Hey everybody! I’m looking for ways to improve the performance of my PLEX media server. More specifically, I’d like to build a Windows server that will perform substantially better than my current setup.
Currently my PLEX media server runs on a Dell Poweredge T410 with 2xIntel E5620 processors, Windows Server 2016 Standard, 16GB of ECC DDR3 RAM, and a 10GB Network Card. All of my actually media is stored on a 6-bay DS1618+ (currently rocking 4x10TB 7,200rpm Seagate NAS drives in RAID 5) with a 10GB Network Card. On the WAN side of things I have CTL Fiber, 1,000Mbps up and down.
At one point last night I only had 6 active streamers and my Dell Server’s CPU('s) were capping at 100% utilization. One of those 6 streamers was playing a movie in 4k on an iOS device (not using direct play) and I could tell he was struggling with buffering.
Long story short, I want this to be a non-issue and am looking for any and all advice that might help me decide which components to buy/consider when designing a new server. Bandwidth has never been an issue, even with 10+ streamers… it’s just my server’s hardware. If you have any experience with this please let me know:
What’s the best processor(s) for a PLEX server and would two (server motherboard) be better than one, or would the average gaming PC wrek the average aging Dell server with respect to PLEX Media Server performance?
Dedicated Graphics or no? If yes, do you recommend the latest NVIDIA gaming cards like a GTX 1080 or RTX 2080TI? Or would something designed more specifically toward video editing/rendering be better?
I would just like to get to the point where the only thing I have to worry about is my bandwidth. I don’t want to have to tell my friend who’s trying to stream a 4k movie that he needs to switch to direct play just because my parents, cousin, and coworkers are already doing the same.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated! My budget is anywhere from 1-3k but I could always buy parts slowly over time or wait and save up, so for the most part you can consider the budget a non-issue (within reason)
I moved from a server like yours that was power hungry, loud and did a lousy job…
Here’s what you are looking for (Items in parenthesis are what I went with):
SSD/NVMe hard drives (preferably in RAID 1 configuration) for reliable and fast PLEX Database Storage (2x512GB NVMe in RAID 1)
P2000 or P4000 Quadro GPU - More concurrent transcoding streams then you could even imagine (P4000)
Processor - With the above processor requirements become very low other then background thumbnail creation (Xeon W-2145)
Power Supplies - Find a chassis with redundant PS.
System uses under 500w at full load is fully redundant (or as redundant as a single box is going to be)
Complete Deployment:
Single Plex Server w/ redundant components
Highly Available Windows Server 2019 Storage Server Deployment
Direct Attached Storage holding 24x 12TB Seagate Enterprise SAS Drives
All media shared through SMB 3.0
Redundant Networking
Fiber Internet - 1GB Symmetric
Most concurrent streams 10 - 6 of which were transcoding from 4K.
I spent over 1k last month on those 10TB drives and the 6-bay Synology so I’m not interested in changing my media storage at this time. That being said, the new server I build for running my PLEX Media Server will definitely have some sort of flash memory. I may raid 0 it, but I’ve never seen PMS cause any significant disk utilization on my current Dell server, which is just rockin’ 4x2TB platter drives in RAID 5. Anyway, I’d like to put storage aside and focus on the CPU’s and graphics cards you recommend for the new rig.
I would like to generate thumbnails and optimize things without much stress. Do you still recommend a Xeon W-2145? If so, would it best best to go with two of them in a server board?
As for graphics you suggested a P4000 Quadro, which I’ve found 4 versions of but none of them appear to require external power connectors. I know things that require more power aren’t always better, but would a P4000 Quadro really be better than an RTX 2080Ti at handling all PLEX Media Server features?
With the workload being “Plex” and the number of streams you have specified you are clearly in the workstation category. Whether you use a W-2145 or an i9-9960xe is up to you but dual CPU’s while they do work are not fully utilized plus they waste a lot of power. Generationally you are upgrading 10 years of capability.
Gaming Video cards contain parts that wouldn’t be utilized for transcoding and again just use more power. There are RTX versions of the P4000 that have slightly improved encoders. Where 4K is concerned, the amount of onboard RAM comes into consideration for the total number of concurrent transcodes.
