Plex pc specs

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:05

Hi there,

Wanting to make a very rudimentary pc to act as my Plex server to serve my family consisting of 4 people , something that can handle supplying at max 4k HDR films or downscale to 1080p for people with hd TVs.

What's the minimum spec you'd recommend to run this, would it need a dgpu?
I was thinking of looking for a 7700k or similar with 8gb ram would that do it or do I need more ooomph?

julianhj · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:48

For quite a while I was using a 2500k and it seemed to be fine locally, so I'm sure a 7700k will be okay. I seem to recall that 8th gen Intel onwards has a benefit, but I can't recall the details. I've been using an i5 11400 for the past couple of years and it barely notices when someone's streaming.

Andre · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:48

I'm using a 12th gen alder lake N100 processor based mini PC with 16GB RAM using on-board GPU - Plex uses 8% CPU running a single 1080 stream, 2 4K streams hits 4%

julianhj · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:51

Further to the last - it's iGPU that I was thinking of, which might also include 7th gen (??).

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:52

Andre said:
I'm using a 12th gen alder lake N100 processor based mini PC with 16GB RAM using on-board GPU - Plex uses 8% CPU running a single 1080 stream, 2 4K streams hits 4%

Okay so that seems more than enough, what do you think would be a minimum I could use

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:54

julianhj said:
For quite a while I was using a 2500k and it seemed to be fine locally, so I'm sure a 7700k will be okay. I seem to recall that 8th gen Intel onwards has a benefit, but I can't recall the details. I've been using an i5 11400 for the past couple of years and it barely notices when someone's streaming.

It will be locally and it in the wild

Cookie12 · 30 Jan 2024 at 20:55

N100 as Andre suggests is the best for ultra low power.

8th gen intel or newer is considered the sweet spot for anything plex transcoding related, as those have the newer codec support. Can't remember what that full list is but I think it's things like encode and decode of 10bit x265 via quicksync.

I think the igpu is the uhd 730 and 12th gen onwards has uhd770 which is a trancoding beast.

Andre · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:00

Illuminist said:
Okay so that seems more than enough, what do you think would be a minimum I could use

What is your budget? I picked that "beast" up for less than 200 quid with a Win11 pro license included

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:03

Andre said:
What is your budget? I picked that "beast" up for less than 200 quid with a Win11 pro license included

100 ideally but up to 200 Inc motherboard ram CPU, power supply etc

Andre · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:08

Have a search for beelink - they do some superb NUCs at very good prices. No need to build anything, and everything you need is included in that price
Must say, out of all the NUCs I have bought over the years, this is the best for quality and performance

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:09

Andre said:
Have a search for beelink - they do some superb NUCs at very good prices. No need to build anything, and everything you need is included in that price
Must say, out of all the NUCs I have bought over the years, this is the best for quality and performance

Appreciate that, will have a look

dlockers · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:24

I use a Dell OptiPlex 3020 I got for 50 quid from marketplace. It has an i5 4590 and doesn't seem to be phased by serving content. The biggest issue was finding devices that can receive it; so I upgraded to an Apple 4K the absolute best Plex experience ever.

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:29

dlockers said:
I use a Dell OptiPlex 3020 I got for 50 quid from marketplace. It has an i5 4590 and doesn't seem to be phased by serving content. The biggest issue was finding devices that can receive it; so I upgraded to an Apple 4K the absolute best Plex experience ever.

Someone told me that streaming 4k with HDR is a problem for some cpus, is this true, the HDR bit especially for remote access viewing

dlockers · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:44

Illuminist said:
Someone told me that streaming 4k with HDR is a problem for some cpus, is this true, the HDR bit especially for remote access viewing

You will have more of an issue streaming HDR on the receiving end. Some devices are quite picky/need a Plex pass or something.

Illuminist · 30 Jan 2024 at 21:54

dlockers said:
You will have more of an issue streaming HDR on the receiving end. Some devices are quite picky/need a Plex pass or something.

I have paid for the full Plex experience to be able to stream multi devices and download etc, not that downloading works any more

julianhj · 31 Jan 2024 at 17:27

dlockers said:
I use a Dell OptiPlex 3020 I got for 50 quid from marketplace. It has an i5 4590 and doesn't seem to be phased by serving content. The biggest issue was finding devices that can receive it; so I upgraded to an Apple 4K the absolute best Plex experience ever.

I bought my first Apple TV (also a 4K) a few months ago - I'm really impressed with it. I use it for all streaming now.

Illuminist · 31 Jan 2024 at 18:41

Managed to find an 8th gen i3 that I can jam lots of HDDs into, that should do it right?

toString · 2 Feb 2024 at 14:49

I'm in the same boat looking through a load of beelink specs for a rp4 plex replacement... Got it down to a EQ12 £230 or SEi10 £280 or SEi12 £360. Just slowly going over the specs and reviews really..

srekal34 · 2 Feb 2024 at 18:38

Intels 12th gen and above will be more future proof due to gpu compatibility with all current codecs. I have 12400t and it works like a charm(some hp thin client - 2 nvme slots & 1 sata)
Never EVER buy AMD for plex, they dont care to add hardware decoding on integrated AMD gpus(plex's fault, not AMD)

HEADRAT · 9 Feb 2024 at 10:37

The biggest question mark with any kinda of Plex server is if you'll need to transcode or will everything will be Direct Steam, if everything will be Direct Stream then you'll need no 'ooomph' at all, if you're transcoding that opens a bag-o-worms.