 currently. I don’t see any benefit from your current specs of the server to having hardware acceleration. If you decide one day to upgrade and build a new machine than it might prove beneficial later on down the road. My personal opinion.

3

To be honest I’m just trying to find a reason to buy plex pass :smiley:

I thought with hardware Acceleration I could get better performance from my server. If not, I’ll pass and not buy the pass :slight_smile:

4

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/93361/intel-atom-x5-z8350-processor-2m-cache-up-to-1-92-ghz.html

It’s a Cherry Trail CPU without the Intel Quick Sync Video ASIC so you will not see HW transcoding with a Plex Pass account.

1 Like
5

Even if it’s not written in that page, the x5-z8350 supports quick sync.

Here you can find a guy who says this cpu supports up to 4 hw transcoding at the same time: http://chuckscoolreviews.blogspot.com/2019/05/plex-hardware-transcoding-performance.html?m=1

6

Interesting that they put a modern QSV ASIC in that CPU.

7

7th Gen QSV. It should work.

8

I was hoping it would work. I have the same CPU (Intel Atom x5-Z8350), but in my case it does not do any hw transcoding. It is now doing sw transcode as follows:
Video
1080p (H.264) --> 720P (H264)—Transcode

I think that should be transcode (hw) if the cpu supports it. I bought this box based on the chucks review. I will have to test with his file to verify if it maybe only does mpeg transcode on hw level.

Is there in the meantime something I can verify to make sure all my settings are correct? Should it be mentionned in the logs why it does not do HW transcode?

TIA

9

Test that 1080p by going down to 480p.

10

It’s another movie, but that should not matter.
Now its like:
Video1080p (H.264) --> SD (H264)—Transcode

And CPU 100%

11

Fixed!!!

On debian, you need to do the following:
I managed to get hardware transcoding working by using usermod -a -G render plex and restarting the system.

2 Likes
12

nice job! I’m curious now.

Is that in a Plex FAQ somewhere? Does it apply to all Debian installs?
May I ask if it was something you overlooked during install?
Does it require sudo or editing system files to make permanent?

13

By the way, at the end I tried and it works very well, it can convert smoothly a 1080p x265 to 1080 h264.

Anyway I gave back that mini pc because the CPU is too slow for other operations, now I have a J3455 and it’s totally better. Probably the perfect CPU for a little plex server

14

That is what I usually recommend people as a starter–typically the NUC7CJYH if not the NUC7PJYH. I stopped short of that when you enlightened me about this weird concoction that Intel created.

Laptop as a PLEX server
15

I can guarantee you that with hardware acceleration, the Z8350 could be a good plex server.

The problem is, for example, that it takes several hours to update windows 10. It’s very annoying to use it.

Now i bought an Intel NUC NUC6CAYH which is probably the cheapest one with Celeron J3455 and it’s even too powerful for my needs.

NUC7PJYH is maybe too powerful if you don’t have a lot of users, the NUC7CJYH could be even a cheaper option but i saw the passmark benchmark so i preferred NUC6CAYH which gets more than 2000 like plex faqs suggest

16

No doubt since its 7th Gen QSV

That was what I was eluding to in my last post.

2000 Passmarks is an old guideline that is no longer relevant with HW transcoding. In reality you need much less than that for the audio transcoding that is still processed via CPU. I don’t generally recommend Apollo Lake due to some issues with PQ when hosting PMS under Linux but you should be fine under Windows.

17

I’m not arguing at all, but I thought I’d mention that my 4 core Celeron J1900 @ 2GHz has a passmark of 1880, and it’s going in the trash, because a single 1080p to 720p hw transcode that forces AC3 to Opus brings it to its knees. The same video without audio runs the cpu @ 5%.

I really chose poorly going for a NAS that uses the least Watts.

18

That doesn’t surprise me since that is a CPU from the Bay Trail lineage. The Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake CPUs handle more.

19

Oops, I think it was a 1440, and I read it wrong when it was compared to a J3550.

20

Yep. Those are probably the best low-power Plex servers you can get at the moment.