Would old Threadripper be a good platform for a Plex / NAS?

[Dravinian]

Oddly, just came across this snipper from a Plex forum thread:

 

Quote

 

"As you can see this file is being direct played, so there's no transcoding happening. If you see (throttled) it's a good sign.

 

It just means is that your Plex Media Server is able to perform the transcode faster than is necessary."

 

 

So throttled in this case does not mean throttled as in every other PC use case for this term? That it is being held back for some reason, like thermal throttling for example.

 

So when I saw the throttling it wasn't that my CPU wasn't keeping up, it was that it wasn't really needed.

 

Anyone able to confirm this?

[Jarsky]

9 minutes ago, Dravinian said:

Are you saying that a 4c/4t CPU can handle more concurrent streams than a 12c/24t CPU?

 

Can you point me to anything that would verify this because that is hard to believe and I would like to do more reading.

 

That's exactly what im saying. 

As I said in my last post we've already gone over this in recent threads. 

 

Plex doesn't inherently use CPU power (for direct streams). 

Even media scanning doesn't use much power...if I drop my plex server to have 2 cores,it will still only use ~10% while scanning. 

 

What does require power is transcoding.

Audio transcoding is done by your CPU but has very low utilization.

Video transcoding can be hardware offloaded to the QuickSync enc/dec engine to do the work; this takes the work off the CPU. 

 

Here are some of the recent threads covering it, theres a lot of info in the one with @ChalkChalkson where we discuss GPU encoding. 

 

 

[Jarsky]

8 minutes ago, Dravinian said:

Oddly, just came across this snipper from a Plex forum thread:

 

 

So throttled in this case does not mean throttled as in every other PC use case for this term? That it is being held back for some reason, like thermal throttling for example.

 

So when I saw the throttling it wasn't that my CPU wasn't keeping up, it was that it wasn't really needed.

 

Anyone able to confirm this?

 

https://support.plex.tv/articles/203064726-if-a-transcode-is-throttled-is-that-bad/

 

Quote

If you see that a transcode is reported as “throttled”, that’s actually a positive indication. What that means is that your Plex Media Server is able to perform the transcode faster than is necessary. Once the transcode gets ahead, the Server is able to “throttle down” and take a short break before it needs to do another small chunk of transcoding.

 

[Dravinian]

8 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

 

That's exactly what im saying. 

As I said in my last post we've already gone over this in recent threads. 

 

Plex doesn't inherently use CPU power (for direct streams). 

Even media scanning doesn't use much power...if I drop my plex server to have 2 cores,it will still only use ~10% while scanning. 

 

What does require power is transcoding.

Audio transcoding is done by your CPU but has very low utilization.

Video transcoding can be hardware offloaded to the QuickSync enc/dec engine to do the work; this takes the work off the CPU. 

 

Here are some of the recent threads covering it, theres a lot of info in the one with @ChalkChalkson where we discuss GPU encoding. 

 

I will have a look through those.

However, the i7-4790k has QuickSync already, so if I turn on Hardware Acceleration (with a FlexPass), then there will be no need to upgrade to anything at all?

 

My only concern with the CPU was that there was a limited number of cores, 4, and that this would limit the concurrent streams available (as would the CPU Benchmark calculation of 2,000 pts per stream - with a CPU with just 8,000 pts total.

 

But if QuickSync can handle a lot more streams, then the CPU is just fine as it is?

[Jarsky]

10 minutes ago, Dravinian said:

I will have a look through those.

However, the i7-4790k has QuickSync already, so if I turn on Hardware Acceleration (with a FlexPass), then there will be no need to upgrade to anything at all?

 

My only concern with the CPU was that there was a limited number of cores, 4, and that this would limit the concurrent streams available (as would the CPU Benchmark calculation of 2,000 pts per stream - with a CPU with just 8,000 pts total.

 

But if QuickSync can handle a lot more streams, then the CPU is just fine as it is?

 

You should read that first thread I recommended. 

TL;DR the 4790K is an old CPU with an old version of the QuickSync engine. It performs far more poorly in quality (side by side, a CPU & GPU transcoded stream, you can see the difference), and it doesn't support any of the modern encoding/decoding for h265/hevc which is becoming widely used, and 4K content in general (if you care about 4K).

7th Gen - 9th Gen use the same QuickSync engine and GPU so theyre all the same and the best value in terms of hardware transcoding, with the 10th Gen now being the best (but the i3-10100 is ~$150) in quality and supporting VP9-10bit encoding. 

 

Just to add more detail to my answer, in order to do hardware transcoding you do require a Plex Pass (i tend to forget as I have a lifetime one). 

But hardware transcoding is really the way of doing Plex properly these days, CPU is the inefficient way. 

