How Important is Hardware Transcoding

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As per the title, how important is hardware transcoding?

The media that I will be streaming will 99% of the time require transcoding and I can expect anywhere from 1 to 2 simultaneous transcodes. Specifically, it will be transcoding because of subtitles.

The reason why I’m asking is because I was looking into purchasing one of these: https://www.amazon.com/FreeNAS-Mini-Network-Attached-Diskless/dp/B00EQJ1BTU?ref_=w_bl_hsx_s_pa_web_9199424011

However, the CPU that these come with are Avaton which do not support the Intel QSV. So, would the higher core count (8) make up for the fact that everything will likely need to be SW transcoded?

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As far as I am aware each software transcoding routine uses one core so if one vid transcodes fine 6 will on an 8 core device. As to the transcoding efficiency of a chipset I am not sure.

There is detailed help here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/

I have a 4th gen core I5 which is fairly good at SW transcoding as long as the source video isn’t totally pants quality.

It’s a good 4 years old and I’ll upgrade to an 8th gen and even maybe go I7, the second being a ‘nice to’ given that the 8th gen has far better routines as far as transcoding is concerned.

The thing about the official Plex article is that HW acceleration will generally result in a lower endpoint quality.

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But again that’s based on the source quality.
With a good source it gives excellent results.

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That’s a good point. I forgot that “HW transcoding” quality is very subjective to the hardware. The quality will change depending on different implementations in the HW for transcoding. I might get better quality just just using SW transcoding in general.

I’ve thought more on this problem and realized that I’m probably overthinking this. The simple solution is that I’m going to get a NAS. I’ve amassed enough “stuff” and I share it with enough people that it just makes sense that I should dissociate it from my personal computer. Now, I’ve been trying to shove a square peg into a circular hole by making this my media server as well and that’s probably why everything seems so difficult.

What I think I’m going to do is get the NAS and install a plex server on it. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, it still doesn’t change the fact that I want/need a NAS. At that time, I’ll consider yet another server whose sole purpose will be media transcoding and not [insert N number of things here] as well.

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