Plex Server Build - December 2020

Plex Media Server
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I’m looking to build a new Plex server with a board that has eight sata ports and finding one is beginning to be a bit of a challenge. I think I’m going to settle on a Asus X99 II (https://www.newegg.com/asus-x99-deluxe-ii/p/1JW-000C-00852?Description=LGA%202011-v3%20motherboard&cm_re=LGA_2011-v3%20motherboard--9SIADFRD030987--Product) with a i7 6800K processor. The 6800K has a passmark of 10494, so I believe that should be enough for a few simultaneous 1080p transcodes.

Any other suggestions on other boards that have eight sata ports? If anyone has pcie sata controller suggestions, I would be open to those too, but I’ve had some bad experiences with them, so it would need to be a high end controller that isn’t going to mount my drives as removable disks.

Going to use this case, because it has eight 3.5" bays - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q2Z11QE/?coliid=I3HRB9S8BZI2GL&colid=1L2DA11FSX9CL&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I have several 850 and 1000 watt psu’s on hand and plenty of ddr4 memory, so I won’t have to buy either of those items.

Open to using server hardware, but would rather not, since I already have desktop psu’s and memory.

I’m using Windows 10 Pro. No RAID. Drive Pool with no duplication (high availability is not really a concern). I have offline cold storage and cloud backups to alleviate any data loss from drive failures. Cloud restoration to be used as a last resort in the event that my offline cold storage is destroyed.

Anything I’m forgetting and need to consider?

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You have a Plex Pass, so you can use hardware accelerated transcoding.

Use a 7th Gen or later CPU, which supports hardware decoding of 10-bit HEVC.

Unsure if HDR to SDR Tone Mapping adds further requirements. Nothing specific to Windows mentioned in the support document.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/

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Great, but I need a board with eight sata ports to use with that newer processor. Having trouble finding boards with eight sata ports.

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pcpartpicker.com and newegg.com let you filter by many parameters, including SATA ports.

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Thanks. I will check out pc part picker. Checked newegg last night and there just were not very many boards with 8 sata ports for a reasonable price. The Asus one I found for 250 wasn’t bad, but the rest were either China junk or had huge price tags.

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Thank you so much! Pc part picker gave me a lot more options in comparison to my newegg search.

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I changed things up a bit. I decided against “having to” buy a board with eight sata ports and settled on a Asus Prime Z270P that I already have on hand since it’s compatible with 7th gen processors.

Found a used 7700 processor for a good price and then bought the Fractal Design Define R5 case with eight drive bays.

I finally found a marvell pcie sata card that didn’t have a ton of bad reviews for around 30 dollars, so if I need more than four anytime soon, I’ll just use that. For now my three 14tb western digital drives will be plenty.

I’m currently using a 250gb western digital blue sata ssd for my OS drive. Is there any benefit to using a M.2 drive and/or increasing the size of my operating system drive? For me, using the m.2 slot disables a sata port, so there is certainly no benefit to that. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that someone’s plex media server folder in appdata\local was extremely large and he was talking about using a 1tb os drive, but I don’t understand why that folder was so large. I have over 2500 video titles and I’m only at around 10gb.

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Plex Data Server Location

You can move the Plex data folder to another drive. See [HowTo] An extended guide on how to move the Plex data folder on Windows

Having the Plex data folder on an SSD vs HD will make no difference once the streaming starts. The movie/show/etc is read from where it is stored. The Plex data folder is not needed at that point.

In theory, using an SSD may make a difference in the responsiveness of Plex apps (how fast cover art and other information is displayed).

When you view available media in a library, the Plex server sends cover art for each item to the client. The cover art is stored in the Plex data folder. The faster the media where the data is stored, the faster the Plex server can send it to the client, and the faster it is displayed onscreen.

Whether or not it makes a difference for you depends on the amount of traffic on your server. If you have 5 simultaneous users it probably won’t make a difference. If you have 75 simultaneous users then it might.

I’m in the five user camp. I run Plex Media Server on a Synology DS918+ with no SSDs for caching. I’ve no problem loading cover art, etc from a library with ~900 movies.

Transcoding & SSDs

Some forum users have expressed concern that having Plex’s transcoder temp directory on an SSD will shorten the life of the SSD (When transcoding, Plex reads/writes many temp files as it converts audio/video between formats).

Search the forum for “SSD transcode” or similar terms to see the threads.

As I run PMS on a NAS with no SSDs, I cannot provide any details on SSD wear from transcoding.

SATA vs M2 SSDs

This is my experience with my home Win10 PC, which does not run Plex Media Server.

If the M2 SSD has a SATA interface, then you will not see much difference versus a 2.5" SATA SSD. The limiting factor is the 6 Gbps SATA interface.

For M2 PCIe SSDs, check the capabilities of your motherboard. On some mobos (such as mine), the M2 slot only has 2 PCIe lanes, which limits data transfer speed to ~10 Gbps. It is still faster than SATA, but if you’ve a fast SSD, you’ll still hit the limit of the interface.

