@cayars said:
i7 8700k would be a great choice if you can afford it.
You think I’m a poor man? The i7 8700k is not expensive… I would likely got the i7 7820x if it had QSV and that’s 200 USD more… But I could even stretch my budget for one of the cheaper i9’s but I don’t think I need it.
I think I’m going for the 8700k. Just need to wait for it to get available…
Nope not saying or thinking you’re poor. In these forums everyone thinks about things differently.
To one person $300 is pocket change and the person will spend this amount every week on something computer related without thinking twice about the purchase. To another person on a budget that $300 might have taken 6 months or more to save before they can spend it. Think college kids with just enough basic money to get by. We get all kinds of people in this forum so I try not to assume.
That’s why I said “i7 8700k would be a great choice if you can afford it”
You sound like you can definitely afford it so I think we are good.
You can purchase 2 and make me happy as well. 
@cayars said:
Nope not saying or thinking you’re poor. In these forums everyone thinks about things differently.To one person $300 is pocket change and the person will spend this amount every week on something computer related without thinking twice about the purchase. To another person on a budget that $300 might have taken 6 months or more to save before they can spend it. Think college kids with just enough basic money to get by. We get all kinds of people in this forum so I try not to assume.
That’s why I said “i7 8700k would be a great choice if you can afford it”
You sound like you can definitely afford it so I think we are good.
You can purchase 2 and make me happy as well.
Yeah, @cayar. It’s a good thing to not assume things. People tend to assume things about me ALL the time. It makes me crazy… There are several reasons for that. 1. I got a totally different “identity” than etnicity. It includes all aspects including personality, ground values, speech, politics and so on… 2. I look considerbly younger than I am. People OFTEN thinks I’m 10-15 years younger than I am… Because I got that baby face. People often assume I lack things such as life experience, professional experience and money among other things. When I was in my 20’s I didn’t care much about it. I heard I will get over it. But when people are convinced that my approx. 10 year older girlfriend is my mother all the time or when cashier are giving angry killer glances to my girlfriend like she was a true pedophile (back then I was 24 yo) then it only gets harder to live with people “assuming things”… Probably I just getting paranoid and over sensitive. And I am pretty much an sensitive person in general… So, I apologize for that.
However my girlfriend was buying the 8700k and 8 GB DDR4 RAM to me. As a gift… she offered me because she sold her car. I’m lucky having a nice gf. 
Here is my new system:
Some current stats:
In the end of the last year I was selling 4 or 5 drives. It was RED drives between 4 TB and 6 TB. So, I will save up for 5x12 TB WD Gold instead. Then I’ll setup them in the motherboards RAID mode. I might upgrade 8 GB RAM to 32 GB RAM and getting a 512 GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD instead of the 850 PRO also. Mainly because I need the SATA slot later on.
What you think about it?
The drive situations sound just fine. However, I would give serious consideration to NOT using RAID built in. That could tie you to that specific motherboard. What happens if the MB dies? Will you lose access to your data? Will you be able to move the data and access it from another computer?
RAID on motherboards can be quite risky. You won’t need RAID for speed purposes and maybe you don’t want this anyway. With RAID all drives have to be spun up all the time. If you had 5 12TB drives maybe only the drive with the media on it that is actually being played need to spinning. Just something to think about.
If you are only running Plex on this computer 8 GB is just fine and 32 GB won’t do hardly anything for you. Save the money and use it for something better like another drive
BTW, checkout DrivePool (low cost) and SnapRAID (open source) which can make your storage super simple and very easy to expand without worry about proprietary solutions like RAID on the motherboard.
Carlo
The drive situations sound just fine. However, I would give serious consideration to NOT using RAID built in. That could tie you to that specific motherboard. What happens if the MB dies? Will you lose access to your data? Will you be able to move the data and access it from another computer?
I would agree with this. If you still want the traditional raid-5/6, I’d recommend using software to achieve it. That way in disaster recovery, you can take the drives to any other computer running the same OS (linux / windows / whatever you are running), and read the array. I’ve run across many horror stories where people have tried to achieve the same thing when a raid card (or an MB with onboard raid) dies and scrambling to replicate the hardware setup just to read the data.
Do note that software raid does open you up to a window of data loss in case of power failure that some hardware raid systems avoid via a battery backed cache or similar. This is the so-called “raid 5 write hole.” Though if you are comparing to the raid controller on a MB, it likely doesn’t have the cache anyway so it has the same issue. My recommendation regardless of what setup you use: put it on a UPS and make sure the automatic shutdown works to do a proper shutdown before the UPS dies.
