Lower power CPU for Plex server

Frank Jeagar · 27 Jul 2022 at 14:09

Well thanks to my current setup using ZFS, when I upgrade my drives to the new 10TBs I'll have to completely backup all data, create a new array and transfer it back.

So that might be a good point to shift to unraid since it is going to be a big task regardless.

I do like the idea of using BTRFS just for the flexibility it provides.

skyripper · 27 Jul 2022 at 14:25

You can expand ZFS pools if the underlying drives have been swapped for bigger ones. It is a complete faff though, and the advice is backup before mucking with it.

Avalon · 27 Jul 2022 at 15:01

You’re worying about a hypothetical problem that generally doesn’t exist in the real world. Drives are generally capable of doing this regularly and had done so for decades (still got an old UnRAID box that has 6x2TB WD Greens in it, no casualties yet).

You’ve embraced hardware transcoding to save a modest amount of watts, but seem to have missed the easy win here, every time anyone plays anything on TrueNAS, you spin up 10 drives at 50-70w+ for hours at a time, in UnRAID you spin up one drive at 5-7w, let’s assume you do that for 6hrs a day and call it 60w, it’s £49.05 of extra power a year vs £4.95/yr with UnRAID, add another 1/3 to that by the end of the year and it’s £65.40 and £6.54. Also you get easy expansion and the ability to add whatever is the best £/TB at the time you want to buy in terms of expansion.

TrueNAS is great for high IOPS, but as I mentioned above, you have to understand it’s limitations and accept them. If you don’t specifically need IOPS, why are you choosing to spend £49-65 on powering drives you don’t need to? It seems a choice at least worth giving more thought to.

I used to do as Street does, now I let a hosted box with symmetrical gigabit do all the hard work and just mount cloud storage via rclone - I can do that and a local Plex docker instance on about 14w of 8th gen i3 NUC. I still have local storage and servers, but it’s only really used for things that don’t belong in the cloud.

Frank Jeagar · 27 Jul 2022 at 16:10

I agree and I will give it some serious thought, but I don't take changing the OS on this system lightly. Also, yes it could save a lot of power in the long run, but it would also cost at least $90 upfront.

As a bigger change it is something I will consider for the long term, especially when I decide to upgrade my storage since that is already a lot of work, but for now a switch to 8th gen Intel should save some power and maybe even a bit of money after I sell my current hardware.

Also unraid has a lot more features and lots of advanced features that I would like to use that aren't really possible with TrueNas so it is something I've already considered in the past, after this discussion I think I will eventually make the switch.

Avalon · 27 Jul 2022 at 16:33

Frank Jeagar said:
I agree and I will give it some serious thought, but I don't take changing the OS on this system lightly. Also, yes it could save a lot of power in the long run, but it would also cost at least $90 upfront.

As a bigger change it is something I will consider for the long term, especially when I decide to upgrade my storage since that is already a lot of work, but for now a switch to 8th gen Intel should save some power and maybe even a bit of money after I sell my current hardware.

Also unraid has a lot more features and lots of advanced features that I would like to use that aren't really possible with TrueNas so it is something I've already considered in the past, after this discussion I think I will eventually make the switch.

Just to be clear, hardware transcoding will require £94.99 up front for PlexPass lifetime, otherwise you get no benefit at all over what you have. You can pay £3.99 a month if you want or annually, but it’s poor value, they occasionally put it on sale.

Frank Jeagar · 27 Jul 2022 at 16:35

Avalon said:
Just to be clear, hardware transcoding will require £94.99 up front for PlexPass lifetime, otherwise you get no benefit at all over what you have. You can pay £3.99 a month if you want or annually, but it’s poor value, they occasionally put it on sale.

I fortunately already have a lifetime pass from when it was on sale a long time ago, but thanks for a clarificaiton that could have been a shock haha.

Cyber-Mav · 28 Jul 2022 at 09:18

Avalon said:
If we start with storage, you know 2TB drives are way too small, just running one 24/7 idle is costing you £12.25-17.15 per drive, you have 10 of them... by the end of the year you're looking at £16.35-22.89 per drive... times 10. It's £230-40ish for a brand new 10TB Iron Wolf or EXOS Enterprise drive or £220 if you shuck them, if we assume that replaces 5 x 2TB drives, you're saving £91.56/yr even allowing for the cost to run the new drive, clearly that makes sense over 3 years and they're warranted.

does this take into account a nas situation where unused drives are spun down?

Frank Jeagar · 28 Jul 2022 at 09:22

Cyber-Mav said:
does this take into account a nas situation where unused drives are spun down?

I believe this calculation from Avalon was assuming 24/7 run time, but the later discussions in this thread (including further calculations from Avalon) centre around spin down.

Avalon · 28 Jul 2022 at 09:45

Cyber-Mav said:
does this take into account a nas situation where unused drives are spun down?

If you re-read the comment you quoted it does specifically say running 24/7 idle, idle is spun up and doing nothing, due to the way TrueNAS works any pool access (eg someone watching something) requires the full pool to be spun up. Spun down the power consumption is negligible.

