Minimum requirements for a 4k plex server?

[CerberusFlame99]

Im looking to build a Plex media server/NAS for as cheap as possible that will be used to stream 4K content. What is the cheapest I can go? (PS Im not ashamed of using a janky solution like an old dell optiplex with an external drive enclosure connected)

[unijab]

Maybe reading this might help: https://forums.plex.tv/t/best-server-for-4k-transcoding/215608

[TotallyLegitimateandSafe]

linux server 1 cpu 4gb ram - fast network/bandwidth with a 10gb card is not required, but useful.
The current setup I have installed is just a simple raid 5 with 100tb of garbage tier storage.  Just use whatever old junk you have laying around and setup damn small linux on it.

[CerberusFlame99]

2 minutes ago, TotallyLegitimateandSafe said:

linux server 1 cpu 4gb ram - fast network/bandwidth with a 10gb card is not required, but useful.
The current setup I have installed is just a simple raid 5 with 100tb of garbage tier storage.  Just use whatever old junk you have laying around and setup damn small linux on it.

Can you transcode 4K footage on it? Im about to buy a 4K tv so I wanted to be able to watch 4K content on it and I cant see the TV being able to transcode it locally at a reasonable quality... you think an old gtx 660 would be useful if I just used it as a HW transcoder?

[TotallyLegitimateandSafe]

Transcoding...  any AM3+ cpu should be fine.  Run an AMD FX chip and you shouldn't need any pci gpu.

 

just load up plex server on your current machine - load up performance monitor or whatever you have and look at your gpu usage while transcoding a 4k video to your phone on plex.  It uses little to nothing.  Run your tests on your current machine(what I did) and take your idle and then run a 4k to your box from it.  Subtract new timings/performance headers from your idle and you have the minimum specs for a linux box(save 256mb for damn small linux and 5mb for plex server).

 

EDIT: something I ran into, had to look it back up.  While running linux is great you may need to tweak.  Browse the forum for things like this: 
 

• In order to support hardware transcoding on Linux, you'll need to add the PMS user to the "video" group. You can do this by running usermod -aG video plexmediaserver as root, substituting "plexmediaserver" for the name of the Plex user on your system. Future versions will handle this automatically on install or upgrade.

 

Just one thing, if you wanna do it all on that machine, just know what your getting into.  Also - I use a static external that I link to so I can easily watch videos on my phone or tablet while on trains or planes with free WiFi.  Works - okay.

[Razor Blade]

Transcoding 4k in Plex (at least in my experience) requires crazy high CPU specs. My current NAS can eek out a 10k passmark score and still buffers pretty bad transcoding 4k. A much more cost effective way to be to use the optimize feature of Plex to transcode your media ahead of time to something like 1080 or 720 so you don't get buffering when you want to watch.

 

Oh and if you're watching the video locally you can select "original" quality so Plex won't need to transcode it.

[CerberusFlame99]

So basically this ? 

[CerberusFlame99]

2 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

Transcoding 4k in Plex (at least in my experience) requires crazy high CPU specs. My current NAS can eek out a 10k passmark score and still buffers pretty bad transcoding 4k. A much more cost effective way to be to use the optimize feature of Plex to transcode your media ahead of time to something like 1080 or 720 so you don't get buffering when you want to watch.

Doesnt that kind of defeat the purpose of having a 4K tv though?

[Razor Blade]

Just now, CerberusFlame99 said:

Doesnt that kind of defeat the purpose of having a 4K tv though?

You can still watch the original file format on your 4K TV. It would be transcoding on the fly that your NAS will have trouble with unless it has the CPU capability.

[CerberusFlame99]

12 hours ago, Razor Blade said:

You can still watch the original file format on your 4K TV. It would be transcoding on the fly that your NAS will have trouble with unless it has the CPU capability.

Oh okay. But would any computer be able to transcode 4K video into lets say 1080p or 720p?

[Razor Blade]

29 minutes ago, CerberusFlame99 said:

Oh okay. But would any computer be able to transcode 4K video into lets say 1080p or 720p?

Pretty much any computer can transcode video. The problem happens when you have really high bitrate video and trying to transcode it on the fly on a CPU that can't keep up that demand which can lead to buffering sadness...

 

Personally I don't have a lot of 4K video so it didn't make sense to use power hungry CPUs in a 24/7 NAS just for the rare occasion I would need to transcode 4K video. Instead I just use the optimize function in Plex to transcode it ahead of time. The only difference is I can select a lower bitrate to play on my phone or tablet without my NAS having to transcode it on the fly. I still can play that original 4K video anytime I want. Like I said the only downside to using optimize is that you take up a bit more space since you're storing more than one version of the video.

 

But if you want a killer CPU that will transcode 4K video on the fly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But IMO more hard drive space is going to be cheaper than buying an expensive CPU just for that one function.

[CerberusFlame99]

1 minute ago, Razor Blade said:

Pretty much any computer can transcode video. The problem happens when you have really high bitrate video and trying to transcode it on the fly on a CPU that can't keep up that demand which can lead to buffering sadness...

 

Personally I don't have a lot of 4K video so it didn't make sense to use power hungry CPUs in a 24/7 NAS just for the rare occasion I would need to transcode 4K video. Instead I just use the optimize function in Plex to transcode it ahead of time. The only difference is I can select a lower bitrate to play on my phone or tablet without my NAS having to transcode it on the fly. I still can play that original 4K video anytime I want. Like I said the only downside to using optimize is that you take up a bit more space since you're storing more than one version of the video.

 

But if you want a killer CPU that will transcode 4K video on the fly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But IMO more hard drive space is going to be cheaper than buying an expensive CPU...

Oh okay. I get what youre saying. So basically just stock up on 4 or 6 TB HDDs then

[Jarsky]

Depends on your configuration and how you're playing the content. If you want to to transcode a 4K source file in real-time, you might want to look at a 7th Generation Intel i3 or later. You can get away with an i3 7100 (or the 8th gen equivalent) leveraging the IntelHD 630 iGPU on Windows. Not sure about Linux though (GPU and iGPU support can be different development between the OS platforms).  

[jkirkcaldy]

Everyone always talks about transcoding 4k, That just seems so insane to me. Until Plex can transcode 4k > 4k there is no point in transcoding it. you would be better off with two separate files. And if the idea of that puts you off because it will use too much storage space, you shouldn't be looking at a 4k server, those files can reach 100gb per 2 hour film in some cases. 

 

Because as it stands, as soon as plex transcodes a 4k file (which is usually HDR) it will downscale it to 1080 and you lose the HDR. So I would look at whether your client can direct stream. If it can't it doesn't matter how powerful your system is it will look like crap.

A 1080p remux will look 100 times better than any 4k transcode.