GPU for Plex Server

[JacobsPhotography]

Hello all, I am looking to upgrade my Synology NAS to a real PC with a GPU for better transcoding.  I am not very familiar on how the hardware in the GPU related to plex but I am curious about the new intel graphic cards and I have heard they have excellent transcoding and encoding hardware.  I am curious if this would be a good low cost option for a current card when they are all released, or if I am missing the mark all together and I should look into something else all together. 

Thanks all!

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, JacobsPhotography said:

Hello all, I am looking to upgrade my Synology NAS to a real PC with a GPU for better transcoding.  I am not very familiar on how the hardware in the GPU related to plex but I am curious about the new intel graphic cards and I have heard they have excellent transcoding and encoding hardware.  I am curious if this would be a good low cost option for a current card when they are all released, or if I am missing the mark all together and I should look into something else all together. 

Thanks all!

Honestly, any desktop class CPU will transcode plenty fine for Plex. 
 

I used to run my homelab on a i3 6100, and I only gave my Plex VM access to half of the 4 threads. With that it was easily able to do multiple 1080p to 720p transcodes. I wouldn’t even waste the money on the GPU or the electricity to power it, whatever CPU you go with for the NAS will likely be plenty fast enough. 
 

Also, a good thing to remember, when your on your LAN, shouldn’t need to transcode at all as you would rather just direct play content. Transcoding should really only be needed when streaming over the internet. 

[TrueTaylor]

On 8/12/2022 at 6:44 PM, LIGISTX said:

Also, a good thing to remember, when your on your LAN, shouldn’t need to transcode at all as you would rather just direct play content. Transcoding should really only be needed when streaming over the internet. 

How about when transcoding from h265 to h264 for endpoint devices that don't support h265? I have a bunch of old firesticks that can't do h265 direct play locally. Instead of replacing all my media consumption points I would rather just have a GPU capable of transcoding the streams. 

 

Is this logic flawed? Input would be appreciated.

[LIGISTX]

9 hours ago, TrueTaylor said:

How about when transcoding from h265 to h264 for endpoint devices that don't support h265? I have a bunch of old firesticks that can't do h265 direct play locally. Instead of replacing all my media consumption points I would rather just have a GPU capable of transcoding the streams. 

 

Is this logic flawed? Input would be appreciated.

I have never tried to encode from 265 to 264 I don't think, so I am not fully sure if you would need a GPU for it. Only 265 stuff I have I believe is 4k, and transcoding that is just horrible. 

 

This is a look at trying to transcode h265 to h264, but it is 4k to 1080p which is not easy...

 

 

It is struggling to keep up, and this is with 6 threads of my Xeon (which arguably are not really all that fast compared to a more modern chip...) original bitrate of this was 4k 265 @ ~28,000 kbps. But again, transcoding from 4k down is just "dumb". If it was just 265 1080p to 264 anything 1080p or less I'm sure it wouldn't be an issue at all, I just don't have anything to really test with myself.