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4K Plex Server Hardware Requirements

Jon Jon
Just now, paddy-stone said:

An nvidia shield tv makes short work of decoding 4K HEVC, that's the best value I would say at the moment for HTPC usage... anything newer with hardware HEVC decoding is much more effecient.

But that doesn't play GTA5. :P

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1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

For an i5, I can't quite say.  The OCed 3770K barely gets the job done in the case of HEVC 10bit 60hz content and the other HTPC, using an i5 4590 comes up short with some cases.  Even with The Smurfs 2, an direct Remux of the UHD BD video, the i5 4590 is barely able to keep up (Though it does seem to) and that's 24hz not 60hz.

However there are factors to considder.  FFMPEG being in constant development can see progressive improvements in how efficiently it decodes content.  Kodi requires a 64bit build to do adequate 4K HEVC decoding at all and the Windows x64 build of Kodi isn't even in 'Alpha' status really, it's just in nightlies, so it could be improved.  Kodi currently has no real support for HDR and Rec2020 so it can't even properly playback the colors or integrate with the OS/hardware's HDR output functions yet.  There's a ways to go there.

Basically all of my HEVC 4k content is 'samples' built for demo/stress test purposes except one UHD BD rips, so it's hard to say what most 4K video content will all really be like once I have a 'practical' need.  We'll see what happens in the next year. :)

We will see for sure!

 

Thank you for the awesome post, by the way. That was really informative :)

 

I know HDR on PC is pretty much in its infancy, that's for sure.

 

I am thinking, as those technologies develop, and we get so GPGPU processing tossed into the mix, a simple video card upgrade that can be offloaded to it that can handle this natively would do the trick. That way, the CPU is just serving up the content and offloading the hard stuff to the video card.

 

That's how I envision it for sure. Toss in some quick sync support with Kaby Lake and up, and you wouldn't even need a dedicated GPU to do it.

Desktop:

AMD Ryzen 7 @ 3.9ghz 1.35v w/ Noctua NH-D15 SE AM4 Edition

ASUS STRIX X370-F GAMING Motherboard

ASUS STRIX Radeon RX 5700XT

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4 3200

Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVME

2x4TB Seagate Barracuda HDDs

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Oculus Rift CV1 w/ 3 Sensors + Earphones

 

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Acer Nitro 5:

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Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4 2666

Geforce GTX 1050ti 4GB

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Seagate Firecuda 2TB SSHD

Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Jon Jon said:

I am thinking, as those technologies develop, and we get so GPGPU processing tossed into the mix, a simple video card upgrade that can be offloaded to it that can handle this natively would do the trick. That way, the CPU is just serving up the content and offloading the hard stuff to the video card.

 

That's how I envision it for sure. Toss in some quick sync support with Kaby Lake and up, and you wouldn't even need a dedicated GPU to do it.

Maybe, but I minimize how many 'new' components go into my my HTPCs.  The primary goal is to hand-me-down components as they're retired from my workstation.  This also means it'll be a while till GPUs with HEVC decoding trickle down to them, infact the next GPU set to be hand-me-downed is an R9 390X, again, no HEVC decoding.

 

But I'll also be doing some interesting 'juggling' once my i7 4930k workstation is retired likely a year from now.  Since the main living room HTPC will get that 6 core thing.

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phenom ii x4 at 3,2Ghz can do a single 4k 20Mb/s real time encoding. Thats from experience. The footage encoded was bigger than 4K.

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I'm able to transcode at least 2 streams of 4k to 1080p 20mpbs on a plex virtual machine running on 8 threads (out of 12 total) of an old Xeon L5640. That processor has a Passmark score of 5461. 

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20 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

phenom ii x4 at 3,2Ghz can do a single 4k 20Mb/s real time encoding. Thats from experience. The footage encoded was bigger than 4K.

What kind of 4K?  I've seen a lot of people talk about '4K' without understanding that it is just a resolution.  4K h.264 or 4K HEVC?  There are MASSIVELY different computational demands between decoding the two.  Even within a single format, you can have features that are enabled or disabled to make it more or less complicated.

 

This is even why these video formats have feature/spec specific tiers, levels, and profiles.  It's to fix certain features and such within a video stream to be compatible with certian decoding capbilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding_tiers_and_levels

 

Just speaking broadly, 10bit HEVC is more demanding than 8bbit.  How many frames per second?  60hz requires 60 frames to be decoded in a single second where as 24hz requires only 24 frames. (This is obvious, I know)   But simply put, the more frames per second, the more decoding must be done in the same amount of time and thus the heavier the demand.

