Plex doesn't require much in the way of CPU resources, it can comfortably run on a Pi3 unless you use unsuitable media and serve it to unsuitable/poorly connected clients. You can also use hardware transcoding if you are a PlexPass subscriber and have suitable hardware. In Ubuntu you'd historically use taskset or schedtool.
Plex Media Server
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Plex doesn't require much in the way of CPU resources, it can comfortably run on a Pi3 unless you use unsuitable media and serve it to unsuitable/poorly connected clients. You can also use hardware transcoding if you are a PlexPass subscriber and have suitable hardware. In Ubuntu you'd historically use taskset or schedtool.
You've got about 8 years of catching up to doAutomation is much more efficient than doing things manually, when you get your head round SONARR/RADARR/LIDARR, Ombi and Tatulli, combine them with SAB/NZBGet and Deluge/rTorrent with VPN built into the docker and when you get fed up of doing it all on your home connection with local storage you can move to a VPS/Cloud solution with unlimited storage and massively faster connectivity. If you do it right your only need to interact with your server should be to add anything to the monitor list that isn't automatically imported from the sources you set it to pull lists from.
Well I had a play last night and configured Sonarr/Radarr and Jackett. All fairly straightforward to set up and I've got them running well. It definitely makes it a lot easier adding new things. Now I just need to set up Ombi to girlfriend proof the system properly.
I'm just putting a little server together now, gone for an i3 8100 (4k content and transcoding), mini itx, 16gb RAM and brand new x4 WD Red 8tb and an SSD for OS. I'm hoping to replace my two current servers, an aging n54l and a Gen 8. Both have stud me well and never let me down and are still going great today. However neither can cope with my media demands now as trying to push out 4k content to non direct play compatible devices. Plus a refresh with new hardware never hurts anyone bar the wallet 
. Just hoping to recoup some of the cost by offloading these on ebay. The storage space i've bought covers and adds to whats in those two combined.
I bought a xeon e3-1245 v2 last year for my Gen 8, with the elusive and very expensive HP larger heatsink, hoping that would help with transcoding but made the mistake of jumping in before fully researching the fact i neeed a more modern processor to cope with h265 and 10bit HDR, hence me going for coffee lake i3 now.
I think my family members who benefit from plex should chip in and help me out with the costs lol.
. Just hoping to recoup some of the cost by offloading these on ebay. The storage space i've bought covers and adds to whats in those two combined.I bought a xeon e3-1245 v2 last year for my Gen 8, with the elusive and very expensive HP larger heatsink, hoping that would help with transcoding but made the mistake of jumping in before fully researching the fact i neeed a more modern processor to cope with h265 and 10bit HDR, hence me going for coffee lake i3 now.
I think my family members who benefit from plex should chip in and help me out with the costs lol.
I'm just putting a little server together now, gone for an i3 8100 (4k content and transcoding), mini itx, 16gb RAM and brand new x4 WD Red 8tb and an SSD for OS. I'm hoping to replace my two current servers, an aging n54l and a Gen 8. Both have stud me well and never let me down and are still going great today. However neither can cope with my media demands now as trying to push out 4k content to non direct play compatible devices. Plus a refresh with new hardware never hurts anyone bar the wallet
I bought a xeon e3-1245 v2 last year for my Gen 8, with the elusive and very expensive HP larger heatsink, hoping that would help with transcoding but made the mistake of jumping in before fully researching the fact i neeed a more modern processor to cope with h265 and 10bit HDR, hence me going for coffee lake i3 now.
I think my family members who benefit from plex should chip in and help me out with the costs lol.
Well this is slightly awkward. Firstly if your server stud’s you, you can seek help, your don’t need to allow yourself to be sexuallly exploited like this, help is available
Next up history may be about to repeat itself in terms of your upgrade experience, unfortunately transcoding 4K on Plex has a number of issues and limitations, taking the HDR you mention, Plex transcoding HDR is horrible, it can’t handle tone mapping, you end up with a washed out image that just looks crap - you wouldn’t want to watch it. The other thing you need to be aware of is the way Plex transcodes 4K, Plex transcoding only supports H264, not HVEC. As soon as you transcode the video side, it’s down to 1080p, this is why any well run server will usually have a separate 4K library that is only shared with those who can direct play (client capabilities and bandwidth).
Basically at this stage, if you can’t directly play 4K HDR, then don’t play 4K HDR, use a more appropriate media type. If you can direct play you have no need to transcode.
Kodi has recently made progress on HDR to SDR visual processing, but don’t expect that to make it to Plex any time soon.
