Best CPU for Plex...?

[Lukman4]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking into setting up a new home server but I'm not sure the best route to take on which CPU to buy that is the most efficient, is capable of running everything I need, and will keep the power bill low.

I need my home server to run unRaid with the ZFS plugin, Home assistant, PhotoPrism within Docker, PiHole, NextCloud, WireGuard, test OS' like MAC OS and Linux but they wouldn't be always on, and Plex with Radarr, Sonarr, etc. For Plex I would need it to run one 4K stream and maybe 1 - 2 remote 1080p streams concurrently.

I was thinking of getting a CPU with integrated graphics since I think it would help with power efficiency when there isn't also a GPU pulling power. I was looking into T series Intel CPU's and AMD integrated graphics CPU's. Power efficiency is very important and so is making sure everything runs smoothly.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id look at truenas scale as it handles ZFS management much better than unraid, and has similar abilities to run vms and containers.

 

Id get something like a i3 12100 or a i5 12400. iGPUs are very good for encoding, and there low power. Id skip the t skus and other low power skus, as they idle at about the same power and y ou can always lower the tdp on the normal parfs if needed.

[OddOod]

The only thing I'm a *bit* wary of here is those VMs. They may want a few cores a pop. But you can upgrade if you need the extra grunt.

[Blue4130]

2 minutes ago, OddOod said:

The only thing I'm a *bit* wary of here is those VMs. They may want a few cores a pop. But you can upgrade if you need the extra grunt.

Overprovisioning would be fine for this workload. None of those VM's are really demanding to require their own cores.

[Lukman4]

59 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id look at truenas scale as it handles ZFS management much better than unraid, and has similar abilities to run vms and containers.

 

Id get something like a i3 12100 or a i5 12400. iGPUs are very good for encoding, and there low power. Id skip the t skus and other low power skus, as they idle at about the same power and y ou can always lower the tdp on the normal parfs if needed.

Truenas scale may be better for ZFS but I love how easy to use Unraid is and how user friendly everything is as well as all of the different plug ins. I would really only want to use ZFS for NextCloud and PhotoPrism if possible.

 

I heard that 12th gen Intel CPU's and Quicksync though are not yet fully supported with Plex hardware encoding and are buggy. Though that 10th gen Intel iGPU run best with Plex, does this still remain true?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Lukman4 said:

Truenas scale may be better for ZFS but I love how easy to use Unraid is and how user friendly everything is as well as all of the different plug ins. I would really only want to use ZFS for NextCloud and PhotoPrism if possible.

 

I heard that 12th gen Intel CPU's and Quicksync though are not yet fully supported with Plex hardware encoding and are buggy. Though that 10th gen Intel iGPU run best with Plex, does this still remain true?

 

How would you use zfs just for a few containers? I don't see the point of that. Id just use the normal unraid array for everything here as I don't see the point of ZFS here.

 

 

[Lukman4]

22 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How would you use zfs just for a few containers? I don't see the point of that. Id just use the normal unraid array for everything here as I don't see the point of ZFS here.

 

 

Well ZFS would help let's say if a file accidentally got deleted on my NextCloud or PhotoPrism. If there's another way to set something similar up, that would be great! Some sort of file history.

[Electronics Wizardy]

17 minutes ago, Lukman4 said:

Well ZFS would help let's say if a file accidentally got deleted on my NextCloud or PhotoPrism. If there's another way to set something similar up, that would be great! Some sort of file history.

Nextcloud has a trash can like function built in, so you don't have to use the filesystem for this. 

 

You can also use btrfs that is support in unraid for snapshotting.

[Lukman4]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Nextcloud has a trash can like function built in, so you don't have to use the filesystem for this. 

 

You can also use btrfs that is support in unraid for snapshotting.

That could work! I apologize, this is my first time setting up an Unraid server. Is their a way to schedule snapshots too?

[Electronics Wizardy]

51 minutes ago, Lukman4 said:

That could work! I apologize, this is my first time setting up an Unraid server. Is their a way to schedule snapshots too?

I don't know if its built in to unrid, but there should be scripts or its easy to make scrips for this.

[Lukman4]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I don't know if its built in to unrid, but there should be scripts or its easy to make scrips for this.

Got it!

 

What about the CPU for my build? I heard that 12th gen Intel CPU's and Quicksync though are not yet fully supported with Plex hardware encoding and are buggy. Though that 10th gen Intel iGPU run best with Plex, does this still remain true?