[ChalkChalkson]

6 hours ago, Dravinian said:

I looked at Plex and it seems to indicate you need a QNAP device to utilise Nvidia's NVENC encoding?

My unraid box is doing fine... And I'm 99% sure that Windows all Linux distros you can get drivers for and maybe even BSD based stuff can work. Relevant Plex Support Link

5 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Standalone Plex Server, its completely overkill.

Get an i3-9100 for $100 and it will destroy the Threadripper for Plex because of its hardware enc/dec support (QuickSync).

 

5 hours ago, Dravinian said:

Are you saying that a 4c/4t CPU can handle more concurrent streams than a 12c/24t CPU?

This is a weird way to frame it. Imagine CPU rendering a game of thread ripper and then being surprised that a pentium with a dedicated GPU can outperform it. Dedicated silicon is always king when available. The new QuickSync is just that (but on the CPU die). If you need 4k and/or multiple clients you might need a 10 series nvidia GPU though.

5 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Here are some of the recent threads covering it, theres a lot of info in the one with @ChalkChalkson where we discuss GPU encoding.

That thread was really helpful for me yeah. I hadn't fully grasped everything when I purchased, but Jarsky did one hell of a job explaning everything (you deserve a medal my friend - hopefully you struggle with thermal stuff one day so I can get even with you )

5 hours ago, Dravinian said:

However, the i7-4790k has QuickSync already, so if I turn on Hardware Acceleration (with a FlexPass), then there will be no need to upgrade to anything at all?

If you are only streaming 1080p that might actually be the case, but PlexPass + either 10th series GPU or CPU will feel like a huge upgrade

4 hours ago, Jarsky said:

You should read that first thread I recommended.

Also: what OS are you using @Dravinian? On some getting Plex to see your GPU is not trivial

[Aragorn-]

I've just gone down this route, and ended up with threadripper mostly due to PCIe lanes and the pricing isnt that bad at all.

i got a brand new 1900x for £140, which is cheaper than used 2700x's are selling for.

I got a used X399 board for £150, slightly more than a half decent AM4 board, but actually, to get the PCIe config i wanted, i was going to need a top end X570 board coming in close to £300.

One thing i hadnt quite considered was cooling. The 2700x would have been happy with the box cooler, but i ended up buying an AIO for the 1900x.

 

 

My reasoning, as a starting point i need a basic GPU to run the system (in my case an RX550) and a 16x slot for my LSI HBA. I also wanted the option of having a third PCIe 16x slot available for a GPU to accellerate Plex if required, and additionally the option of adding a faster NIC in future.

 

My system will boot from a pair of NVMe SSD's in RAID1

I will also run some VM's for other things, and the machine also hosts a Kodi instance for the main TV in the house.

 

Plus, its fun to play with such fancy hardware, and when its this cheap compared with the alternatives its almost rude not to!

[Dravinian]

 

2 hours ago, ChalkChalkson said:

My unraid box is doing fine... And I'm 99% sure that Windows all Linux distros you can get drivers for and maybe even BSD based stuff can work. Relevant Plex Support Link

 

This is a weird way to frame it. Imagine CPU rendering a game of thread ripper and then being surprised that a pentium with a dedicated GPU can outperform it. Dedicated silicon is always king when available. The new QuickSync is just that (but on the CPU die). If you need 4k and/or multiple clients you might need a 10 series nvidia GPU though.

That thread was really helpful for me yeah. I hadn't fully grasped everything when I purchased, but Jarsky did one hell of a job explaning everything (you deserve a medal my friend - hopefully you struggle with thermal stuff one day so I can get even with you )

If you are only streaming 1080p that might actually be the case, but PlexPass + either 10th series GPU or CPU will feel like a huge upgrade

Also: what OS are you using @Dravinian? On some getting Plex to see your GPU is not trivial

I looked at the support page, that was where i got this:

 

"In addition to regular hardware-accelerated streaming based on the NAS having a compatible Intel processor, some QNAP NAS devices also have PCIe slots. These can be used to add a compatible NVIDIA graphics card (GPU)."

 

But I didn't see anything else about it.

 

I am running FreeNAS, annoyingly, I checked a cheat sheet for GPUs, the 960 has H265, but the 970 doesn't...wtaf!

 

It does say that the card can do 13 streams at 1080p (10MBit) to 1080p (8MBit)...whatever the hell that means lol

 

So, can I get the GPU active on FreeNAS?

 

[ChalkChalkson]

1 hour ago, Dravinian said:

 

I looked at the support page, that was where i got this:

 

"In addition to regular hardware-accelerated streaming based on the NAS having a compatible Intel processor, some QNAP NAS devices also have PCIe slots. These can be used to add a compatible NVIDIA graphics card (GPU)."

 

But I didn't see anything else about it.