Hello,
My original post was a bit vague about what i want it to do. I have built the server now and at home all my devices can directly play 4k HDR content. So thats not been the issue for me. But the thing is i've started replacing a lot of my favourite movies with their 4k replacements and when i'm out, say at my girlfriends and we fancied wathing a flim on plex there, and it was 4k, the transcoding wouldnt work, it would literally play 5 seconds and stutter and tell me the server isnt fast enough. I tried this last night, as it was the first time at my girlfriends since replacement server has been up and running and it worked. Yes the picture isnt 4k and its transcoding down to 720p but it worked and it was playing ok and the picture was watchable.
It's not perfect, but hey ho i was never expecting it to be.
The server is quicker, its a lot quieter too, more HD space, and hopefully it might save the leccy bill a bit lol as i've now turned off my N54l and Gen 8. Just need to wipe these now, reinstall windows 10, take some photos and get them ebay or something.
It is a shame plex just isnt quite there with support for things like HVEC transcoding, HDR etc. Its great for everything else and sharing media has never been so easy.
My original post was a bit vague about what i want it to do. I have built the server now and at home all my devices can directly play 4k HDR content. So thats not been the issue for me. But the thing is i've started replacing a lot of my favourite movies with their 4k replacements and when i'm out, say at my girlfriends and we fancied wathing a flim on plex there, and it was 4k, the transcoding wouldnt work, it would literally play 5 seconds and stutter and tell me the server isnt fast enough. I tried this last night, as it was the first time at my girlfriends since replacement server has been up and running and it worked. Yes the picture isnt 4k and its transcoding down to 720p but it worked and it was playing ok and the picture was watchable.
It's not perfect, but hey ho i was never expecting it to be.
The server is quicker, its a lot quieter too, more HD space, and hopefully it might save the leccy bill a bit lol as i've now turned off my N54l and Gen 8. Just need to wipe these now, reinstall windows 10, take some photos and get them ebay or something.
It is a shame plex just isnt quite there with support for things like HVEC transcoding, HDR etc. Its great for everything else and sharing media has never been so easy.
I’m glad you like the new server, but if you want to play 720p remotely, just keep a 720p copy as well as the 4K, it’s a stupidly simple solution rather than spending hundreds on hardware and something pretty much every large (read 100TB+) server owner I know does.
Plex doesn’t support H265 transcoding because H265 encoding in software is horrific in terms of CPU requirements, it certainly doesn’t scale and that leaves hardware transcoding, unfortunately encode/decode support only hit the silicon as of the previous 7th gen intel desktop CPU’s, AMD GPU’s are crap in this respect and Nvidia artificially limit to two streams on desktop GPU’s, so it’s Quadro P2000 or modified drivers on 9/10 series GPU’s. You also have issues with clients being unable to support H265 and/or HDR tone mapping, you then have the issue of audio support as well. H264 is widely supported and works.
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I would echo the comments to keep a separate local 4K library. I also looked into the viability of transcoding 4K HDR but quickly realised it was not possible due to tone mapping. Instead, I keep the 4K remux locally which is like 60GB and then a crappy 4GB WEB-DL version which people stream. I've near on 50TB of content and I've found this the easiest way. Friends and family do not even see the "4K HDR Movies" category, only "Movies". If the film is not in 4K, then I just keep the 1080p remux. I used to use a 4670K @ 4.2GHz and that performed brilliantly, it choked a bit when I had more than 3 people streaming. I got a hold of some cheap E5-2680 V2s and ran two of them for a while. I sold them as power usage was too high, they were sat idle most of the time and I fancied something else to play with. As we bought a new house and now have a dedicated office I wanted a more modern CPU that could also game on if needed. I picked the Ryzen 2700X and it seems to handle transcoding with no effort and is a competent gaming CPU. At some point I will stick a GPU in it and then when friends come over, we can game side by side. I can use my gaming PC and they can use the server.
One thing I did notice though was the lower the quality you are transcoding to, the harder the CPU has to work. Our old house had 20mbps up, I used to limit to 4mbps per stream. Our new house has 50mbps up, I limit to 12 mbps per stream and before I changed out the Xeons I could see they were being worked less than before. Not by a huge amount but definitely less.
If in the future, there is a way to transcode HDR to SDR (with proper tone mapping) without a massive performance cost then it will be viable to keep a single library. It would need implementing in a way (assuming GPU based) that it was not limited to 2 streams though as otherwise it would offload the 3rd stream to the CPU and choke it out.
One thing I did notice though was the lower the quality you are transcoding to, the harder the CPU has to work. Our old house had 20mbps up, I used to limit to 4mbps per stream. Our new house has 50mbps up, I limit to 12 mbps per stream and before I changed out the Xeons I could see they were being worked less than before. Not by a huge amount but definitely less.
If in the future, there is a way to transcode HDR to SDR (with proper tone mapping) without a massive performance cost then it will be viable to keep a single library. It would need implementing in a way (assuming GPU based) that it was not limited to 2 streams though as otherwise it would offload the 3rd stream to the CPU and choke it out.
