4K Plex Server Hardware Requirements

[Jon Jon]

This should be a fun one, and informative for the future.

 

I am considering doing a fresh new build come tax season, and I am thinking of going threadripper for my new platform.

 

However, I still have this little engine that could machine that I don't want to just toss in the garbage.

 

I do plan to turn this into a Plex server. As I already use it to serve up data today, I want to be able to do 4K tomorrow.

 

I think the hardware is overkill, but I would love to talk about what is really required.

 

I will probably down clock my Core i5 3570 back to stock (3.4ghz), keep the 12GB DDR3 1600 memory in here, and probably keep Windows 10 on it along with Plex Server installed, and just turn the whole drive into a file share with local credential requirements to keep it securish.

 

I will leave my 120mm AIO on this thing, and just have a single 140MM fan in the front to help push air over my HDDs that will be in here to keep it both quiet and sufficiently cooled.

 

However, serving up and transcoding 4K is a totally different beast.

 

I wonder if it has the CPU to handle, or if quick-sync will technically be able to help serve that up if needed.

 

Today, I backup my Blurays 1:1 into MKVs, but with the move to 4K, those will be massive as well.

 

What are your thoughts on this, and what the actual requirements are?

 

Thanks!

[Lurick]

Just some general info, if I remember right, a passmark of somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 is suggested per 4K transcode stream, the i5 gets roughly a 7K passmark score so you could probably get away with transcoding and playing two streams at once. I think quick-sync can help but not sure how much. So depending on the requirements and number of streams at once, it should be perfectly suitable for the job  

[Jon Jon]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Just some general info, if I remember right, a passmark of somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 is suggested per 4K transcode stream, the i5 gets roughly a 7K passmark score so you could probably get away with transcoding and playing two streams at once. I think quick-sync can help but not sure how much. So depending on the requirements and number of streams at once, it should be perfectly suitable for the job  

Interesting....

 

If that logic holds, then I imagine people could get away with a Kaby Lake i3 and run it with a silent cooler as well.

 

TBH, I am more concerned with temps from my HDDs than anything else.

 

EDIT:

 

I found this thread over on Plex's forums regarding this as well:

 

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/209432/transcoding-4k-requirements

 

They discuss the actual Passmark score requirement depending on the bitrate!

Edited August 7, 2017 by Jon Jon
Additional Detail

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, Jon Jon said:

-snip-

That makes sense. Better quality and whatnot would require more power, just crazy to think of a stream needing a 16,000 passmark score, that's a beast of a CPU right there.

I've got a Dell R620 dedicated to streaming with dual E5-2640s and I've never gone above 50% utilization with multiple streams but I don't stream at native 4K bitrates  

[billythekid247]

I'm still trying to figure out if I want to re-purpose my 3570k system as a Plex server, or build a new one with a Kaby Lake i3 so I can use it to stream 4K netflix as well. The only 4k blu ray drive for PC would be nice, but the price is still a little to sleep. This should be an interesting thread.

 

Edit: On a more detailed look 4k blu ray drives are a little over a hundred dollars, not bad at all.

Edited August 7, 2017 by billythekid247

[Sir Asvald]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

That makes sense. Better quality and whatnot would require more power, just crazy to think of a stream needing a 16,000 passmark score, that's a beast of a CPU right there.

I've got a Dell R620 dedicated to streaming with dual E5-2640s and I've never gone above 50% utilization with multiple streams but I don't stream at native 4K bitrates  

How quite is the R620? What config does it have? 

[Jon Jon]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

That makes sense. Better quality and whatnot would require more power, just crazy to think of a stream needing a 16,000 passmark score, that's a beast of a CPU right there.

I've got a Dell R620 dedicated to streaming with dual E5-2640s and I've never gone above 50% utilization with multiple streams but I don't stream at native 4K bitrates  

I am looking deeper, as I would imagine Plex would allow you to offload the transcoding to a dedicated video card, if needed.

 

Kaby Lake, with its iGPU having native H.265 and HVEC support, may prove to be a better candidate.

 

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, Abdul201588 said:

How quite is the R620? What config does it have? 

WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!!!!

haha, kidding.

I have that, a bunch of networking equipment, and an R610 (the older brother to the 620), and I cannot hear them with my closet door closed at night when I go to sleep. It spins up a bit noisy under 100% load but that's why I've got two, to spread the load  

It's got dual E5-2640s and a ton of RAM I got from work  

 

 

1 minute ago, Jon Jon said:

I am looking deeper, as I would imagine Plex would allow you to offload the transcoding to a dedicated video card, if needed.

 

Kaby Lake, with its iGPU having native H.265 and HVEC support, may prove to be a better candidate.

 

Yah, I'd be curious to see what benefits offloading to the iGPU would have. I think Plex recently-ish announced GPU based offloading? Or maybe I just never looked and they've had it for a while.

[Jon Jon]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

-snip-

I found this great Reddit post from a few days ago.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/6rf9v0/plex_server_build_recommendation_470_16core_32/

 

I am reading through it now.