Read the parts on Linux, BSD and Windows - depending on your OS. A NAS is just a computer afterall

1 hour ago, Dravinian said:

I am running FreeNAS, annoyingly, I checked a cheat sheet for GPUs, the 960 has H265, but the 970 doesn't...wtaf!

 

It does say that the card can do 13 streams at 1080p (10MBit) to 1080p (8MBit)...whatever the hell that means lol

 h.265 adds significant image quality improvements and only the h.265 supporting cards support 4k. If you are watching DVDs or stream Blue Rays over a gigabit network you likely wont notice the difference. If you stream UHD rips or down convert to low bitrate (streaming remotely or over iffy wifi) you probably will.

But honestly, you can likely swap your 970 for a 1050 on ebay, maybe you need to pay 10 bucks or so...

1 hour ago, Dravinian said:

So, can I get the GPU active on FreeNAS?

FreeNAS is BSD if I recall correctly. The support page only lists a minimum media server version, so it probably works fine. Do you run Plex natively or in a Docker?

[Dravinian]

Just now, ChalkChalkson said:

Read the parts on Linux, BSD and Windows - depending on your OS. A NAS is just a computer afterall

 h.265 adds significant image quality improvements and only the h.265 supporting cards support 4k. If you are watching DVDs or stream Blue Rays over a gigabit network you likely wont notice the difference. If you stream UHD rips or down convert to low bitrate (streaming remotely or over iffy wifi) you probably will.

But honestly, you can likely swap your 970 for a 1050 on ebay, maybe you need to pay 10 bucks or so...

FreeNAS is BSD if I recall correctly. The support page only lists a minimum media server version, so it probably works fine. Do you run Plex natively or in a Docker?

I run it in a jail, if that is another term for a docker - might be specific to FreeNAS.

 

I have done a number of searches, and I cannot find any information that would indicate that FreeNAS is capable of utilising the GPU for any purpose, from what I can tell there is no GPU passthrough on FreeNAS although it might be something that will come with TrueNAS Scale...whatever that may be.

[ChalkChalkson]

17 minutes ago, Dravinian said:

I run it in a jail, if that is another term for a docker - might be specific to FreeNAS.

 

I have done a number of searches, and I cannot find any information that would indicate that FreeNAS is capable of utilising the GPU for any purpose, from what I can tell there is no GPU passthrough on FreeNAS although it might be something that will come with TrueNAS Scale...whatever that may be.

Here is a reddit thread going through it for quick sync (probably enough for a couple streams, not sure about 4k, but intels documentation says it should handle a 4k stream fine.

For dedicated GPUs I have no idea, if it doesnt work seamlessly, maybe the same steps as for quick sync work? Maybe you can run the plex server directly in the os? If you were on a windows or linux based solution I could talk you through it (main reason why I steered clear of FreeNAS is that BSD is even more nieche than Linux, getting good support can be tough)...

[Dravinian]

18 minutes ago, ChalkChalkson said:

Here is a reddit thread going through it for quick sync (probably enough for a couple streams, not sure about 4k, but intels documentation says it should handle a 4k stream fine.

For dedicated GPUs I have no idea, if it doesnt work seamlessly, maybe the same steps as for quick sync work? Maybe you can run the plex server directly in the os? If you were on a windows or linux based solution I could talk you through it (main reason why I steered clear of FreeNAS is that BSD is even more nieche than Linux, getting good support can be tough)...

Thanks, I found that hard to follow, but in my searching I did find this on GitHub

 

https://github.com/kern2011/Freenas-Quicksync

 

Which is about more my step by step, this is how you turn the PC on....type of guide.

[Dravinian]

2 minutes ago, Dravinian said:

Thanks, I found that hard to follow, but in my searching I did find this on GitHub

 

https://github.com/kern2011/Freenas-Quicksync

 

Which is about more my step by step, this is how you turn the PC on....type of guide.

Unfortunately, someone is actually watching something at the moment and as much fun as it is cutting it off when there is just 15 minutes left on the movie they are watching, I could do without the whining right now...will let you know if that works.

[Jarsky]

5 hours ago, Dravinian said:

I am running FreeNAS, annoyingly, I checked a cheat sheet for GPUs, the 960 has H265, but the 970 doesn't...wtaf!

That's because the 960 is a later generation GPU...it was released near the end of the maxwell cycle, and just at the start of the release of 4K. 

It doesn't really support all the "4K" requirements so it'd be quite hit and miss the hardware transcoding, minimum Nvidia card i'd get is a GTX1050, or else go Intel 7th Gen+ with QuickSync. 

 

As for FreeNAS, it has hardware QuickSync support since 11.2-U4 for jails & VM (bhyve) passthrough, but basically you need FreeNAS 12 or higher

 

3 hours ago, Dravinian said:

I run it in a jail, if that is another term for a docker - might be specific to FreeNAS.

