# How many cores **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussions\ **Created:** [November 24, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266 "2016-11-24T13:03:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tearspacer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b782af/32.png) [@Tearspacer](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Tearspacer)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266/1 "2016-11-24T13:03:35Z")
Was just wondering if anyone knows how may cores plex will use when live transcoding. As I am building a 20 core 40 thread server (i know this is way over kill it’s getting used for other things as well) For example adobe only really uses a max of 8c-16t and will just leave the other cores or barely use them. So was wounding how many cores plex will use and if it would use all 20 cores 40 threads ---
**Author:** ![BobSnot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/94ad74/32.png) [@BobSnot](https://forums.plex.tv/u/BobSnot)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 1:07pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266/2 "2016-11-24T13:07:40Z")
totally depends on the source codec. VC-1 = single core, H.264 = up to 12 from memory… its basically just ffmpeg so you can google search for that. ---
**Author:** ![OttoKerner](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/ottokerner/32/10079_2.png) [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 2:10pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266/3 "2016-11-24T14:10:53Z")
A single transcoding job won’t use all of your cores. But then if you’re building such a monster, you won’t have just one video stream at a time. rule of thumb: - without subtitles to ‘burn in’ - video codec NOT VC-1 you will get use of several cores per stream. If you have primarily raw rips of DVDs and BRs (which means all bitmap subtitles [PGS/VOBSUB] and the occasional VC-1 encoded video), you’ll need a cpu with a high ‘single thread rating’, because subtitle burn in and VC-1 decoding happen mostly only one-threaded. So if you have one of these “web server” Xeons, you may build yourself an expensive piece of trash. Look up your cpu on this website [http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high\_end\_cpus.html](http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html) For instance, if you are combining 2 of these for instance, you’ll get problems with BluRay rips and bitmap subtitles: [http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2670+v2+%40+2.50GHz&id=2152](http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2670+v2+%40+2.50GHz&id=2152) because their ‘single thread rating’ is way below 2000 points. Do also avoid the H.265 video codec, if you cannot rule out any occurence of transcoding (and most of the time you can’t really). Decoding H.265 alone on purely cpu will eat a s\*\*\*load of cpu power which then is missing for other concurrrent playbacks. ---
**Author:** ![Joe4992](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d9b06d/32.png) [@Joe4992](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Joe4992)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 3:47pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266/4 "2016-11-24T15:47:34Z")
Would love to know the power draw on that monster you are building. And how much your electric bill goes up when it’s run all day. ---
**Author:** ![Tearspacer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b782af/32.png) [@Tearspacer](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Tearspacer)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 10:54am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266/5 "2017-04-17T10:54:22Z")
> @Joe4992 said: > Would love to know the power draw on that monster you are building. And how much your electric bill goes up when it’s run all day. At idel it is 450w at 100% load gpus and cpus it maxes out at 1443w. Electric bill didn’t go up as i don’t have one because I live in Australia and got them solar panels. Free energy ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 10:16pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/how-many-cores/168266/6 "2020-01-07T22:16:37Z")