Plex Hardware Acceleration

Frank_The_Rock · March 20, 2023

I run a Plex Server, a Homeassistant On VM an a few thing like that on my windows server. Its on a i9-10900K 32 gig of ram, Os on M.2 and hdd for contents. I have a nvidia 3060 I could add to the server, would it be useful to help the system ? I was mostly encoding my media in H264 before. But I started to use 4k H265 more, and some family member start to see transcode issue... I will try to replicate the issue not been ableto be there when it happen. But as I have the hardware available, would they work well togheter ? I have a plex pass so Hardware acceleration is available...

Thanks for your insignt!

DrMacintosh · March 21, 2023

Having a dedicated GPU (assuming you have Plex Pass) like a 3060 would significantly improve your servers ability to transcode video in real time.

Jarsky · March 21, 2023

You can use the HD graphics on your 10900K to do this.

If Plex is in a VM, in your BIOS you can generally enable IOMMU and then your Intel UHD graphics should be in its own VGA Controller group which you can assign to the VM.

If you're using Plex in a Docker, then you can also passthrough the Graphics to the docker container

Lurick · March 21, 2023

If Plex is in a Linux VM then you can use this to help as well:

Frank_The_Rock · March 23, 2023

Thanks to you guys @DrMacintosh @Jarsky @Lurick

I had read in the past that the CPU alione is enough to do many transcode but since I have the card wanted to be sure they wont fight and still play nice. An also help not just sit preaty lol

thanks !