FreeNAS jails aren't Docker, theyre iocage

 

 

I was under the impression from your OP that you were building a dedicated Plex server, didn't realise you were using FreeNAS.

Dont think they have nvenc/nvdec (nvidia) support yet...Hardware transcoding is still a pain to get working in FreeBSD probably due to the lack of interest.

I don't use FreeNAS really in any meaningful way so not sure where their GPU passthrough is at to be able to run an Nvidia GPU in a VM.  

[Dravinian]

34 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

That's because the 960 is a later generation GPU...it was released near the end of the maxwell cycle, and just at the start of the release of 4K. 

It doesn't really support all the "4K" requirements so it'd be quite hit and miss the hardware transcoding, minimum Nvidia card i'd get is a GTX1050, or else go Intel 7th Gen+ with QuickSync. 

 

As for FreeNAS, it has hardware QuickSync support since 11.2-U4 for jails & VM (bhyve) passthrough, but basically you need FreeNAS 12 or higher

 

FreeNAS jails aren't Docker, theyre iocage

 

 

I was under the impression from your OP that you were building a dedicated Plex server, didn't realise you were using FreeNAS.

Dont think they have nvenc/nvdec (nvidia) support yet...Hardware transcoding is still a pain to get working in FreeBSD probably due to the lack of interest.

I don't use FreeNAS really in any meaningful way so not sure where their GPU passthrough is at to be able to run an Nvidia GPU in a VM.  

FreeNAS doesn't support nvidia transcoding at all.

 

The intel quick sync is doable, I have spent the last 3 hours researching it...and I am close...one bit off at the moment, hoping to fix it tomorrow when I put a head on the server and can get into bios and make sure the igpu is actually turned on.

[SupaKomputa]

try emby rather than plex

https://emby.media/

[Dravinian]

5 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

try emby rather than plex

https://emby.media/

If it was just me, I would, but this involves a few people and getting them all to download and install another program to work, with their TVs, laptops, etc. is a bit of a pain to be honest.

 

Spent 3 hours last night trying to get hardware acceleration working, then in a moment of genius realised, having GPUs plugged into the MB probably disabled iGPU....took them out this morning, and whilst I have not tested got it working yet, as I think I messed it around a LOT last night, I now have the components in place for it to work...dri / drm are showing up in FreeNAS and Plex Jail, hw acceleration is turned on in Plex Pass.

 

I think I need to go through the guide again and make sure that in my messing about I didn't accidentially negate a step or mess up a step (by turning my Jail to devfs 110 instead of 10) or that the DRM 5 bug isn't operating to mess me about.

[ChalkChalkson]

4 hours ago, Dravinian said:

If it was just me, I would, but this involves a few people and getting them all to download and install another program to work, with their TVs, laptops, etc. is a bit of a pain to be honest.

I mean if you are willing to switch around software on your end, on windows and linux the process is pretty seemless. For example on unraid you can have a plex server running in a couple minutes.

4 hours ago, Dravinian said:

Spent 3 hours last night trying to get hardware acceleration working, then in a moment of genius realised, having GPUs plugged into the MB probably disabled iGPU....took them out this morning, and whilst I have not tested got it working yet, as I think I messed it around a LOT last night, I now have the components in place for it to work...dri / drm are showing up in FreeNAS and Plex Jail, hw acceleration is turned on in Plex Pass.

Having a GPU plugged in shouldn't deactivate the IGPU

[Dravinian]

3 hours ago, ChalkChalkson said:

I mean if you are willing to switch around software on your end, on windows and linux the process is pretty seemless. For example on unraid you can have a plex server running in a couple minutes.

Having a GPU plugged in shouldn't deactivate the IGPU

I think it does on consumer motherboards...this isn't a modern laptop that will switch between igpu and dedicated for power and it isn't a server mb.

I say that because unplugging it turned on the igpu...

[ChalkChalkson]

3 hours ago, Dravinian said:

I think it does on consumer motherboards...this isn't a modern laptop that will switch between igpu and dedicated for power and it isn't a server mb.

I say that because unplugging it turned on the igpu...

I mean my old nas ran on a consumer mobo and I had the igpu running a gui and a dedicated gpu passed through to a vm

 

[Dravinian]

29 minutes ago, ChalkChalkson said:

I mean my old nas ran on a consumer mobo and I had the igpu running a gui and a dedicated gpu passed through to a vm

 

I think you can set it up in the bios, but on an 'auto' level if you install a GPU then I think it just replaces the iGPU or at the very least, unplugging it auto sets the bios to 'enable'.

 

I dunno, just glad I didn't ahve to lug the server or a monitor around as it is headless so having it automatically start saved me doing physical exercise and at the end of the day, isn't that all that matters?