What is the best hardware combination for plex server?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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1

Hai all,

I am standing on a point to buy some high end hardware for my plex server.
The main goal is hevc / x265 / 4k in multiple streams
after some research i got to this point:

My current hardware where playing this is impossible:
i5 4xxx
16 gb ram
Nvidia gtx1050 (i am aware of the 2 lanes transcoding of the nvidia cards)
4x10 tb wd red
2x8 tb wd red

The choices:
Intel i9 9xxx
32 gb ram
Radeon RX 590 for hardware acceleration

or:
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X
32gb ram
with maybe a graphic card only if amd hardware acceleration exists?

So maybe are there are 3 option:
1: intel with amd gpu
2. amd cpu only
3. amd with gpu

Please let me know which combination is the best for transcoding
*budget for cpu, gpu and motherboard is ~1500 euro/dollar

Thanks for the effort!

2

If you go with 1) you might as well leave out the discrete GPU, since the CPU has already Quicksync built in (which is what Plex supports best).

3

This is by no means a comparable setup to what you are looking at, but I am using an old 3rd Gen Intel Core i7 3770k CPU, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 512GB SSD, Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, running Ubuntu 18.04.

Disable the Nouveau (open source) Nvidia drivers.
Install Nvidia drivers (a specific version).
Install Nvidia encoder patch.
Profit.

I can now run more 1080P transcodes than I have fingers, and the CPU sits at 0-10% utilization. Yeah, HW transcodes are technically not as good as software, but damned if I can tell the difference.

The delay from clicking play to actually playing is much shorter now too.

If you’re interested I can post my build sheet.

4 Likes
4

I have a similar setup, But on Windows 10. Im itching to try Nvidia Patch for “unlimited” transcodes on my 1050TI, But Linux/Ubuntu scares the **** out of me :frowning: Have no idea what Im doing there…

Can I ask, How many HW transcodes have you gotten with the Nvidia Patch on Ubuntu with a 1050TI ?

5

To be completely honest, I was being a bit facetious by stating that I could “run more 1080P transcodes than I have fingers”. I can easily do 5 1080P transcodes, but being on Comcast with a whopping 10Mbps upload speed really keeps me from needing to do more than that when combining remote and local streams.

I will try to do a larger test tonight, all transcoding to an 8Mbps 1080P stream, on LAN, from multiple devices. Earlier I did a quick crappy test and got to 8 streams, but they were automatically throttled down to .xxMbps due to the upload limitation I have.

Remember, graphics cards are built to do this!! So unlocking the ability to do more than 2 HW encodes in the card is huge.

Linux can be daunting when you’re coming from a Windows world. I’m a Windows System Administrator by trade, but love dabbling in Linux, especially when I can see such a major performance difference between Windows and Linux.

Dive in to Ubuntu. There is a ton of info out there if you need assistance.

2 Likes
6

The simplest and cheapest solution is not transcode 4k at all.

If you keep a separate 4k library and don’t use it for mobile or non-4k clients, then you don’t even need to upgrade.

if you are not direct playing 4k, then you are simply wasting time and money on a PMS server instead of buying 4k clients.

Currently the best 4k client is nvidia shield which will direct play pretty much anything you can get.

Do note for 4k/hdr you will need a complete 4k/hdr pipeline.

This currently means nvidia shield > 4k/hdr receiver > 4k/hdr tv.

for 2019 we might finally see 4k tv’s that will be able to direct play 4k/uhd with their built in apps, but until hdmi 2.1 tv’s and receivers get rolled out, we will have to wait and see.

7

Just had a peak at keylase github for the Nvidia Patch for Ubuntu. Was updated 8 minutes ago with “initial windows support” :slight_smile: I gues its possible to have unlimited transcodes on Windows now with GTX cards :slight_smile:

8

wow! that’s awesome.

9

Now already i got Quicksync is there so much more performance in the new intel gen. Now i can’t play a 4k videos at all with or without the current gpu :confused:

10

I see it’s the cheapest but i want to have a setup to just stream every video and i have allot of 4k content atm. Not everyone has 4k client hardware and i don’t want to wait until they are upgrading. But thanks for your thoughts :wink:

11

Unlocking nvidia graphic’s cards transcoding lanes sound like a realy good idea. Is this is something default or a special trick in linux??

Currently i am running on windows but i don’t mind to switch to linux

12

Found it on github gonna try it today! :wink:

13

QuickSync is not QuickSync
It depends on the generation of the CPU, whether the builtin QuickSync hardware can do 4K/HEVC/10bit
see Intel Quick Sync Video - Wikipedia

You haven’t told the exact type of your current CPU, otherwise I could have looked it up which generation of QuickSync it has.

14

his current cpu is haswell which is many years old and barely supports 1080p.

the gtx1050 however should support 4k/hdr transcoding.

although from the nvidia list there are 2 kinds of 1050’s with different decoding features.

so, hardware transcoding should be working (within the 2 encoder sessions limit) with his existing hardware.

15

I used an ACEPC Wintel T8 Pro with an HD Homerun. I reused a 1TB Seagate external drive that I had been using for MythTV.

Specs for the ACEPC (fanless):

1.9 Ghz Intel Atom processor
2GB Memory
32GB Disk

It comes with Windows 10 pre-installed. I wiped it and installed an Ubuntu Server.

So all told I spent about $240 (including the cost of the external disk).

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