# Hardware Transcoding Enabled but 100% CPU Usage? **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussions\ **Created:** [December 10, 2017, 12:14am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-100-cpu-usage/217104 "2017-12-10T00:14:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cafe\_Diem](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/cafe_diem/32/208501_2.png) [@Cafe\_Diem](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Cafe_Diem)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2017, 12:14am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-100-cpu-usage/217104/1 "2017-12-10T00:14:59Z")
I’m testing hardware acceleration on a low-end Kaby Lake Celeron (G3930, which has QSV support) on Win10. I’ve run into a weird issue. Plex Server confirms that it’s hardware decoding/encoding a file: ``` Plex Web (Microsoft Edge) Playing Converting Video Transcoding HEVC (hw) to H264 (hw) Audio Transcoding DCA to AAC ``` But when I check the Task Manager, the CPU is floating between 90-100% usage, with most of that being the Plex Transcoder process. I can’t imagine the audio transcode process requires 100% CPU. Is this normal? I’ve seen similar behavior on a quad-core Haswell i5 as well. If not, where should I look in the logs for more detail? (This computer isn’t yet compatible with 1709, so there is no GPU section in the task manager to review) Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Cafe\_Diem](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/cafe_diem/32/208501_2.png) [@Cafe\_Diem](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Cafe_Diem)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2017, 5:04pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-100-cpu-usage/217104/2 "2017-12-10T17:04:16Z")
Going to answer my own post after spending some time researching last night: With Quick Sync enabled, the Plex server spikes to 90-100%… but only for the first 2-3 minutes. I haven’t researched why, but I’m guessing it’s immediately filling the buffer on the client, then doing real-time transcoding. Even on a low-end Kaby Lake Celeron, the CPU load is fairly minimal after the initial spike. Also worth noting that I tested hardware encoding on a quad-core Haswell Core i5 system and a dual-core Kaby Lake Celeron last night. The Kaby Lake ran circles around the Core i5 with acceleration enabled. Not only was the video sharper, but seeking didn’t take 30-40 seconds with random failures. Very pleasant surprise, for a machine that cost less than $200 to assemble. ---
**Author:** ![weezzer008](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3e96dc/32.png) [@weezzer008](https://forums.plex.tv/u/weezzer008)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2018, 2:36pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-100-cpu-usage/217104/3 "2018-12-04T14:36:59Z")
Mine is doing this as well. I can see that my nvidia 1070 gpu is going some sort of trans-coding as it has the plex transcoder process utilizing it. However, my intel 3770 cpu jumps from idle at around 15% to 100% when a transcode starts. I’ll give it more than 3 minutes to test if it goes down. ---
**Author:** ![TeknoJunky](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/teknojunky/32/165055_2.png) [@TeknoJunky](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TeknoJunky)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2018, 2:46pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-100-cpu-usage/217104/4 "2018-12-04T14:46:23Z")
audo transcoding still does use the cpu, so even if you have HA for video, if you have a lower power cpu it still will have to keep up with high bit rate HD audio to \> aac and/or eac3 or whatever. And Hd audio conversion does use a bit more than say converting dts to ac3 or whatever lossy audio source. Along with audio transcoding, transcoding 4k is a lot of IO, so your cpu/chipset/disk subsystem is going to be getting a large workout. ie reading in a 4k stream, transcoding vid/aud on the fly, buffering, and sending it out to the client(s). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 12:15am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/hardware-transcoding-enabled-but-100-cpu-usage/217104/5 "2020-01-08T00:15:25Z")