Mini PC (NUC) for Plex

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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I have been running my Plex Server in a Nvidia Shield TV 2017. After the latest Android Update I am having trouble to get it back up and running with a backup I have. So now I am at the point where I think about new hardware. It should be more capable then the Shield and also house my Home Assistant Server.
So I will most likely install Proxmox and run Home Assistant OS in a VM and Plex in a container.

Mostly only one stream is running at a time. So it should cover 1-2 transcoding sessions.

As the hardware will be running 24/7 I would also like it to be a) efficient and light on power usage b) quiet

I was looking into either a Intel Celeron N5105/N6005, Intel i3 1115G4, or AMD Ryzen 3 5300U/5425U
8-16GB RAM
256GB NVMe SSD.

I am not sure which processor is best suited and have also not found any good offers.
I am happy for any feedback and help on finding the right package.

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Currently running a Mac Mini M1 Max, 16 GB shared RAM, 10GbE

It easily does two simultaneous 4K HDR transcodes with tone-mapping at 60% cpu usage and draws 10W doing so, and always silent. If there’s no HDR, then it’s far less CPU, maybe 30% where one was 20%. So increasing 10% each transcode means I might get 8 simultaneous SDRs at most? I can’t figure out how to start that many.

Anyway I don’t think it likes 3 HDR tonemaps, and would occasionally buffer some playback.

This if my first time hearing about HAOS. Seems to have a page for running on macOS.

And this Plex article talks about what to expect from different CPUs like yours.

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Thanks for your expierience. I have not had any Apple products so far. The build quality is very nice, but it also comes with a hefty price tag. In addition to this I am not sure if I could configure the Mac completly via remote, as I plan to store the mini PC either in the server rack in my basement, or in the dining room next to the wireless router, with no monitor attached to it.

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The price tag, yes sir. Here’s a Plex Mini headless w/ remote admin

The one thing about Macs, they give you back a lot of time.
A hundred percent of the focus is on running.
I too wanted a NUC but have been messing with rPi for headless, less $$.

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No AMD CPU/GPU. Plex does not support hardware accelerated transcoding on AMD GPUs.

The Celerons will transcode 1080p, but will struggle if they have to burn in subtitles. I’m not sure how well they will transcode & tonemap 4K HDR. They can transcode 4K using hardware acceleration. I’m just not sure of their ability to tonemap HDR to SDR in real time (I’ve never tried to do so on a Celeron).

Of those three, the i3 is your best bet.

I run Plex on a Lenovo M90q with an i5-10500T with Ubuntu 22.04. Transcoding 1080p Blu-ray rips is not a problem, including burning subtitles. It will transcode & tonemap two simultaneous 4K HDR rips. However, it cannot burn subtitles when transcoding & tonemapping even a single 4K HDR media.

On Linux based systems, burning subtitles uses the CPU, even if the video is transcoded using hardware acceleration. It is also a single threaded process, so cannot take advantage of multiple cores in a CPU.

You can use the single thread passmark rating as a rough guide with respect to subtitle burning. There are no exact numbers, but you can use other people’s experience as a guide.

For example, the J3455 in my DS918+ has a single thread rating of 807. It struggles to burn subtitles into most video.

The i5-10500T has a single thread rating of 2340. I have not stress tested it, but burning subtitles into two simultaneous 1080p movies is not a problem. However, as mentioned above, it cannot burn subtitles into a 4K HDR BD rip. It simply does not have enough horsepower.

Subtitle support varies greatly across Plex clients. Subtitle burning is not always required when transcoding.

Plex Android / Android TV clients, such as the Shield, have good subtitles support. PGS, VOBSUB, & SRT subtitles should not be a problem. ASS subtitles will be burned into the video stream if enabled. Note that Plex is working on adding ASS support to Android clients. A pre-beta forum preview is available. See this thread.

Plex Smart TV clients generally support less subtitle formats than Android clients. Currently, on most clients, enabling PGS, VOBSUB, & ASS subtitles results in a video transcode and subtitle burning. SRT subtitles can be an issue under certain conditions, such as if the audio is transcoding.

Other Plex clients - Roku, AppleTV, etc - have their own set of limitations (I don’t own those, so can’t provide first-hand specifics).

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Thanks for the information. Indeed the hardware accelerated transcoding seems to be supported mostly on Intel CPUs with QuickSync…
I rarely use subtitles, but 4K content is increasing, although there still is a lot of 1080p content as well.
Mostly I use the server to watch the content on the livingroom Samsung Q85 smartTV (Wifi) onboard Plex app, although the Shield (Wired Ethernet) is directly connected to it (purely due to laziness of toggling the input and remote).
Sometimes I am watching on my Windows computer. In addition to that a remote stream from a family member may be running.
In the past I may have had some buffering issues on the Smart TV app, I then switched to the Shields Plex Client, where all content so far ran without any issues.
Remotely the 4K content was not watchable.

If I go for a new hardware it should at least cater for a better user experience.

The three systems I found so far are as follows:
Intel Celeron N6005
Intel i3-1115G4
AMD Ryzen 5 5625U

If the Shield TV is no longer running the server I could also connect the TV to the ethernet cable, which may improve the connection.

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The TV Ethernet port is 100 Mbps.

When using the Plex Tizen app, a strong 5 GHz WiFi signal will provide better streaming for 4K HDR rips/remuxes, which can burst above 100 Mbps.

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Always something new to learn… Sad that they put only a fast Ethernet port on a 4K TV.

Regarding the AMD: I was unable to find a Mini PC with the above listed Ryzen 3, only one with the Ryzen 5, which compared to the i3 has more Cores, higher clock and is still very light on power consumption. Still the downside is that hardware accelerated transcoding is limited, but maybe the more powerful CPU can make up for it?

Alternatively I could upgrade my DS416j with a DS920+ for example, but that comes “only” with a Celeron J4125 and comes in more expensive than the NUC with an N6005.

If I’d go for the Mac Mini, I could think about it replacing fully my current Windows Office PC, but I have just invested in an Radeon RX 6600 for it -.-
It does not seem to be an easy choice

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Passmark Ratings for comparison:

  • Nvidia Tegra (Shield TV): not available
  • Intel J4125: 1,170
  • Intel Celeron N6005: 1,759
  • Intel i3 -1115G4: 2,680
  • AMD Ryzen 5 5625U: 2,845
  • Apple M1: 3,755
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You didn’t mention your video card. The reason I am saying this is that when I started using the Plex server the quality of videos was not very good. I was thinking that it was because of Plex Server. Then I read a post on this server and bought a new Video Card (EVGA 12G-P4-2992-KR).

Now the quality of the video card is very Good and I can even see HD Videos.

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The Radeon RX 6600 graphics card is in my office computer, which is not my Plex Server. I would not like to keep this machine running 24/7 as it does consume way to much power.

1 Like
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Mini headless uses 10W - 12W transcoding but ymmv

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