@cayars said:
Hands down the i9 for the Plex server. I wouldn’t consider the Ryzen or Xeon given the choice.
The i9 will be faster per core and will have a built in state of the art decoder/encoder for H.264 and H.265.That CPU was “made” for Plex
Carlo
You couldn’t be more wrong in your statement. i9s do NOT have QuickSync capability as there is no integrated GPU. My 1950x will easily compete against most i9s in transcoding ability.
Oh man, thanks for catching that typos. I’m edited it to say i7.
I did get my personal opinion correct in the very next message when I said:
"I’ll try to make it simple.
DO NOT purchase a CPU without HW transcoding built in. :)"
To me it’s just not worth building a new system without hardware transcoding built in.
Thanks again,
Carlo
@cayars said:
The drive situations sound just fine. However, I would give serious consideration to NOT using RAID built in. That could tie you to that specific motherboard. What happens if the MB dies? Will you lose access to your data? Will you be able to move the data and access it from another computer?RAID on motherboards can be quite risky. You won’t need RAID for speed purposes and maybe you don’t want this anyway. With RAID all drives have to be spun up all the time. If you had 5 12TB drives maybe only the drive with the media on it that is actually being played need to spinning. Just something to think about.
If you are only running Plex on this computer 8 GB is just fine and 32 GB won’t do hardly anything for you. Save the money and use it for something better like another drive
BTW, checkout DrivePool (low cost) and SnapRAID (open source) which can make your storage super simple and very easy to expand without worry about proprietary solutions like RAID on the motherboard.
Carlo
Alright… After eveluating CentOS 7 as a PLEX server for 1-2 years approx. I will stick to Windows 10. I got the “LTSB” version of Windows 10 which is made for instances such as hospitals, for engineers etc. that don’t want that extra entertainment/advert stuff such Xbox Live, Windows Media Player, App Store, Edge, unessesary notifications… and it got long term updates as I remember. This version is a pretty much stripped down version of Windows 10 and I really think it’s working out great as a PLEX server.
However, Linux has partition management and (some) stuff for such as SnapRAID for pooling. Windows 10 has the inbuilt “Storage Spaces”. (Storage Spaces in Windows - Microsoft Support)
So, how does that feature compares to DrivePool by StableBit? I don’t want to pay for DrivePool and I don’t like the interface of SnapRAID. I might consider to use torrents… but you can’t find DrivePool on any private tracker where I am… And DrivePool on a public source where malware could co-exist is a no-go for me… So, if I won’t be able to use the built-in feature in Windows 10 I will probably end up buying a legit license of DrivePool. But once again… I don’t want to waste unessesary money for that. What I been thinking about is that I might lose the pro’s of redundancy and speed gain in pooling vs. a RAID. Am I correct? If I been sticking with Linux I would go with RaidZ BUT there are no port to Windows. Right?
@cayars said:
Oh man, thanks for catching that typos. I’m edited it to say i7.I did get my personal opinion correct in the very next message when I said:
"I’ll try to make it simple.DO NOT purchase a CPU without HW transcoding built in. :)"
To me it’s just not worth building a new system without hardware transcoding built in.
Thanks again,
Carlo
That typo was the actual thing that made me a bit confused. Previously… But I’m glad it’s been sorted out now. Thanks again. I’ve to say that I’m pretty satisfied with my i7 8700k. If it wasn’t for you and the others in this thread I might not been buying this CPU. So thank you very much for that.
However, Linux has partition management and (some) stuff for such as SnapRAID for pooling. Windows 10 has the inbuilt “Storage Spaces”. (Storage Spaces in Windows - Microsoft Support)
I’ve been still seeing people having issues with storage spaces through the past few iterations. If you want to go that route, be sure you thoroughly investigate what it does and doesn’t do well by those who’ve actually used it. I can’t comment on SnapRAID/DrivePool as I’ve not used either.
If I been sticking with Linux I would go with RaidZ BUT there are no port to Windows. Right?
There is, but “it comes with free Panics.” So not really yet 
Talk given by the developer on its state: https://youtu.be/6_8jQnJf418?t=23m5s
@ZineWaves said:
So, how does that feature compares to DrivePool by StableBit? I don’t want to pay for DrivePool and I don’t like the interface of SnapRAID. I might consider to use torrents… but you can’t find DrivePool on any private tracker where I am… And DrivePool on a public source where malware could co-exist is a no-go for me… So, if I won’t be able to use the built-in feature in Windows 10 I will probably end up buying a legit license of DrivePool. But once again… I don’t want to waste unessesary money for that. What I been thinking about is that I might lose the pro’s of redundancy and speed gain in pooling vs. a RAID. Am I correct? If I been sticking with Linux I would go with RaidZ BUT there are no port to Windows. Right?
