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Can you explain what the difference is with transcoding with and without a plex pass? What is hardware transcoding? doesn't the name "hardware transcoding" imply that it depends on the hardware? i.e having a good cpu will make it better?
 
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You could buy something equally capable for £100 upwards used. Plex doing hardware transcoding (requires a Plex Pass) uses almost no CPU as it’s only audio transcodes that are done in software. Also 4TB is a strange choice in this day and age, especially on a case with a low number of drive bays. Consider if you will that if you have a reasonable internet connection, then GSuite Enterprise is effectively cheap and unlimited storage. I generally prefer to run Plex and associated things on Ubuntu in docker as Plex and hardware transcoding under windows doesn’t scale that well.
are you saying 4TB is not enough? i can't really find a micro atx case with many more drive bays. additionally, my library isn't that big so i think 4tb should be fine for now.
 
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A plex pass is required to enable hardware transcoding, without it you have to do it all in software. Hardware transcoding uses the iGPU or NVEnc to do the transcoding work in hardware with near zero CPU usage rather than software transcoding which is all done with CPU and can quickly ramp up load/fan noise. The bigger question should be why people are transcoding on a local server/client set-up - you either have crappy clients, crappy connectivity or crappy encoding settings.

'Now'... I wouldn't personally waste the money on anything that small drive wise, heck I wouldn't have bought anything smaller than 8TB 5 years ago, let alone today.
as to why i'm transcoding, my samsung tv's will need transcoding, and i don't really wanna invest in a shield per tv.
 
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They will only need to transcode if you feed them unsuitable formats (eg you made poor choices in encoding) or connect them to the server using something silly like power line or Wi-Fi. Also we live in a world where a FireTV or Roku wipes the floor with most ‘smart’ TV’s. In transcoding terms a modern Celeron will do 20+ transcodes in hardware, you don’t need an i5, even an i3 is significant overkill.
yeah, but then i need to worry about setting up handbrake to spit out files for all of my different devices right?
 
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Honestly transcoding isn't bad if you have a Plex Pass. I run a 9th gen i5 which is total overkill, but it was second hand and cheap, and it will happily transcode 4k. I don't transcode much, but for the odd time I watch something away from home or a family member wants to watch something it's handy.
interesting, i'll test it out on my machine with a 4690k...but from what i've read, hardware transcoding isn't as good quality wise.
 
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No. You should be using a format that pretty much any client will direct play anyway, possible exceptions being HDR (now tone mapping is more or less OK) and exotic audio formats if you have/intend to use a decent AV amp/set-up.
Yes i have a plex pass.
As above, you'd need a 7th gen or newer to get full Quick Sync support but quality wise, I've used hardware transcoding to watch things when I've been away, in hotels etc and it's absolutely fine.
ok cool, so i'm getting quite confused now.
i just want to be able to play stuff, don't care whether its transcoded or direct played, and i don't want to have to manage reencoding my stuff that i get from torrents or usenet.can i do that with a celeron?

if so, i would appreciate a build.
thank you
 
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Your spec above is more than enough CPU wise, however would be pretty lacking storage wise. Personally, I'd go for a cheaper second hand 8th or 9th gen CPU and board and throw more money at a bigger hard drive and SSD cache. I'd also go for UnRAID for the OS as it makes setting up the various dockers for Plex pretty seamless. Just having a quick look on eBay and a few i3-8100, board and RAM combos have gone for around £80. Add a case, two 8TB hard drives (one for parity to give you redundancy) and an NVMe drive for cache should be around your budget.
been hearing a lot about nvme drives for cache...how is this setup/how does this work?

is the os installed on the nvme drive?
 
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The two HDD bays have a 120mm fan on them, and the case has a 200mm? fan on the front. Under normal usage conditions it's cool enough and quiet, but when it checks parity the drive temps get a bit too toasty.
what hdd bays are they? where did you get them from? how easy to install?
 
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i've been trialling plex on my old 4690k with a gtx 970 and it's been pretty fine with hardware transcoding enabled...but im not sure if its CPU transcoding or using the gtx970...how can i tell?
 
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You’ve confused your terminology - CPU transcoding is software transcoding, QuickSync and NVEnc are hardware transcoding, if it says ‘(HW)’ next to the Transcoding lable on the dashboard, it’s using either iGPU or NVEnc, I would imagine you have disabled iGPU if you have installed a GPU. You haven’t mentioned your OS, and if it’s something horrible like Windows, then best of luck As it sucks for transcoding in general compared to *nix, also you will need to patch the 970 to enable additional streams if required, a 960 actually has a later NVEnc engine that the 97/980, the differences may or may not be relevant to your media curation standards.
patch the 970 with what? a newer driver?

yeah it's windows, anyway, i'm planning on a new build with unraid.

thoughts on the below?



CPU: Intel Celeron G5925 3.6 GHz Dual-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock H510M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1200 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 CL16 Memory
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply

Total: £365.95




ignore storage for now.
 
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You’ve confused your terminology - CPU transcoding is software transcoding, QuickSync and NVEnc are hardware transcoding, if it says ‘(HW)’ next to the Transcoding lable on the dashboard, it’s using either iGPU or NVEnc, I would imagine you have disabled iGPU if you have installed a GPU. You haven’t mentioned your OS, and if it’s something horrible like Windows, then best of luck As it sucks for transcoding in general compared to *nix, also you will need to patch the 970 to enable additional streams if required, a 960 actually has a later NVEnc engine that the 97/980, the differences may or may not be relevant to your media curation standards.
what's better for transcoding? the gtx970 or the igpu in the 4690k?
 
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