Sanity check build for Plex server

[Mitzy]

Hi

Hoping to benefit from some of your combined wisdom. Currently have a M1 Mac Mini which I used as a seedbox. I have 3 x 16Tb drives in R0 and 1TB m.2 which I used a temp download location for torrents and Usenet.

I’ve went Intel for HW transcoding and I chose latest gen because I figured that would offer the best codec support?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-13600K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AV-IN) = £338.99
• 1 x Lexar Hades 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (SKU: MY-019-LE) = £39.95
• 1 x Corsair CV Series CV650 80 Plus Bronze ATX Power Supply (CP-9020236-UK) (SKU: CA-26E-CS) = £69.94
• 1 x Gigabyte B760M DS3H DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5C0-GI) = £114.99
• 1 x Jonsbo C3 Plus-Black/window Micro ATX Case (SKU: CA-007-JB) = £61.99

Total: £637.85 (includes delivery: £11.99)​

​

 

[Tetras]

I’ve went Intel for HW transcoding and I chose latest gen because I figured that would offer the best codec support?

As far as I know, the 12th & 13th gen IGP features are the same, but you need a 12500, 13500 or higher to get 2 codec engines, though I've never seen any benchmarks that compare the performance of CPUs with 1 versus 2 (e.g. 12400 v 12500).

 

[Avalon]

An i3 8100 has UHD630 and will do some obscene number of H264 transcodes in hardware (I got bored testing after 30 something) as well as 4K and tone mapping and H265, board/CPU can be had for £40-60 used, shove £40 of RAM into it and you’re around £120-140 or buy an ex. Corp. box for under £100 delivered inc everything. You’re spending £637.85 or roughly £537.85 more to do the same job, with no obvious advantage… Why?

 

[Mitzy]

An i3 8100 has UHD630 and will do some obscene number of H264 transcodes in hardware (I got bored testing after 30 something) as well as 4K and tone mapping and H265, board/CPU can be had for £40-60 used, shove £40 of RAM into it and you’re around £120-140 or buy an ex. Corp. box for under £100 delivered inc everything. You’re spending £637.85 or roughly £537.85 more to do the same job, with no obvious advantage… Why?

Interesting. I was off the understanding that the 630 could do 1 maybe 2 transcodes of 4K HDR and the 770 could do at least double? What size are the files you tested with?

 

[Chaos666]

and here I am with my plex on my optiplex 7010 and i3 3225 ..
can you please explain why you need such powerfull hardware?

 

[Avalon]

Interesting. I was off the understanding that the 630 could do 1 maybe 2 transcodes of 4K HDR and the 770 could do at least double? What size are the files you tested with?

File size is irrelevant. Bit-rate is relevant, but honestly not worth worrying about unless we are talking REMUX. I have tested and confirmed 4x4K H265 transcodes work perfectly on an i3 and i5, I haven’t tried them on a mobile i3, but the more important question is why on earth would you need that many concurrent transcodes if 4K H265 HDR? If it’s a client issue, upgrade the client, if it’s a bandwidth issue run cable, if it’s a WAN issue then you should be keeping those users off your 4K library and preventing 4K transcodes with Tautulli, that assumes you have the WAN bandwidth to handle that many transcodes in the first place.

 

[Avalon]

and here I am with my plex on my optiplex 7010 and i3 3225 ..
can you please explain why you need such powerfull hardware?

With respect, you’re using an Ivy Bridge/HD4000, in hardware transcoding terms, it really sucks in both quality and capabilities/CODEC support.

 

[jaybee]

Hi

Hoping to benefit from some of your combined wisdom. Currently have a M1 Mac Mini which I used as a seedbox. I have 3 x 16Tb drives in R0 and 1TB m.2 which I used a temp download location for torrents and Usenet.

I’ve went Intel for HW transcoding and I chose latest gen because I figured that would offer the best codec support?