For my home PC, I used a M.2 to PCIe x4 add in card. It lets me use the full capabilities of the SSD. The system is definitely more responsive than when the boot drive was a 2.5" SATA SSD.

Adding the card knocked my graphics card from x16 to x8 due to mobo limitations. I don’t game or have other heavy video usage on the PC, so there was no negative impact to my system.

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It’s a noticeable difference with a single user. The problem is with the random read time of small files. An average HDD gets under 1Mbps when accessing small files. With most less than 500kbps. In comparison my extremely cheap non-name-brand SSD gets over 200mbps, with many getting 400 & some even more. When you access your server & pull up a library, scroll through a library, load a collection, etc your library is accessing only a small 5MBs, 10, maybe as small as 1MB, but I’ll use 3 for this example, those small files at an average 600kbps takes 5 seconds to load just 3MBs, no matter how fast your processor is. It doesn’t matter so much with large files, so your media would be silly to put on an SSD, but I recently made that switch & it was definitely noticeable.

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I’d suggest looking into RAM Transcoding, especially if this is gonna be a dedicated Plex Server. I use the free version of SoftPerfect’s RAMdisk which tops out at 4GB/disc, & it works great for me. If you have at least 16GB of RAM it’ll in no way affect your performance negatively

& just for comparison sake
Untitled
My system isn’t the fastest, & it was doing other tasks at the time, but the HDD is an Enterprise Drive, the SSD is one of the lower end, 128GB for like $15, ones, & my RAM Disk is SoftPerfect’s free version which isn’t the fastest either. The bottom 2 of each one are what’s important for the Metadata, the top 2 are important for the Media files. & where 4GB/s is more than you’ll ever use unless you are connected with 4 Gigabit ethernet cards to multiple independent networks, & the speed will always be limited by the other components anyway, it at least makes Transcoding limits solely on those other components. But the speed, for me, isn’t as important as the fact that it saves wear & tear on my SSD.

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I also have a spare 1080ti that I’m not using. Is there any benefit to adding it to this plex server build?

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It should be able to help with transcoding. If you enable Hardware transcoding it can help you stream more things at the same time, but hardware transcoding does result in lower quality. It’s all about your personal needs & preferences. Personally I’d suggest not adding it unless you run into issues where you need it.

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As far as my own personal use, I only stream from within my own network, so everything is direct play. However, a lot of my family will want to stream from outside of the local network.

I have a gigabit connection, but it’s not gigabit on the upstream. I believe that maxes out at 40 megabit.

For now, I’ll just leave the gpu out of the build and do some testing.

One other question. In the Plex Web - Quality section, it allows you to set the quality for Internet Streaming. Is that a cap for all simultaneous streams or is that per simultaneous stream?

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That is the setting for that specific instance of Plex Web.

It has zero impact on how streams are sent to other clients.

For remote access, there are settings on the server and on the clients.

Most Plex clients have a default limit of 4 Mbps/720p for remote streaming. This can be adjusted as necessary on the client. It cannot be adjusted server side, remotely by a server owner, etc.

For the server, see Settings → Server → Remote Access and Settings → Server → Network. Select “Show Advanced” to see additional options.

On the Remote Access page, you can limit the overall bandwidth used for remote streaming and the amount used by each stream.

On the Network page, you can limit the number of simultaneous remote streams allowed per user.

See Plex Documentation for network settings, remote access settings, and the Remote Access & Server Sharing section.

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If you use a 6th Gen or earlier Intel CPU, add the 1080Ti to the system.

If you use a 7th Gen or later CPU it is not necessary.

The reason is due to the capabilities of the Intel QSV GPU on the CPU and hardware accelerated transcoding (which you can use since you have a Plex Pass).

Intel QSV Decoding Capabilities

  • 7th Gen or later: Can decode 10-bit HEVC/H.265 video.
  • 6th Gen: Can decode 8-bit HEVC/H.265 video
  • 5th Gen & earlier: Cannot decode any HEVC/H.265 video.
  • All: Can decode AVC/H.264, MPEG2, VC-1
  • All: Can encode to AVC/H.264 (Plex transcodes all video to H.264)

A 1080Ti is limited to three simultaneous encodes by Nvidia (Nvidia Support Matrix). Hacked drivers are available to override this limit (Elpamsoft).

The wildcard is transcoding and tonemapping 4K HDR media. Plex just added HDR to SDR tonemapping to Plex Media Server. It currently has partial support for Intel QSV and no support for Nvidia GPUs. You’ll have to see how things progress before knowing if the 1080 Ti will help.

Not a bad plan. You can always add it later if needed.

If/when you add the board to your server, you may need to set it as the primary video card in the system BIOS (instead of Intel QSV). You do not have to disable Intel QSV, just make Nvidia the primary. Not a big deal. Just an FYI. I had to do so when I ran Plex Media Server on my Windows desktop and added a Nvidia GPU to the system.

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