I got a whole bunch of posts about this in the thread listed in my SIG detailing the trials and tribulations I went through when using it on Windows Server which has even more functionality than you would on Windows 10.
I’ll save you the trouble of reading it and give you the highlights. Don’t use it. 
It has to much overhead, isn’t as expandable as DrivePool, isn’t as flexible or as resilient as using SnapRAID for parity nor as flexible. Storage Spaces is what I used previously to DrivePool. I switched and have never looked back!
Carlo
@cayars said:
If you are only running Plex on this computer 8 GB is just fine and 32 GB won’t do hardly anything for you. Save the money and use it for something better like another drive
I think you’re wrong about the RAM. I need more than my 8 GB.
Unziping a 4K Remux in an archive in the background at the same time as listening to a track on in Foobar2000 (with ASIO) at the same time as checking if .SRT subtitles are “synced” in another 4k remux at the same time as AV doing a background scan 5 min ago… and not a single user are currently streaming right now.
The CPU was pending between 60 - 90 % approx. That’s acceptable. But RAM is peaking at 99 % non-stop when processing those files. That’s not the first time. It’s on a regular basis. What about if I had 5-10 similtainius streams now instead of 0? I tend to disagree. I might need at 16 GB RAM. Maybe 32 GB could been good when I get more users. I have several users that not been streaming since I made the upgrade but was streaming earlier last year. I’m about to convince them getting back soon. I might end up in multiple streams at the same time… All music FLAC, 90 % of the movies are barely lossy or non compressed HD content and 5-10 % will be 4K content with HDR. Those files are about 30 GB each…
Are you really sure 8 GB RAM is fair enough? You think there could be some other issue taking up resources or you think I’m good with 16 GB instead of 32 GB? 32 GB is maximum for this mobo. I think it would be enough to be on the safe side… but I don’t know if you would agree? You’re right about not adding too much performance just for the sake…
EDIT: Last year, before my “upgrade” I had 16 GB 1866 mhz RAM. I was not experiencing any RAM peaks back then. Neither on Linux or Windows. But now I added considerbly much more 4k content. A compressed movie in HD might between 8 GB and 15 GB in general. A 4k movie between 20 GB - 30 GB approx. So, I’m not really sure 16 GB would be “enough” anymore…?
You’re running a bunch of stuff including torrents with an active virus background scan. Plex is also doing two transcodes. These types of things will burn through file handles and will use memory to help cache the file system to allow the programs to work faster. Nothing bad going on, just the way things work.
There is nothing wrong with upgrading the memory to 16 GB to get a bit more breathing room. But Plex will run ok on only 8 GB of memory and a lot of people do just that.
PS would have been better to sort that by memory use vs CPU use so we could have seen what was using most of your memory.
@cayars said:
There is nothing wrong with upgrading the memory to 16 GB to get a bit more breathing room. But Plex will run ok on only 8 GB of memory and a lot of people do just that.
I don’t think 8 GB would be fine for maybe up to 5-10 simultaneous streams (4k, HD and FLAC) for several hours a day. Correct me if I’m wrong? It works out for now yes… But not on sight. Shouldn’t I aim for 32 GB instead? For such requirements?
32 GB will not be needed if this is purely a Plex Server. I can’t recommend what you will need if you have other programs running. But Plex can work ok with just 8 GB of ram and support a dozen streams. I’ve done this for a long time and know plenty of others who do this as well.
16 GB would be better IMHO as it gives more breathing room and allows windows to use the memory for caching. Windows will use it all up.
If you have the money for 32 GB or RAM there is nothing wrong with having that in your system but it’s just not needed just for Plex. Depends on everything else you might having running on the same box.
Carlo
PS I’m running Plex and Emby on the same Windows Server machine with only 8 GB of RAM and I’ve never had a problem. I took the memory I had in the machine out to use in other machines and never had a problem so I left it at 8 GB.
I run 8GB on my Plex server, but it is just that… a Plex server. That said, on my primary desktop I run 16GB and I have not found a single instance yet where I thought I needed more. Recently when I was rebuilding my Plex server and transitioning it to Linux I had both Plex and Emby running on my desktop along with Handbrake running continuous encodes and still never found a point I needed more than 16GB of RAM. Unless you are planning to run VMs or something larger scale like an enterprise database I really can’t see recommending 32GB of RAM (especially at today’s prices) unless you just have money to burn.
