Plex Server Processor

General Discussions
1

I am having problems with transcoding 1080p blu-ray rips with my current plex server setup. I have a 7.1 surround system, so I want to rip the blu-rays with full 7.1 surround, and (using Acrok) the only option that lets me do that is WMV9 which uses VC-1 encoding. According to the Plex forums, I need a processor with a single thread Passmark score of at least 2,000 to cope with transcoding this type of file.

My current CPU only has a single thread Passmark of about 1,200 so it’s obviously under powered, but researching CPUs with single thread scores over 2,000 has a dramatic jump in CPU prices, even used ones.

The only other use of my Plex server is as a home server, so I don’t have any other desktop computer or graphics intensive applications I use it for.

I have discovered the Xeon e5-1620 at 3.6Ghz which has a Passmark of just over 1,900 and is very cheap on eBay. I’m just wondering if anyone has any experience of transcoding 1080p on this chip, and if it copes ok, or if it is still too low powered?

Appreciate any feedback.

2

The general rule for H.264 is 2000 Passmarks per 10 Mbps of H.264 video when using software transcoding.
I am unaware of any such value for VC-1 or other codecs but do know HEVC requires something in the order of 3000+ to decode.

If your proposed CPU is < 2000, compare it to those which are found in NAS boxes (Intel J3455 or I3 as example). The J3455 can’t do the job without hardware transcoding. The i3 can get ‘most’ but not ‘all’ H.264 cases (bit rate is the important element here)