[newgeneral10]

Idk how you feel about changing media servers, but Emby definitely does support QuickSync, Nvidia NVENC, OpenMax OMX, and VA API.  AFAIK, Plex only supports Intel CPU encoding

[Jon Jon]

1 hour ago, newgeneral10 said:

Idk how you feel about changing media servers, but Emby definitely does support QuickSync, Nvidia NVENC, OpenMax OMX, and VA API.  AFAIK, Plex only supports Intel CPU encoding

So that is beneficial, since if it supports Quick Sync, then that implies that Kaby Lake should be able to natively transcode 4K video that are using the new codecs (HVEC and H.265).

 

Digging deeper into the Plex forums, there are guys there that are basically serving up to TONS of devices all at once, with old re-certified, multi-CPU XEON builds, and that just isn't necessary for someone like me that will serve up maybe 1 or 2 streams at a time.

 

I am thinking an i3 Kaby Lake is plenty for this task, and an i7-7700K being the higher end alternative to serving multiple streams in the home, with Quick Sync enabled.

 

Remember that transcoding isn't necessary unless the device doesn't support the original file format, or if you are looking to compress. For me, it's a matter of serving it up, but in the event that, say, I had ripped a 4K bluray, and I needed to be able to transcode to H.264 1080P for a non-4K streaming device in the house, I imagine that could handle the job using Quick Sync.

 

What do you guys think?

[newgeneral10]

1 hour ago, Jon Jon said:

I had ripped a 4K bluray, and I needed to be able to transcode to H.264 1080P for a non-4K streaming device in the house, I imagine that could handle the job using Quick Sync.

 

What do you guys think?

For one or two devices, that should be fine.

[jarreddean]

Let me know how you go. I'm currently doing tests on my ryzen 1700 and 4k 1x transcoding makes it sit at 80%. to non 4k supported devices. Also if you get the chance when you do get your threadripper could you do some tests of 4k transcoding.  Thanks for the info.

 

[AshleyAshes]

I don't transcode or use plex, I use Kodi to directly access media off SMB shares, however since my main HTPC is a 3770K (Overclocked to 4.2ghz) with HD 7950 it has no HEVC hardware decoding function so it brute forces it with software decoding on the CPU.  Let me tell you, just DECODING 4K HEVC, especially 10 bit and espeeeecially 60hz uses most of the CPU.  Even 24hz content is like 50%.  Worse, my other HTPC with a stick 4590... It can't even decode every 4K HEVC file I have cause the CPU comes up just a bit short.

 

Without a working hardware decoding function, you'd need a MEAN piece of hardware to handle multiple transcoding jobs from that kind of content.

[jarreddean]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I don't transcode or use plex, I use Kodi to directly access media off SMB shares, however since my main HTPC is a 3770K (Overclocked to 4.2ghz) with HD 7950 it has no HEVC hardware decoding function so it brute forces it with software decoding on the CPU.  Let me tell you, just DECODING 4K HEVC, especially 10 bit and espeeeecially 60hz uses most of the CPU.  Even 24hz content is like 50%.  Worse, my other HTPC with a stick 4590... It can't even decode every 4K HEVC file I have cause the CPU comes up just a bit short.

 

Without a working hardware decoding function, you'd need a MEAN piece of hardware to handle multiple transcoding jobs from that kind of content.

I was thinking a threadripper build for that reason, however i'm hoping someone does some 4k streaming tests so i know it will handle it well. 

[Jon Jon]

11 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

I don't transcode or use plex, I use Kodi to directly access media off SMB shares, however since my main HTPC is a 3770K (Overclocked to 4.2ghz) with HD 7950 it has no HEVC hardware decoding function so it brute forces it with software decoding on the CPU.  Let me tell you, just DECODING 4K HEVC, especially 10 bit and espeeeecially 60hz uses most of the CPU.  Even 24hz content is like 50%.  Worse, my other HTPC with a stick 4590... It can't even decode every 4K HEVC file I have cause the CPU comes up just a bit short.

 

Without a working hardware decoding function, you'd need a MEAN piece of hardware to handle multiple transcoding jobs from that kind of content.

When reading Plex's forums, a lot of the major builds they are doing is with re-certified high core count Xeons.

 

Also, awesome job using Kodi.

 

That's pretty nuts to hear that for sure!

 

[Jon Jon]

11 hours ago, jarreddean said:

I was thinking a threadripper build for that reason, however i'm hoping someone does some 4k streaming tests so i know it will handle it well. 

I am sure a Threadripper build would be able to handle that well.

 

That would be an actual workload it is designed for.

 

Especially with the 64 PCI-E lanes, you could have multiple GPUs running in parallel specifically for helping crunch that job, if Plex would only begin to support that.

 

However, that's a lot of money to spend, when they seem to recommend used Xeon builds.

 

Sure, they may not be as powerful as Threadripper, but when you can get a build like that together for $500-$1000 in comparison and it handles the job well, then good enough.

 

I am interested for sure.

 

Does anybody here have a Plex server doing massive workloads currently?

[jarreddean]

1 hour ago, Jon Jon said:

I am sure a Threadripper build would be able to handle that well.

