Hardware recommendation for a new Plex Server.... 95% of my media is X265/ HEVC

General Discussions
1

Hello All…

I am looking for some recommendations for hardware (CPUs, RAM) … I want to build a Dual processor Xeon tower server to drive my Plex environment. I will have ESXi 6.5 running one VM of Windows 10 pro with Plex.

I was looking at SuperMicro towers (https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/743/SC743TQ-865B-SQ) and was going to buy two used Xeons from Ebay, but since all I need it for is to transcode X265 for web streams I’m not sure which processors will be effective.

I am also not sure if any Xeon can be paired up or do only certain processors support dual motherboards.

I appreciate any advise the forum can give me.

Cheers!

2

You need a KabyLake (or better) CPU with iGPU.
Look at the GPU (ark.intel.com) and go from there.

3

@ChuckPA … Thanks for the quick reply. Assuming that iGPU is integrated graphics I must say that I am surprised that most of the processors that have integrated Graphics are i7s… very few Xeons.

https://ark.intel.com/Search/FeatureFilter?productType=processors&IntegratedGraphics=true this has the i7-8700 on the top of the list for iGPU processors.

do you have any experience with dual i7 machines? 12 cores sounds good, but I thought that i7s has issues in a dual processor motherboard.

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I just read that the 8700 does not support dual processors

5

That’s why I stopped what I was doing and replied so quickly.

Had you purchased the Xeons, you’d end up returning them.

Hardware transcoding is based entirely on Quick Sync Video at this point. Yes, some folks have success on different platforms (Windows); but if you’re using Linux, this is how you must do it until after Intel finishes updating the libvaapi package

6

@ChuckPA … what about building a GPU server? aka: Deep Learning Box

would Plex utilize the GPUs for transcoding?

7

PMS cannot utilize external GPU / Graphics cards at this time.

It is being considered and worked on but the scope of that effort is quite large (huge actually). To be effective and fair to all, all the big name / model GPUs would need support. That’s considerable development and testing time.

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@ChuckPA … if I stick with software transcoding do I still need integrated graphics on the processor?

would that allow me to build a more traditional dual Xeon box… then once Plex supports external GPUs then I could get fancy…

Thoughts?

9

If you stick with software transcoding, you won’t need the GPU. You can escape the crazy Intel GPU firmware game and Yes, it will allow you to build a more traditional box.

Regarding the external GPUs, a) it will be a long time if/until it arrives since there are so many variables (GPUs) involved b) The testing & support logistics is the huge task.

10

Hi Chuck…

Just wanted to ask if external GPUs were supported for offloading the Transcoding in PMS yet? Any update?

Cheers,
Steve

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