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-13600K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AV-IN) = £338.99
• 1 x Lexar Hades 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (SKU: MY-019-LE) = £39.95
• 1 x Corsair CV Series CV650 80 Plus Bronze ATX Power Supply (CP-9020236-UK) (SKU: CA-26E-CS) = £69.94
• 1 x Gigabyte B760M DS3H DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5C0-GI) = £114.99
• 1 x Jonsbo C3 Plus-Black/window Micro ATX Case (SKU: CA-007-JB) = £61.99

Total: £637.85 (includes delivery: £11.99)​

​

​

​

Yeah if you were buying brand new, it's a good build. The CPU is OTT though and you could go down to an i3.
But in terms of bang per buck, you could build a server that will do the exact same Plex duties (very light) using second hand parts off ebay for possibly even under a ton. Any generic, efficient, low power PSU, any 2 x 8gb of ram, an 8th gen i3 CPU or above will be fine, then a cheap motherboard to suit. Case...whatever you like.
The CPUs go for £20-40, ram might be £30, mobo anything from £20-50, PSU depends what you can find. Certainly doable for well under £200. Your spec is like £600. If you must have brand new, at least change to the oldest intel i3 cpu you can still buy brand new, and mobo to suit.

 

[Avalon]

Yeah if you were buying brand new, it's a good build. The CPU is OTT though and you could go down to an i3.
But in terms of bang per buck, you could build a server that will do the exact same Plex duties (very light) using second hand parts off ebay for possibly even under a ton. Any generic, efficient, low power PSU, any 2 x 8gb of ram, an 8th gen i3 CPU or above will be fine, then a cheap motherboard to suit. Case...whatever you like.
The CPUs go for £20-40, ram might be £30, mobo anything from £20-50, PSU depends what you can find. Certainly doable for well under £200. Your spec is like £600. If you must have brand new, at least change to the oldest intel i3 cpu you can still buy brand new, and mobo to suit.

It’s like you took what I said and the figures provided (literally), and made it longer. Technically you can go down to Pentium/Celeron levels, it’s the iGPU that’s actually doing the work.

 

[Mitzy]

File size is irrelevant. Bit-rate is relevant, but honestly not worth worrying about unless we are talking REMUX. I have tested and confirmed 4x4K H265 transcodes work perfectly on an i3 and i5, I haven’t tried them on a mobile i3, but the more important question is why on earth would you need that many concurrent transcodes if 4K H265 HDR? If it’s a client issue, upgrade the client, if it’s a bandwidth issue run cable, if it’s a WAN issue then you should be keeping those users off your 4K library and preventing 4K transcodes with Tautulli, that assumes you have the WAN bandwidth to handle that many transcodes in the first place.

I’m really sorry I didn’t clarify this sooner, I am almost exclusively discussing transcoding BR remux.

I wish I could get my Mum to upgrade her internet and her client (Roku) to watch movies from me but she won’t.

One of my friends has fast enough internet but refuses to use anything but the inbuilt Plex app on his Samsung TV because he feels he spent enough money on the thing it SHOULD be able to play whatever I have just fine

In an ideal world yeah, I’d not bother to spec out like this but hey ho

 

[Mitzy]

Yeah if you were buying brand new, it's a good build. The CPU is OTT though and you could go down to an i3.
But in terms of bang per buck, you could build a server that will do the exact same Plex duties (very light) using second hand parts off ebay for possibly even under a ton. Any generic, efficient, low power PSU, any 2 x 8gb of ram, an 8th gen i3 CPU or above will be fine, then a cheap motherboard to suit. Case...whatever you like.
The CPUs go for £20-40, ram might be £30, mobo anything from £20-50, PSU depends what you can find. Certainly doable for well under £200. Your spec is like £600. If you must have brand new, at least change to the oldest intel i3 cpu you can still buy brand new, and mobo to suit.

The reason I went for the 13 i5K over anything lower is because it’s only from the i5K and up that you’re actually getting the proper raptor lake architecture (or so I’m told lol) the 12 & 13 gen i3 are the exact same chip’s allegedly.