Soldato
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Hi all, I would like to set up a Plex server (1080p) and was looking at a low power usage solution such as an RPi or Rock64, however in the future I would like to add two cameras to record as home CCTV.
What sort of CPU would I need to comfortablly cover this?
What sort of CPU would I need to comfortablly cover this?
That depends on the choices you make, media type, client capabilities, connectivity and the number of users dictate your server requirements. Too many people ignore those and throw the wrong server hardware at the problem to compensate...or buy a DinoServ because that’s what they think is a good idea, don’t be that person.
A modern low end intel CPU with iGPU will usually be more than capable when combined with a PlexPass to enable hardware transcoding, intel power gating is also highly efficient on the power front. With the proper media curation choices a Pi3 is OK, but it’s laborious to have to choose or convert media so it’s right, and sooner or later something will need to be transcodes and the Pi3 simply isn’t going to do that.
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Media type will be MP4 or mkv mainly, client capabilities will be too a variety of devices but no more than 2 connections at a time within the same house. The server would be connected to the router via ethernet and the clients to the network over wi-fi.
I have a spare Chromebook (Acer c720 - 2955u and 2gb ram) that is not being used at the moment. If I connected an external hard drive for media storage to it via USB3 would you think that be likely to handle the requirements? Or is it a case of just test it and see?
I have a spare Chromebook (Acer c720 - 2955u and 2gb ram) that is not being used at the moment. If I connected an external hard drive for media storage to it via USB3 would you think that be likely to handle the requirements? Or is it a case of just test it and see?
By media type and client choice, I mean is the media compatible with direct play on your client, for example some people choose a pi and run openPHT, it works well, until you try and feed it decent bit-rate 1080 h265, that’s not usually going to end well and result in a transcode. Similar story with Roku devices, nice devices, but running them comes with certain caveats on making your library Roku friendly. Choose the right media and right client’s and you can use a more efficient server, go with a PlexPass and you can use iGPU to do the encoding.
Connectivity wise Wi-Fi is the spawn of Satan, it gets worse when you’re talking about potentially constant reasonably high bandwidth (in actual throughput terms for consumer grade ISP routers) usage, with decent signal you’ll be fine, but having played the game for a long time I really don’t like Wi-fi for devices with historically poor antennae often sandwiched between a solid wall and a RF shielded screen, that said for 1080 work you should be OK and it does work.
CPU wise Plex suggest a CPU mark of 2k per 1080p AV transcode, in practice it’s possible with slightly less, but in your case i’d aim for something with 4K as a worst case scenario.
Connectivity wise Wi-Fi is the spawn of Satan, it gets worse when you’re talking about potentially constant reasonably high bandwidth (in actual throughput terms for consumer grade ISP routers) usage, with decent signal you’ll be fine, but having played the game for a long time I really don’t like Wi-fi for devices with historically poor antennae often sandwiched between a solid wall and a RF shielded screen, that said for 1080 work you should be OK and it does work.
CPU wise Plex suggest a CPU mark of 2k per 1080p AV transcode, in practice it’s possible with slightly less, but in your case i’d aim for something with 4K as a worst case scenario.
Soldato
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That's very helpful, thank you for taking your time to reply.
Looking at those recommendations I'll try it on a machine I have with a G3258 and see how Plex runs around the house on different devices.
Looking at those recommendations I'll try it on a machine I have with a G3258 and see how Plex runs around the house on different devices.
Perfectly adequate for 1-2 h264 transcodes or many direct play streams, try and establish what media formats work best on all your devices and ensure where possible you make sure media is in those formats to avoid transcoding, if you have a PlexPass subscription then it’ll do more via the iGPU.
Soldato
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Just wanted to say thanks, as I now have it set up (new case for all the HDD's from the missus for Christmas) and had lots of fun playing about with sharing in ubuntu.
Glad you got sorted, just remember to make the time to watch and enjoy and try not to get too bogged down in the technical side
Ran Plex on an N36L, N40L and N54L, the key is direct play (on a LAN with proper media selection this shouldn't be an issue). Nice quiet little servers that when used properly are still very capable and efficient. Bigger question is why? If they aren't running a Plex server already will they update/maintain it? If not and you already have your own why not consider sharing?
I'll be looking after it remotely..
As for sharing mine, I have a teenage who moans like, well a teenager, if people upload stuff from the house, and the earache either of us would end up with just isnt worth it
Tell it to tidy it’s room and when it pays the bills, it can dictate how the uplink is used
Joking aside, the way to do this is to automate the hell out of it as you’d have to use your uplink to upload content, or the remote downlink to grab, Sonarr/Radarr running on a VPS with GDrive business will cost very little each month and remove half the administration/curation duties as well as much of the bandwidth heavy lifting at both ends, for a very small cost per month. Assuming you direct play (and don’t have some weird obsession with 4K remux) then it should work quite well.