 

That would be an actual workload it is designed for.

 

Especially with the 64 PCI-E lanes, you could have multiple GPUs running in parallel specifically for helping crunch that job, if Plex would only begin to support that.

 

However, that's a lot of money to spend, when they seem to recommend used Xeon builds.

 

Sure, they may not be as powerful as Threadripper, but when you can get a build like that together for $500-$1000 in comparison and it handles the job well, then good enough.

 

I am interested for sure.

 

Does anybody here have a Plex server doing massive workloads currently?

Only problem with old server stuff is basically the costs of the power consumption, Noise levels  I'd rather have a new system that runs well and can be upgraded easily. Hope LTT does a video on transcoding streamed footage they have the HW to do it easily.

[Jon Jon]

1 minute ago, jarreddean said:

Only problem with old server stuff is basically the costs of the power consumption, Noise levels  I'd rather have a new system that runs well and can be upgraded easily. Hope LTT does a video on transcoding streamed footage they have the HW to do it easily.

That's very true.

 

I am confident a TR4 build with a decent AIO with no overclock will probably run silent.

 

Just slap a lower end GPU (GTX 1050ti maybe) and you've got a low power 16C/32T workhorse for sure.

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Jon Jon said:

When reading Plex's forums, a lot of the major builds they are doing is with re-certified high core count Xeons.

 

Also, awesome job using Kodi.

 

That's pretty nuts to hear that for sure!

 

It's both an HTPC and a Steam machine, so the 3770K isn't put to waste, it runs games on a 4K TV too.

[Jon Jon]

6 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

It's both an HTPC and a Steam machine, so the 3770K isn't put to waste, it runs games on a 4K TV too.

That's pretty solid.

 

Wait, can the HD 7000 series output 4K 60hz? I was under the impression they could not.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Jon Jon said:

That's pretty solid.

 

Wait, can the HD 7000 series output 4K 60hz? I was under the impression they could not.

The HD 7950's HDMI port is limited to HDMI 1.4a, that's 4K at 30hz yes.   Buuuuut, it's DisplayPort 1.2 port has no problem with 4K@60.   I'm just using a DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter and I have no problem getting 4K@60 RGB for my 4K TV.

[Jon Jon]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

The HD 7950's HDMI port is limited to HDMI 1.4a, that's 4K at 30hz yes.   Buuuuut, it's DisplayPort 1.2 port has no problem with 4K@60.   I'm just using a DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter and I have no problem getting 4K@60 RGB for my 4K TV.

That's pretty sharp! I would not have thought to do that lol.

 

How is the CPU use otherwise? I am hoping my i5 can keep up without the additional threads.

[AshleyAshes]

20 minutes ago, Jon Jon said:

That's pretty sharp! I would not have thought to do that lol.

 

How is the CPU use otherwise? I am hoping my i5 can keep up without the additional threads.

For an i5, I can't quite say.  The OCed 3770K barely gets the job done in the case of HEVC 10bit 60hz content and the other HTPC, using an i5 4590 comes up short with some cases.  Even with The Smurfs 2, an direct Remux of the UHD BD video, the i5 4590 is barely able to keep up (Though it does seem to) and that's 24hz not 60hz.

However there are factors to considder.  FFMPEG being in constant development can see progressive improvements in how efficiently it decodes content.  Kodi requires a 64bit build to do adequate 4K HEVC decoding at all and the Windows x64 build of Kodi isn't even in 'Alpha' status really, it's just in nightlies, so it could be improved.  Kodi currently has no real support for HDR and Rec2020 so it can't even properly playback the colors or integrate with the OS/hardware's HDR output functions yet.  There's a ways to go there.

Basically all of my HEVC 4k content is 'samples' built for demo/stress test purposes except one UHD BD rips, so it's hard to say what most 4K video content will all really be like once I have a 'practical' need.  We'll see what happens in the next year.

[paddy-stone]

58 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

For an i5, I can't quite say.  The OCed 3770K barely gets the job done in the case of HEVC 10bit 60hz content and the other HTPC, using an i5 4590 comes up short with some cases.  Even with The Smurfs 2, an direct Remux of the UHD BD video, the i5 4590 is barely able to keep up (Though it does seem to) and that's 24hz not 60hz.

However there are factors to considder.  FFMPEG being in constant development can see progressive improvements in how efficiently it decodes content.  Kodi requires a 64bit build to do adequate 4K HEVC decoding at all and the Windows x64 build of Kodi isn't even in 'Alpha' status really, it's just in nightlies, so it could be improved.  Kodi currently has no real support for HDR and Rec2020 so it can't even properly playback the colors or integrate with the OS/hardware's HDR output functions yet.  There's a ways to go there.

Basically all of my HEVC 4k content is 'samples' built for demo/stress test purposes except one UHD BD rips, so it's hard to say what most 4K video content will all really be like once I have a 'practical' need.  We'll see what happens in the next year.

An nvidia shield tv makes short work of decoding 4K HEVC, that's the best value I would say at the moment for HTPC usage... anything newer with hardware HEVC decoding is much more effecient.