Need 4K transcoding PLEX server, what is best £200 CPU?

General Discussions
1

Hi all,
I’ve just sold my Xeon PLEX rig and now I need something more modern.

I have 18TB of media including 4K 10bit films,

But I only have probably one 4K transcode at any point,

The two that stand out initially to me are:

i5-9600K (12k CPU mark score)
RYZEN 5 3600 (19K CPU mark score)

So the AMD looks better off the CPU mark alone, but does the Intel come into its own because of its built in quick sink stuff?

Or is there some other CPU i’ve not thought about??

Please help! :slight_smile:

2

bumppp

3

Bump already?

For that many streams, you need some sort of hardware transcoding unless your players all direct play.

Ryzen processors are not supported to my knowledge.

Theres a standard link that guessestimates passmark per transcode without hardware acceleration.

2 Likes
4

Haha, I have no patience :slight_smile:

I saw that link before and it says for a single 4K HDR 10bit transcode then probably 17000 points,

That’s why I thought the ryzen 3600 with its 20000 points and only £188 seems a bargain?

Thanks
Ash

5

True.

But less of a bargain should you require two transcodes in future.

A 9th gen i5 would likely transcode 2 10bit streams through hardware if it is supported by the OS. I dont know if all the 9th gen processes are out yet or if people have tried to see how far they can be pushed!

1 Like
6

Yea they are out:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/intel-core-i5-9600k-3.7ghz-coffee-lake-socket-lga1151-processor-oem-cp-65p-in.html

7

Why don’t you just buy a 1050ti and HW transcode?

1 Like
8

I’m not against the idea,

What kind of performance do they get?

9

I have a i5 6500 sitting around I could use, do you think this + a GTX 1050 TI would be a better option that a Ryzen 5 3600 or a i5-9600k?

Thanks

10

If you want the best performance, get the Ryzen 5 3600 plus a 1050 (ti).

But - I might be wrong - as you cant tell plex to load balance between HW transcoding and CPU-based transcoding you would never really use the better performance of the Ryzen 5 3600.

In this case you could just use the i5 6500.
But the built-in iGPU only supports HEVC encoding at 8 bit, at this time plex doesn’t do 10 bit HDR transcoding so this wouldnt be a problem… but I have a hope that it will be supported in the future and in this case you would need to buy a new GPU anyway.

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11

I have a tight budget so getting both is not an option unfortunately,

So just getting a GTX 1050ti for my i5-6500 seems like a good plan…

and only cost £130 for a zotac one,

12

Sorry for my absense.

I assume you got one by now, but yeah a 1050ti should basically fix up your 4k transcoding issues. If you come across some really high bitrate titles the 1050ti can’t deal with - optimise it, should only take a few hours optimising it via Hardware

for me, adding a 1050ti to my i7-2600 setup, made a world of difference when it came to 4k

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13

Hi, no worries, I ended up buying a Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600Mhz ram, and I am not regretting it, performance is great! and so was the price!

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14

prob a good choice, can always get a gpu later down the track

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