 

[Mitzy]

Alright well jobs done. I got spec above except 32Gb ram instead. Should keep me going a while. Appreciate all the input peeps

 

[Avalon]

I’m really sorry I didn’t clarify this sooner, I am almost exclusively discussing transcoding BR remux.

I wish I could get my Mum to upgrade her internet and her client (Roku) to watch movies from me but she won’t.

One of my friends has fast enough internet but refuses to use anything but the inbuilt Plex app on his Samsung TV because he feels he spent enough money on the thing it SHOULD be able to play whatever I have just fine

In an ideal world yeah, I’d not bother to spec out like this but hey ho

Even transcoding REMUX won’t make a difference to my recommendation or the end result, any 8th gen iGPU will do the same number as what you just purchased at a fraction of the cost. A word of warning though, R0 over three drives that size for storage is going to end badly sooner rather than later, seedbix implies torrents (low IO load), some form of redundancy is a better move here surely? Also pulling multiple REMUX off a mechanical array concurrently down a gigabit pipe doesn’t give me happy thoughts. Have you considered moving to something like UnRAID? You at least get redundancy and can run Plex locally via docker which also removes the gigabit bottleneck and that i5 will be sat idle otherwise.

 

[jaybee]

It’s like you took what I said and the figures provided (literally), and made it longer. Technically you can go down to Pentium/Celeron levels, it’s the iGPU that’s actually doing the work.

I missed your post when I skimmed the thread sorry.

Even transcoding REMUX won’t make a difference to my recommendation or the end result, any 8th gen iGPU will do the same number as what you just purchased at a fraction of the cost. A word of warning though, R0 over three drives that size for storage is going to end badly sooner rather than later, seedbix implies torrents (low IO load), some form of redundancy is a better move here surely? Also pulling multiple REMUX off a mechanical array concurrently down a gigabit pipe doesn’t give me happy thoughts. Have you considered moving to something like UnRAID? You at least get redundancy and can run Plex locally via docker which also removes the gigabit bottleneck and that i5 will be sat idle otherwise.

Gigabit bottleneck? Not sure I follow.

 

[Mitzy]

Even transcoding REMUX won’t make a difference to my recommendation or the end result, any 8th gen iGPU will do the same number as what you just purchased at a fraction of the cost. A word of warning though, R0 over three drives that size for storage is going to end badly sooner rather than later, seedbix implies torrents (low IO load), some form of redundancy is a better move here surely? Also pulling multiple REMUX off a mechanical array concurrently down a gigabit pipe doesn’t give me happy thoughts. Have you considered moving to something like UnRAID? You at least get redundancy and can run Plex locally via docker which also removes the gigabit bottleneck and that i5 will be sat idle otherwise.

I'm not worried about redundancy, at least for now. I have Google Workspaces which offers essentially unlimited storage space. Plus, my drivers are full of stuff freely available, I don't care if I lose it all. I can grab it all again within a few days, maybe a few more if they're close to capacity lol

I was off the understanding that tone mapping was not possible with 610-640? Is that not the case?

 

[Avalon]

I'm not worried about redundancy, at least for now. I have Google Workspaces which offers essentially unlimited storage space. Plus, my drivers are full of stuff freely available, I don't care if I lose it all. I can grab it all again within a few days, maybe a few more if they're close to capacity lol

I was off the understanding that tone mapping was not possible with 610-640? Is that not the case?

I used to assist with the PG project, I am aware of Team Drives/GSuite

Again, where are you getting your info from? It’s just it’s really not doing you any favours and costing you money. Tone mapping works fine on UHD630 unless you are burning subtitles for obvious reasons. If you go back far enough, there was a specific Intel runtime version that caused some issues, but you’re talking something like a year ago? It only required you to pull the older version to fix, so hardly significant.

 

[Avalon]

I missed your post when I skimmed the thread sorry.



Gigabit bottleneck? Not sure I follow.

