My current plex media server set up is the following:
Xeon-E3 1230v5
32GB DDR3 ECC RAM
Supermicro X11SSL-F board
Im running FreeNAS and PMS runs in a jail on this system, with FreeNAS just serving the storage. Since buying a plexpass, I want to add a few of the features like music tagging, but they’re not supported on FreeBSD, so I want to move off. In addition, I’ve tried transcoding a 4k video to two clients, one wireless one over gigabit wired, and they both end up struggling to keep up (the server can barely handle it).
I’ve read the comments that PMS needs a CPU that can do 2k passmark for 10Mbps video, So I initially set out looking at building a dedicated box using an E5, however I’m trying to consume as little power as possible, and seeing as how an E5 can average at 60-80 watts (entire system) at idle, I’ve started looking at other options, like a xeon-d system (maybe 1541), or an i7-6700k based system. Since PMS doesn’t need ECC ram, the i7 might be cheaper, but my goals are the following:
- Transcode 4k content to up to 3 device at once (not likely, but future proofing)
- Consume as little power as possible (will probably have dual SSD’s in RAID-1 for the OS, RAM drive for transcode directory, 10Gbe to storage)
- Be able to hopefully handle Hardware assisted transcodeing (so this probably rules out the E5)
My budget is tops maybe 1200$ for this, give or take…but with hardware transcoding available, I’m thinking maybe the i7 will be enough? I’d like to make this future proof for at least the next 5-6 years, that being HEVC 10 bit +HDR content, even though not much is available ATM. Is the i7-6700k or even 7700k enough to handle 3 4k transcodes?
Thanks!
I think the short answer is there is nothing you can do right now that is going to give you a server that you’ll still want to use in 3 years, let alone 5 or 6
Transcoding of an 8Mbps H.264 steam needs ~2000 passmarks
Transcoding of an 8Mbps HEVC steam needs about ~7000 passmarks.
Hardware transcoding is going to change that, but with so many variables it’s not going to be such a simple answer.
Personally, I think you’d be best to just upgrade your existing system to FreeNAS 10 when it comes out, move PMS to docker and get your premium music and then wait it out until you can get the Kaby Lake version of this -> https://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/motherboard/Xeon/C236_C232/X11SSH-GTF-1585.cfm
You can still run FreeNAS on that MB and have the docker PMS access the QSV functionality. (you can’t on your existing board even if you replace the chip as the C232 chipsets don’t enable the onboard GPUs - never quite got to the bottom of it that is a chipset limitation, or just how SuperMicro is implementing it)
Besides the above excellent hardware solution, I’d just like to add that when you get on-the-fly H265 to H264 transcoding going, the picture quality might not be as good as you want it to be. Replacing clients, adding storage (and keeping two versions of the same media file) etc are all viable solutions too. So just think this through and make sure you make the right choice for you based on what is most important in your usage scenario.
@Peter_W said:
Besides the above excellent hardware solution, I’d just like to add that when you get on-the-fly H265 to H264 transcoding going, the picture quality might not be as good as you want it to be. Replacing clients, adding storage (and keeping two versions of the same media file) etc are all viable solutions too. So just think this through and make sure you make the right choice for you based on what is most important in your usage scenario.
I’ve also thought about doing that… I’ve got ~20TB free, I’m sure a mobile optimized version of a video might not take that much space, and I can always expand my pool later… keeping optimized versions of only 4k content might be a short term solution to stick with my existing hardware, albeit at the cost of storage, although with the cost of 8+ TB drives coming down slowly, in 2+ years I should be able to upgrade to a larger drive format.