For the storage I wasn’t talking Media storage. I was talking Database (appdata) storage or more likely your OS volume. You want this to be fast for larger libraries. Users will experience delays trying to load libraries when you have slow mechanical storage serving up all those cache files and images. This is also dependent on your library size. I have over 100K+ media files and library / thumbnail size of 400GB.
The Xeon is probably overkill. Like I said the only time I see it getting use is background transcoding tasks. (Thumbnail Generation and Sync)
I haven’t used the RTX line and I don’t know if they have the same limitations of the previous generation of gamer cards. Specifically the driver limit of 2 concurrent transcodes. I think the RTX line is a little more expensive then the Quadro right now. So I guess why pay more for something you don’t need and aren’t going to utilize. I think i read somewhere that the Quadro could do 20+ concurrent 4K transcodes. It’s insane…
Thanks for the input! When you say onboard RAM - referring to the GPU RAM or PC RAM. I’ve never monitored PC RAM usage but I think everytime I look its hovering around nothing… Is this something I should be watching when some transcodes start?
Currently have an 8GB P4000
And 16GB of PC RAM
Do you know do the RTX cards have the driver/transcode limitation?
While SSDs are faster than regular hard drives I have a moderately large library and I do not notice any slowdown running just regular hard drives. I tried an SSD for a while but, because of no noticeable gain, I retasked that drive to another computer where its extra speed would be taken advantage of for accessing a large local database. The gain with Plex was not only not noticeable it was not even measurable using eyes and stopwatch.
NOTE: There was a slightly noticeable gain with an Emby database using the same libraries but even that was not worth the price or trouble.
Also keep in mind that serving video is a VERY undemanding task so the drives used to store video do not need to be fast at all. Speed is really only needed in devices that process video. That is things like transcoding matter but simply serving video or audio is not a stressful action at all.
I have a 1TB SSD in my server that’s dedicated to a Virtual Machine that I use solely for downloading things. I recently shrunk that SSD by 200GB, created a 200GB partition, and relocated my server’s transcoder temporary directory to it. I can see why temp directories would benefit from flash memory. The new server I build will be all solid state, but the thought keeping my PLEX media on flash storage is out of the question. I cannot afford 30TB of solid state storage lol
Do not get the P4000. I would recommend the RTX 4000. The quality gains itself will make it worth it. The card can transcode 4 4K 60gb files to 1080 without breaking a sweat!
I have a Xeon based server as well. That CPU was getting absolutely roasted until I threw in a GPU. I had an old GTX 960 laying around, popped it in, passed it through vSphere to the VM, and the CPU stays pretty chill now. I am sure a proper Quadro would be just that much better.
P2000 doesn’t look to require a dedicated power cable.
But, if you do need one, I’ve actually used a SATA power > GPU power adapter, look them up online. Every MB has SATA power cables laying around generally
Woah that’s a good idea. I’ve used sata power for all sorts of things I probably shouldn’t, but hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for the heads up! If I need external power I’ll look into adapters for sata power.
I read somewhere that hardware acceleration in PLEX requires a processor(s) with QuickSync. My server has two Xeon e5620’s, which don’t appear to do QuickSync. Does this mean that a dedicated graphics card would be pointless unless I also upgraded the processors to ones that are QuickSync compatible?
Hmm that part I am unsure of. I had transcode working on my previous Xeon, a E3-1231 v3… and now on my newer E5-2620 v4.
On a quick glance of intel ark for my old xeon, it doesn’t list anything called quicksync.
If that is the case, then you may be okay without it too.
As far as i’m aware, this is not true. Intel QuickSync is the hardware acceleration that intel offers on some of their chips (mostly not xeon’s). Same goes for nividia cards, except this is not called QuickSync but NVENC. You only really wanna focus on quick sync if you’re not planning on getting a GPU that supports NVENC. Someone correct me if i’m wrong but this is my knowledge of hardware acceleration (i dont use an external GPU, just intel quick sync)
