PMS server - hardware changes possible

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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I am a happy plex user. But, I am wondering about which way I should take my server to keep it working fabulously with my ever growing selection of 4k HDR titles, and one of my TV’s only does 720p, and I prefer 720p on my phone as well. I am currently on Ubuntu 18.04 (and I will update it when I need to) with a i5-9400 cpu with the gpu enabled. However, after Christmas, I have some options:

I was given an i9-9900k. And I will be purchasing an RTX 3070 whenever I find stock. So then, here are my thoughts on my server:

  1. Swap the CPU to the i9-9900k, and keep the i5-9600k in my desktop for gaming and light use, and sell off the current 9400.

  2. When the RTX3070 is acquired, use my GTX1060 6gb in the server, and keep the i5-9400 in it.

  3. Don’t do a thing, and keep relying on the 9400 gpu for transcoding.

  4. I do have an old GTX 950 kicking around, I could use that in the server as well.

Thoughts?

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The GPU in the i9-9900 is every bit as good as the RTX3070.

What you’re going to run out of first is CPU, not GPU.

CPU because of audio transcoding and any subtitle burning you might do.

If I were given the option, and had a mix of usage cases, I would opt for the i9 because of its raw horsepower on the CPU side.

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Interesting. So I am better off with an i9-9900 over the i5-9400 or 9600 with a dedicated gpu for transcoding. Very interesting. Glad I checked. My easy solution was going to be to just slap a gpu in, and take the extra energy bill. I like this solution. Thanks much!

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I have a philosophy I’ve found to be very true. (Taught to me long ago)

K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

It was a running joke from my senior team member who would poke me for:

  1. always making things overly complex just because I thought it was needed
  2. being so smart I was stupid and missing the common sense answer right in front of my face.

After all these years, it still serves me well :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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k = without gpu? yuch.
Id choose whichever has the igpu with qsv.
Running on the igpu has been seamless, fast, and had great compatibility and allowed so many streams. It keeps things so much simpler.

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Intel K CPUs have iGPU. All of my cpu’s do.

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Check http://ark.intel.com to verify what the CPU has.

the suffix (-xxxx) is where the separation from GPU vs non-GPU is

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Right. Only KF chips don’t have a gpu. And the 9400 isn’t an f as I stated, it’s a vanilla i5-9400. All have integrated gpus.

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