On a slightly related note, I went back down the Ryzen + APU rabbit hole last night, it’s possible to get some really low idles (Pi4 levels) which is amazing, but it looks like once you do anything other than idle, it’s back in the 60w+ range. I might roll the dice on a DeskMini or could just get something a little nicer for my B450 ITX to play with, sadly the X300 is pretty thin on the ground at reasonable prices and AMD APU’s are not that cheap at present for anything interesting.

Cyber-Mav · 28 Jul 2022 at 10:09

Whats good for idle power these days? My usage is nas for films and tv stuff so drives are not stressed and spun down most of the time.
The server handles torrents and windows built in vpn server is used for vpn connection on a rare basis. Its a haswell xeon e3 1225v3 but here is the issue, the server is used for video encoding from time to time using handbrake so it runs overnight encodes or can be encoding for days at a time. System itself is on 24/7. My pc helps out with encoding too so the 5600x will run overnight too when i have encoding batches to do.
Was thinking of upgrading my 5600x to a 5950x and do all encoding on it but then thought if i changed the haswell server and used a 5950x in it then i wont need both computers on and just let server do all encodes. But i read 5950x is high on idle power so what i save in encoding power usage is lost out on idle so only benefit is encoding is finished quicker but im in no rush for encoding results...

Armageus · 28 Jul 2022 at 10:13

Cyber-Mav said:
Whats good for idle power these days? My usage is nas for films and tv stuff so drives are not stressed and spun down most of the time.
The server handles torrents and windows built in vpn server is used for vpn connection on a rare basis. Its a haswell xeon e3 1225v3 but here is the issue, the server is used for video encoding from time to time using handbrake so it runs overnight encodes or can be encoding for days at a time. System itself is on 24/7. My pc helps out with encoding too so the 5600x will run overnight too when i have encoding batches to do.
Was thinking of upgrading my 5600x to a 5950x and do all encoding on it but then thought if i changed the haswell server and used a 5950x in it then i wont need both computers on and just let server do all encodes. But i read 5950x is high on idle power so what i save in encoding power usage is lost out on idle so only benefit is encoding is finished quicker but im in no rush for encoding results...

8th gen onwards intel desktop chip with QuickSync - should be supported by Handbrake resulting in lower power whilst encoding, as well as when idling.

(e.g. i5 8500 is 65W part vs your 84W Xeon, but has 25%+ better single threaded performance, almost 50% better multi threaded performance due to 2 extra cores, and that's without taking into account QuickSync)

Avalon · 28 Jul 2022 at 10:31

Armageus said:
8th gen onwards intel desktop chip with QuickSync - should be supported by Handbrake resulting in lower power whilst encoding, as well as when idling.

This.

However, depending on your standards and expectations, you may get away with the iGPU you already have in the Xeon 12x5, it’s only a P4600 and I wouldn’t normally advocate using it for transcoding, but if the BR isn’t low, it would produce OK results much quicker than doing it in software.

QS is the most efficient game in town for encoding and will run rings around any consumer CPU doing it in software, even a really low end CPU as long as the iGPU is a 6xx or newer - that includes some 7th gen chips iirc but check the specific iGPU capabilities as Intel has history for playing dirty. The other option is NVEnc, if you already have an Nvidia GPU then you’re laughing. Also automate the workflow, manually adding files to encode is not a thing anyone should need to do.

Cyber-Mav · 28 Jul 2022 at 14:03

Gpu transcoding doesnt do the result i want which cpu encoding does. I get much better quality at smaller file sizes if i use cpu encoding over gpu.

I have an nvidia t600 but for quality with small file size i still cant beat the cpu. Speed is far superior on gpu though. Unless handbrake is not doing it justice for gpu encoding.

Also would an i5 8500T give lower idle power usage or does the T model just cut down on peak power use?

Armageus · 28 Jul 2022 at 14:38

Cyber-Mav said:
Also would an i5 8500T give lower idle power usage or does the T model just cut down on peak power use?

T models only cut down peak power usage (at the expense of performance) - both drop to lower speeds than their base clocks when idle.

Armageus · 28 Jul 2022 at 14:47

Cyber-Mav said:
Gpu transcoding doesnt do the result i want which cpu encoding does. I get much better quality at smaller file sizes if i use cpu encoding over gpu.

I have an nvidia t600 but for quality with small file size i still cant beat the cpu. Speed is far superior on gpu though. Unless handbrake is not doing it justice for gpu encoding.

Sounds like you are focusing too much on file size. At sensible file sizes there shouldn't be a huge difference between CPU transcoding vs NVEnc vs QuickSync.

Frank Jeagar · 11 Aug 2022 at 14:58

Update for anyone still following or that finds this thread:

I managed to get an Asrock Z370 Extreme4 in a bundle then sold the other items so that I got the board for only £25
I also picked up an i3-8100 for £34 today

When the CPU arrives I will take a day to do some testing.
I intend to test the power consumption of my current setup vs the new setup both done -/+ hard drives and both at idle and while transcoding.

If anyone has any test suggestions or requests let me know and I will see if I can get them done.

alexkyriak · 10 Sep 2022 at 17:45

Great thread, following this, want to build a NAS unit, but lots to learn. Reading about TrueNAS spinning up the whole set of drives, vs Unraid only doing on a per drive basis is quite interesting.