I just want to toss in an opposing viewpoint about Quick Sync: If it’s just one or the other, I’d rather have the strong CPU over the graphics card (though both is the best option of course!). I’ve found it’s both faster and more reliable, by far. I had to disable hardware acceleration after being very excited for its arrival.
- CPU: Core i3-6100u (Skylake GPU; Intel NUC6i3SYK). 256GB SSD, plus 8GB of memory, which should be fine for my one or two streams max. Data is pulled from a NAS over gigabit.
- OS is Windows 10.
- The TV is a 2017 LG with WebOS 3.0 using a wired connection. [Unfortunately, even though the LG can handle both MKV’s and HEVC natively, Plex forces a transcode of all MKV files that are HEVC. This is the cause of multiple posts in Plex’s Smart TV forum, ending with all the users sounding completely defeated. But I digress.]
First, this sometimes gets lost in the equation: If you have any MPEG2 files, such as HD recordings off an antenna, Plex can only decode those in software. Second, if those videos/recordings are 1080i, at last check Plex cannot deinterlace them in hardware (Unless there was an update I missed, I have not checked recent releases). You can’t pick-and-choose what gets hardware acceleration, so HD MPEG2’s are a problem. You can consider Media Optimization instead, though deinterlacing there is still inferior IMO.
Now moving on to AVC and HEVC files. With hardware acceleration enabled, I found the transcode quality to be very reasonable. I’m actually not sure I could have seen the difference in a blind test with a 1080p HEVC MKV. So the quality is solid, big credit to Plex. However, I did run into one showstopper issue. Even though I make sure the Plex server is directly logged in with a monitor connected (a known problem for those of us who use normally RDP), often the HEVC is software-decoded while AVC uses hardware encoding. Walking through the forums gave many recommendations, and none worked.
Whether related or not, I found terrible issues with delays using Quick Sync. Software encoding would take 3-5 seconds max to start playing. Hardware acceleration was regularly 10-15 seconds. The longest was 30 seconds, if you didn’t count the times where it simply sat there forever, and never played and I had to turn off the TV to restart it. The wife acceptance factor dropped like a rock with hardware acceleration enabled.
Worse, if you ever use skip-forward or rewind, you may as well grab a drink.
So in short, I’m in firm agreement with ChuckPA’s recommendation: Get a modern i7, preferably Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake. Skylake is fine too, unless you need 10-bit HEVC decode support in hardware. Those CPU’s also can hardware-encode to HEVC, but Plex does not currently offer that, so it’s irrelevant to your needs. I don’t know if that’s on the roadmap for Plex (it would be a wonderful option for higher video quality while using less data!).
If you buy a modern i7, you can simply try hardware acceleration first via Quick Sync. Does it work flawlessly? Awesome! Does it fail miserably? That’s ok, because you’ll still have a strong CPU. You can disable that functionality, and perhaps revisit it later after future Plex upgrades. Plex is a solid product, but you can run into unexpected issues, and resolving them can be problematic without an official support system.
In my case, that NUC will eventually become a client, and a 6-core Ryzen will take over Plex server duties. Reliability wins.
I’ve been going Plex server crazy. I just bought a WD My Passport Wireless Pro 3TB as it runs Plex Server and I can stream it to tablets in the car for the kids on long road trips!