Not all BRD’s follow the spec, they should all be under 100MB/s, but some spike above this depending on the scene, op is concerned about doing 4 x 4K Transcodes using REMUX sources, moving 4 x 4K REMUX’s over a gigabit connection which realistically will do 100-110MB/s - allowing for overheads and ignoring the mechanical array - to transcode them in real time means you only have 25-27.5MB/s of input bandwidth available per transfer on average. The last decent 4K REMUX testing I did was from Germany/France to Germany, Atlanta and the UK using TLC NVMe on the source end, transcoding worked fine (it’s just pumping out 1080/8 after all), but while direct playing a single REMUX worked, two didn’t. This is using guaranteed bandwidth servers hosted in reputable DC’s with decent peering, flip that over to 10Gb and it works, we had 3 going to different locations with capacity to do more (we ran out of dev’s online at the same time to test more). Obviously not all REMUX is going to be that bad, we chose our test files specifically to load test what was realistically possible, but if two high bit-rate files is can be a problem, 4 on a gigabit pipe is likely going to bottleneck.
My suggestion was to move that to local - to Plex - storage as it mitigates the input bandwidth while still leaving the same output issue, but again locally that’s easier to fix.

 

[jaybee]

Not all BRD’s follow the spec, they should all be under 100MB/s, but some spike above this depending on the scene, op is concerned about doing 4 x 4K Transcodes using REMUX sources, moving 4 x 4K REMUX’s over a gigabit connection which realistically will do 100-110MB/s - allowing for overheads and ignoring the mechanical array - to transcode them in real time means you only have 25-27.5MB/s of input bandwidth available per transfer on average. The last decent 4K REMUX testing I did was from Germany/France to Germany, Atlanta and the UK using TLC NVMe on the source end, transcoding worked fine (it’s just pumping out 1080/8 after all), but while direct playing a single REMUX worked, two didn’t. This is using guaranteed bandwidth servers hosted in reputable DC’s with decent peering, flip that over to 10Gb and it works, we had 3 going to different locations with capacity to do more (we ran out of dev’s online at the same time to test more). Obviously not all REMUX is going to be that bad, we chose our test files specifically to load test what was realistically possible, but if two high bit-rate files is can be a problem, 4 on a gigabit pipe is likely going to bottleneck.
My suggestion was to move that to local - to Plex - storage as it mitigates the input bandwidth while still leaving the same output issue, but again locally that’s easier to fix.

Are you getting Mega bits (Mb) and Mega Bytes (MB) mixed up?
You state that some bluray discs spike above 100MB/s. The maximum bitrate for a bluray disc is spec'd as 144Mbps which is 18MB.
Even if you had 4 x 4k streams going at constant 144mbps bit rate, surely that would still not be bottlenecked by a gigabit connection? i.e. 4 x 144 = 576Mbps.

The ethernet ports in the back of even high end OLEDs are only 100Mb ports. I've never experienced an issue using the native plex app on my LG TV playing high bit rate 4K streams, but then I don't know exactly what bitrate they are to be fair.

 

[Wing-Man]

is this a personal plex server or one you plan on shearing with over 50 people?

 

[Mitzy]

I used to assist with the PG project, I am aware of Team Drives/GSuite

Again, where are you getting your info from? It’s just it’s really not doing you any favours and costing you money. Tone mapping works fine on UHD630 unless you are burning subtitles for obvious reasons. If you go back far enough, there was a specific Intel runtime version that caused some issues, but you’re talking something like a year ago? It only required you to pull the older version to fix, so hardly significant.

How you finding your Workspaces - I know someone got over a PB stored

So with regards to my understanding it comes from personal experience, but I could be wrong. Picture below shows the server transcoding a 60GB 4K HDR remux. Now, the server did the transcode but you can see that it almost took 100% usage to do so. But this was over a year ago, so maybe it's something that is resolved now??



Server deets;

Processor; E-2274G
RAM; 32GB
Storage; 32TB

Is the iGPU on that fundamentally different from their retail brothers and sisters? In the above example, if I switched off tone mapping the usage would drop significantly.
Just to save googling, here's the CPU spec

Intel® Xeon® E-2274G Processor (8M Cache, 4.00 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® Xeon® E-2274G Processor (8M Cache, 4.00 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.

www.intel.co.uk