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?

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Illuminist · 9 Feb 2024 at 10:41

HEADRAT said:
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.

I lately discovered that it did need transcoding as a 4k HDR film was more than they're internet could handle for someone , even on my main pc it used 50% of the CPU to transcode for him

Illuminist · 9 Feb 2024 at 12:09

HEADRAT said:
So if you are going to need to do 4k transcoding then I'd uaw GPU to offload that to

Best Graphics cards (GPU) for 4K Plex Video Transcoding

Best Graphics cards (GPU) for 4K Plex Video Transcoding What graphics card can cope with how many 4K transcoding streams? These are the cards sorted by the performance – transcoding 4K videos down to 720p which is commonly used resolution for tablets or online TV streams. Most popular choice is

nascompares.com

The best GPU to Hardware Acceleration of Plex Transcoding.

Discuss which GPU is the best GPU for Plex's hardware acceleration function, NVIDIA or AMD, who will win this battle.

www.winxdvd.com

I don't think you want the CPU grunt in a Plex server to carry out this task but Intel's quick sync is also an alternative.

This is a good read

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/11ih0gs/plex_hardware_transcoding_explained/#:~:text=Plex%20supports%20two%20types%20of,faster%20and%20more%20efficient%20transcoding.

So for whatever reason you have to turn HDR off in Plex for it to use a GPU to transcode, which makes the picture look very dark for the watcher it's annoying and I hope they change it at some point

Illuminist · 10 Feb 2024 at 13:21

Avalon said:
No, you need an OS an iGPU that supports tone mapping. Hint: Not windows but theres been so much well intentioned advice thats not correct at this point, lets start from the beginning.

Transcoding in software is horribly inefficient for video, more so in H265 than H264, more so in 4K than 1080p, so a 4K H265 transcode in software is just stupidly taxing. So, you ned to buy PlexPass and then we use iGPU to do it, and the HD630 is the ideal choice, the first gen that had that across the board was 8th, literally anything with an HD630 will transcode 4K H265 without issue. The HDR caveat is an OS issue, linux wins, windows sucks, its been this way for Plex for many years on other features too, windows is just a poor choice.

If you don't want to buy PlexPass then JellyFin has matured a lot since its fork from emby and offers free hardware transcoding, but the client support is still the weak spot. Emby offers paid options, but with more restrictions than Plex in terms of devices, its TV integration support is way better though.

I have Plex pass, but also windows which is why I guess I can't use the GPU and tonemapping.
So thank you for this vital information.

So, in light of this fresh knowledge, the best thing is a CPU with a hd630 running linux