I want to build up a new PMS on a new “Mini PC” and so can choose the hardware als well as the operating system.
I narrowed my options to:
Intel NUC i7-10710U
Intel NUC i5-10210U
ASUS PN50 Ryzen 5 4500U
Spec-wise I would take the Ryzen because of the better performance with lower TDP.
Now I’ve seen threads in this forum where people say that Plex does not support AMD (CPUs/GPUs?) as good as Intel. Others say it’s only a problem on Linux.
So my question is: Which hardware should I choose and with which operating system? I have skills with both and don’t like one more than the other.
At the start the PMS would mostly serve my music collecion but movies/TV shows could get more over time. And fan-noise is an important aspect for me because the server would be located in my living rooom.
If noise is a major concern for you, you definitely want to use hardware accelerated video transcoding. Which is, as of yet, not available with AMD CPUs.
And when you say “nVidia GPU”, keep in mind that transcoding on these requires massive amounts of RAM on the card itself, as soon as you transcode more than one stream. The higher the pixel resolution of the stream, the more ram you need.
If you look at the benchmarks, you’ll see that the AMD is not really significantly faster than the i7. But the i7 has the advantage of the hardware transcoder, so it’ll run cooler in many situations.
Do also keep in mind, that the smaller the computer case is, the harder it is to cool it silently. These mini PCs are not really ideal when it comes to Plex, which often means high CPU load for hours on end.
A larger case with oversized coolers (and matching fans) will be less noisy, and requires less often a blow with the air can. Because large fans don’t need to spin as fast as smaller ones to have the same cooling effect. So dust and fluff will aggregate much slower as well.
Plex currently supports Intel Quick Sync Video in the CPU
Plex also supports Nvidia GPU cards (as listed in the Nvidia Decode and Encode matrix which support transcoding.
I have a NUC8-i7-HVK (i7-8809G) CPU. The QSV capability is more than enough to handle multiple streams of 2160p 60 fps (yes, 60 fps). The only place I run out of gas is CPU when burning subtitles or converting audio.
To date, I’ve tested transcode & convert audio on 6 streams (all the players in the house I have) simultaneously. It didn’t flinch and there was still headroom.
I am suggesting this as a lesser cost option. The -8xxx family is likely to be more than enough for home use. We all seem to be running out of CPU power long before we run out of GPU power.
If you are exactly equally comfortable with both Win and Linux, then go with Linux.
Windows has the downside that you cannot run Plex as a service/daemon and use hardware transcoding (sounds strange, but is true).
If your server should run as an appliance, mostly head-less, then Linux wins.
While you were mentioning subtitles: What is the best way to handle these? I watch movies from my firend’s PMS which is an i7 NUC as well. I can stream 4k without any problems - as long as I don’t activate subtitles (which I would like) - then I get stops every several seconds.
I watch with a 2017 FireTV 4K. Can I burn subtitles on a more powerful client or are there any tweaks that could optimize this?