@Balthazar2k4 said:
I run 8GB on my Plex server, but it is just that… a Plex server. That said, on my primary desktop I run 16GB and I have not found a single instance yet where I thought I needed more. Recently when I was rebuilding my Plex server and transitioning it to Linux I had both Plex and Emby running on my desktop along with Handbrake running continuous encodes and still never found a point I needed more than 16GB of RAM. Unless you are planning to run VMs or something larger scale like an enterprise database I really can’t see recommending 32GB of RAM (especially at today’s prices) unless you just have money to burn.
But I use my server for:
About 15 - 25 people will use my PLEX server. Either on a regular basis or less often. Not just “me”. I also have high quality content = heavy files = more data to process. I think 8 GB would work fine for a server meant for 1,2 or 3 people. Not 15-20 something. And not for multi-purposes.
OK I got some news. My server is NOT able to stream my 30 GB 4k/HDR HEVC files. Buffer and lagg. … is all I got. I consider upgrading my RAM to 16 GB, replace my defect RT-AC68U router (bandwith and performance drop) and add a Asus GTX 1070 Strix GPU for hardware transcoding. After that I will save up for my 5 Western Digital 12 TB Gold drives.I expect I will be done in 1-2 years or so.
If you don’t game on your server than buy a nvidia quadro p2000 or above and use HW transcoding. Your gtx 1070 is limited to 2 streams and with at least a Quadro you have unlimited.
@“D. Cederqvist” said:
After that I will save up for my 5 Western Digital 12 TB Gold drives.I expect I will be done in 1-2 years or so.
LOL, if you’re like many of us in 1 year you will be wanting to add a few more drives or be thinking about your next upgrade.
So you’re not building a Plex server but a multi-process server that will handle many different things. That can change things for sure as the other programs running on the machine will cause you to need additional memory.
I personally think using your Plex server as your daily desktop is a bad thing to do but that’s just me. I would highly recommend a dedicated environment. You will not be happy when you are trying to use this computer and Plex is sucking up all your CPU for indexing, deep analysis and the tasks it does normally. It’s built to get the job done and over-with while managing it’s own resources. Throw in user jobs and you will likely be disappointed.
I’d caution running Torrent programs on your Plex server. You will usually want to use a VPN for protection on the machine and a Plex will often give you fits when you do this as it to is forced to run through the VPN which kills performance and almost always kills your ability to access it remotely.
You are far better off dusting off any old computer and turn that into a dedicated torrent machine. Just about any computer you have around the house will fit this job.
I doubt your issue with the 4K files is memory related. A few things to check would be:
Are the files direct streamed? If not that’s a whole other issue you need to address.
If yes to what client?
If yes they are direct streamed try again with nothing running on the Server but Plex. It’s possible the torrent program is using up resources or similar. Maybe the lan card is pegged. Lots of issues could cause this and it’s simple to eliminate any sources besides Plex rather quickly this way.
GTX 1070 is a terrible choice for a Plex server as it’s limited to 2 HW transcodes. You would usually be far better off using QuickSync or an AMD GPU (windows).
@“D. Cederqvist” said:
OK I got some news. My server is NOT able to stream my 30 GB 4k/HDR HEVC files. Buffer and lagg. … is all I got. I consider upgrading my RAM to 16 GB, replace my defect RT-AC68U router (bandwith and performance drop) and add a Asus GTX 1070 Strix GPU for hardware transcoding. After that I will save up for my 5 Western Digital 12 TB Gold drives.I expect I will be done in 1-2 years or so.
I am running a Pentium G4600 (HD630) for my Plex server (with 8GB RAM). I can easily direct stream multiple 50+GB HEVC HDR files and hardware transcode at least three simultaneously (that is all I have tested) to 1080p. I have 13 users and on average have three streams going. If I can do that with a G4600 your problems are something else…
As @teabag1701 and @cayars mentioned, I would steer clear of the GTX 1070 as it is limited to a two stream max. You could consider the Quadro P2000 as it was also my backup option should the HD630 not be up to the task, but thus far I have been pleased with its transcode performance.
I also agree with @cayars assessment regarding using your desktop as a Plex server. In your case, given that you have a high Plex user base coupled with a need to torrent you will quickly find yourself hating the situation. That is why I use a relatively lightweight dedicated Plex server and my desktop for everything else. Plus, I don’t have to worry about Plex downtime if I am upgrading my desktop or having to reboot it for various reasons. Consolidating always seems like a nice idea, but even with VMs it often isn’t.
