CPU for Plex Server

[Stoigeboiii]

I have an Unraid server with a Ryzen 1700 (non x) in it. I was building it as a theoretical what if, to see if I could get Plex working and be able to have my whole house watching it. The only thing is that potentially 7 people could be watching it at one time. I think it'd only be 5 different computers viewing but not sure if it can handle it. I haven't setup my parity drive yet and I know that it also requires a lot of CPU power. I was wondering if I need to upgrade the CPU to make sure that there are no slowdowns. The server has gigabit but I'm not sure if that's also a limiter for 5 devices. I have currently 2 7200rpm drives but I will add more probably 2 not including parity, and a cache drive. 

 

What do I need to do to be prepared for 5 people watching at the same time? 

Quality would be 1080p for 3 of them and maybe 4K (HDR if possible) for 2 of them. 

[Guest]

I have a 1700 Pro in my Plex server and have 6 people streaming 1080P and 2-3 streaming UHD (sometimes HDR) and haven't had issues.

[Jarsky]

If theyre direct streams, thats plenty of power...typically its only audio that will get transcoded on modern devices. 

CPU should be able to handle those users just fine for transcoding except that 4K might hurt. Since its a Ryzen 1700 you must have a GPU...you could offload transcoding to the GPU by enabling hardware encoding. 

[Stoigeboiii]

7 hours ago, Jarsky said:

If theyre direct streams, thats plenty of power...typically its only audio that will get transcoded on modern devices. 

CPU should be able to handle those users just fine for transcoding except that 4K might hurt. Since its a Ryzen 1700 you must have a GPU...you could offload transcoding to the GPU by enabling hardware encoding. 

I'm using unraid and plex in a docket. I don't know if its possible to use a GPU to help when its in a docker.

[Jarsky]

11 hours ago, Stoigeboiii said:

I'm using unraid and plex in a docket. I don't know if its possible to use a GPU to help when its in a docker.

You can pass a GPU through to Plex dockers. Theres plenty of info on how to do this in UnRAID. If you have an Nvidia GPU, simply form the Community Apps store install the LinuxServer.io Unraid Plex plugin,and then upgrade your UnRAID to the Nvidia version. 

 

 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

A ryzen 1700 will handle 7 1080p H265 full transcodes no problem.

 

My old i7-4790k will do 8 streams.  I'm running Plex inside a FreeNAS jail so its all CPU transcoding.

 

In house, its likely that the video will direct stream which should drop your CPU requirement tremendously. 

 

Proof is in the pudding.

 

[Salacious B Crum]

my unRAID I7 6700 can handle that no problem you should be fine as long as you don't hammer it with 4K transcodes