I am about to purchase a new computer sporting the following:
Componet
Purpose
AMD Ryzen B550 ATX
Platform
Gigabyte B550 Vision D-P
Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4GHz Sixteen Core 105W
CPU
4 x DDR4-3200 32GB
Ram
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB Open Air
Video Card
With this configuration, I would like to be able to transcode “4k, 2160p, 50Mbps” down to “Mobile, 720p, 4Mbps” without Plex flinching – with 5-10concurrent transcodes possible.
I think consumer Nvidia cards are limited to 3 concurrent transcodes, and even if they weren’t, asking for a machine to transcode 10 4K 50Mbps probably HDR videos down to tone mapped 720p 4Mbps streams is going to cripple even the most powerful of machines. My question would be why do you need that kind of horsepower and why would that scenario ever come up? A better solution would be to make mobile optimized versions of those videos to avoid absolutely crushing your machine all the time for transcoding. I will add though that I like the hardware choice with the exception of the B550 board. If you are going to go with that level of hardware and want to use it in a “server” environment where PCIe lanes are going to be important, I would move up to X570 or onto the Threadripper platform.
I really don’t know – I haven’t purchased the computer yet – as I’m still solidifying things like this. With that said, my entire 15TB library is entirely 1080p because I always get the error that my CPU or Network wasn’t fast enough or something to that effect – right now I have a server without a GPU.
My current transcode limit is 5, and that’s really not been an issue – I think I was just being greedy – I just really want to get some 4K content.
I suppose I could “Optimize” a video for mobile (never had to do that, as I only have relatively low quality 1080p) … will Plex automatically decide on a version, based on the line capabilities? Like if I try to watch on my mobile in a poor/low bandwidth area, will Plex only play the mobile optimized version?
PLEX does a pretty good job at auto selecting content based on client and network capabilities. So if you have 4K, 1080p, and 720p versions of a film, PLEX in most instances does a pretty great job of selecting the correct file based on the parameters that it needs to meet. So maintaining a library that contains 4K and 1080p or 720p versions of your films is a pretty good method to alleviate server strain from having to transcode massive bitrate files. As for the system specs, I think that looks like a monster system. The reason I suggested the changes earlier was I foresee you keeping this system for a long time and just adding storage as it becomes necessary. This would necessitate a substantial number of PCIe lanes to keep expanding into the future. The raw horsepower of either system is going to be plenty with the exception of the GPU. As I said earlier I believe that consumer cards like the 3090 are limited to 3 concurrent transcodes even if the GPU is capable of a whole lot more. I would look at something like an RTX 4000 or similar. That prevents you from having to do any driver modification to get more then 3 transcodes on the card.
Can you point me towards any documentation on the transcoding limits? I have no issue changing the card if I can find legit documentation about those restrictions.