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5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

What kind of 4K?  I've seen a lot of people talk about '4K' without understanding that it is just a resolution.  4K h.264 or 4K HEVC?  There are MASSIVELY different computational demands between decoding the two.  Even within a single format, you can have features that are enabled or disabled to make it more or less complicated.

 

This is even why these video formats have feature/spec specific tiers, levels, and profiles.  It's to fix certain features and such within a video stream to be compatible with certian decoding capbilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding_tiers_and_levels

 

Just speaking broadly, 10bit HEVC is more demanding than 8bbit.  How many frames per second?  60hz requires 60 frames to be decoded in a single second where as 24hz requires only 24 frames. (This is obvious, I know)   But simply put, the more frames per second, the more decoding must be done in the same amount of time and thus the heavier the demand.

30 fps h.264. Images from a dslr put into a video larger than 4k. It takes a lot of cpu power just to play it that you need a quard core iseries cpu just to be able to play it

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Just now, System Error Message said:

30 fps h.264. Images from a dslr put into a video larger than 4k. It takes a lot of cpu power just to play it that you need a quard core iseries cpu just to be able to play it

Yeah, h.264 is pretty easy peasy 4K to decode on a huge range of CPUs where as HEVC is kinda a different animal and much more demanding.

 

And THIS is why you can't use '4K' as a blanket definition, especially when discussing processing needs for trans coding.

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3 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

But that doesn't play GTA5. :P

hahahha, yeah I guess there is that aspect. For the price that a shield TV is though IMO it makes sense to have separate uses. I had a media PC for a long time, and still have a few NAS boxes etc, but for no hassle 4k video playing shield TV is the winner. As it's native 4k, there is very little load on my NAS, even my older NAS can stream 4k 70GB+ files no problem. I like plex for some uses, but sometimes it can be more hassle than it's worth when it comes to resolution etc problems, I actually just said what the hell, and bought some cheap-ish 4k android boxes for the rest of the house too, total cost was like $150 or so, and now all the TVs in the house can stream from the NAS without needing transcoding. I have very few 4k rips anyway, but just to save myself hassle when someone couldn't get a movie to play etc. The boxes aren't infalible, they do have the android/kodi bug where 25/50fps videos can look like they are juddering when panning across... but I don't actually have many of those, and a workaround instead of playing with the settings again in kodi is to use a different player, my TVs internal player/app is actually pretty good even on 480p to 4k upscaled content it doesn't look too bad.

 

Spent too many years playing around with settings all the time, so now I just rip in the most used resolution and format for general usage, so everyone has access even on phones/pads... and 4K versions too for those excellent comic book movies/sci-fi/action movies that really stand-out in 4k :D

 

[edit] sorry I mean 4K HEVC encoded mostly, but those boxes have hardware decoding for H.265/HEVC and H.264... everything in my house with the exception of a few phones maybe, should decode almost anything. I haven't had a problem since anyway. My newest Server/NAS can double up for HTPC usage if needed too, shouldn't have a problem though.

 

Please quote my post, or put @paddy-stone if you want me to respond to you.

Spoiler
  • PCs:- 
  • Main PC build  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/2K6Q7X
  • ASUS x53e  - i7 2670QM / Sony BD writer x8 / Win 10, Elemetary OS, Ubuntu/ Samsung 830 SSD
  • Lenovo G50 - 8Gb RAM - Samsung 860 Evo 250GB SSD - DVD writer
  •  
  • Displays:-
  • Philips 55 OLED 754 model
  • Panasonic 55" 4k TV
  • LG 29" Ultrawide
  • Philips 24" 1080p monitor as backup
  •  
  • Storage/NAS/Servers:-
  • ESXI/test build  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/4wyR9G
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  •  
  • Gaming/Tablets etc:-
  • Xbox One S 500GB + 2TB HDD
  • PS4
  • Nvidia Shield TV
  • Xiaomi/Pocafone F2 pro 8GB/256GB
  • Xiaomi Redmi Note 4

 

  • Unused Hardware currently :-
  • 4670K MSI mobo 16GB ram
  • i7 6700K  b250 mobo
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  • Zotac GTX 1050 mini

 

 

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2 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Yeah, h.264 is pretty easy peasy 4K to decode on a huge range of CPUs where as HEVC is kinda a different animal and much more demanding.

 

And THIS is why you can't use '4K' as a blanket definition, especially when discussing processing needs for trans coding.

a transcode that uses almost all of 4 cores of a mainstream i7? Im saying the video is taxing to play. Its easier to reencode but playback takes a lot of effort. Both the IGP and CPU gets stressed a lot more.

 

If you need you can always get an epyc. 8 channel ram for your ram needs, 64 pcie lane for multiple 10G NICs and SSDs, 32 CPU cores, itd do multiple hevc 10 bit 4k on plex :P

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