I am considering giving my i7-6700k build to my children for light gaming (I will put a decent GRFX card in it). Because of this I’m looking at newer hardward for my PLex server. It currently runs windows server 2012 r2 Essentials and besides plex houses a Blue Iris server as well as my hosts my home automation system (HomeSeer).
I was thinking of going to an i9-9900k and just going full out (Without going to a “real” i9 processor and x299 setup which would be really costly).
Would a Ryzen system be better? I’m thinking of finally utilizing the intel hardward decoding which I don’t have in my 6700k, but I"m wondering if the 9900k is just too much CPU. This would be a headless machine that just sits there most of the time, but when I need the power, I would like to have it (for optimizing or transcoding multiple streams)
So, do you thin if maybe I just got my kids a nuc and got a p2000 I’d be good with my i7-6700k? I guess if I don’t have to upgrade I won’t. I was going to make use of an old HTPC case in my rack, but a NUC would probably be cheaper.
Without knowing what your use of Plex is we cannot possibly speculate what hardware would suit for a Plex server.
BTW you really shouldn’t be transcoding if at all possible (for reasons of quality if no other). Choose decent clients & you should be able to Direct Play everything.
@nlgelpb, You’re right, I shouldn’t transcode, but there are times I do. For instance, I have:
2 4k TVs
3 1080p TVs
Family who use my plex remotely and their settings may vary (I don’t have control over their settings).
What I thought would work best is to optimize all my 4k media to 1080p as my current server can easily handle multiple 1080p stream when necessary (normally down to 720p for remote clients). However, the Plex transcoder is stupid. If someone comes in requesting 2mbps 720p and I have a 4k file with an optimized 1080p version, it uses the 4k version to transcode, which is absolutely stupid, but apparently a known issue that Plex isn’t overly interested in fixing. I know there are ways around this, but all of them require me to put waaaaay to much time into maintaining my library by either keeping a separate 4k library (Which I don’t want to do) or Optimize my 4k file, then remove it and allow it to make the 1080p the main file and add the 4k back in. I also know that I could create an optimized version for every possible solution, but I have over 600 movies and that is just too much space (most of my library is already 1080p, so not a huge issue, but my 4k library is growing).
That’s just more work than i have time for right now (working 12+ hours days plus a family of 8 right now in the house.
My other issue is I was hoping there was at least a solution to transcode 1 4k file to 4k. I know it’s silly to transcode 4k right now, but since my Roku’s can’t do PGS subtitles, I have no option unless I just don’t want to watch 4k content, even with forced subtitles or go out searching for SRT files instead. Understand I know that this is not Plex’s fault, but Roku for not supporting PGS, but unfortunately Roku seems unwilling to support them so I have to look to my PLEX configuration to fill in that gap.
For now I have 2 nvidia sheilds on the way for my 2 4k TVs, but it sucks that one is a Roku TV that I will basically just have to ignore the 4k on.
I’m thinking the p2000 might be enough to get me by for now, even if it won’t do the 4k. I was just thinking of giving my current hardware to my kids and was wondering if a i9-9900k was overkill. I can get into a complete setup (minus the p2000) for just over $1k as I already have power supplies and a case.
Do you mean the p2000 will handle it, but plex won’t utilize it? I have plex attempt to transcode 4k → 4k whenever I use subtitles that are PGS as it tries to burn them in, but I don’t think it does h265 → h265. I would have to check.
Just a note: I had heard that the conversion from 4k HRD ended up in washed out colors… I just watched one of them and wow…it is bad. I’m going to rip the 1080p versions that come with them and use those for optimized versions instead… still doesn’t solve the 4k -> 4k transcode, but I have 2 nvidia shields from black friday coming to replace 2 roku ultras as they do PGS subtitles and even dolbe pass through. I think I’m going to even hold off on the p2000 for now.
I believe NUCs with iris graphics will be your best option. They will do the HDR->SDR conversion properly for 4K. And they overlay PGS on 4K just fine. Undoubtedly best option for clients which can direct play. Outside the home for clients that can’t direct play, the server side is not good enough yet for HDR unless you’re perhaps lucky enough to have >~200Mbps upload speeds (1Gbps upload would be ideal for 4K HDR direct play) and you outside home clients have >200Mbps download speeds. That would be only option for direct play outside home for 4K. FWIW I am keeping a separate 4K collection mostly for outside home clients that don’t do HDR->SDR on their own. Another option which I occasionally invoke for 4K that needs subtitles is just re-encode the movie with burnin subtitles w/ handbrake to make a new 10-bit 4K file at like 55Mbps (assuming the original video file is like 55-65Mbps or something). The loss in video quality is invisible, and you get a 4K file that is not going to run into any client subtitle problem nonsense. I have an i7-6950x CPU and it takes about ~6 hours to re-encode a 4K movie to 4K w/ burnin subtitles, however.
TL;DR. Get a Quadro 4000RTX and a server w/ very fast CPU and try to get insane fast upload broadband plan and install 8i3BEK NUCs w/ HDMI 2.0 as home clients for Plex (Plex makes a stand-alone OS you can install on the NUCs to make them Plex boxes exclusively, no Windows involved, if you want that route). This is NSFW (not safe for wallet) option.
A question on using the P2000, can you only do transcoding if the server is a windows based server? I run my server in linux but I think you can not get both encoding and decoding in linux with NVIDIA
