Plex hardware transcode performance

federicosergio · September 8, 2017

Hi everybody

I have a few questions about Plex, and its (in)ability to leverage dedicated hardware encoders/decoders.

As of now, I have my media library on a couple of WD network drives (I know it's a crappy solution, but that how it is), and I'm using my desktop as Plex Server.

I mainly stream to Chromecast (the old version, not the Ultra one), a Samsung smart tv and Android phones and tablets.

For space saving, many of my videos are encoded in h.265, even if most of my devices struggle or straight don't support HEVC playback: that's why I'm interested in transcoding performance.

From what I read online, hardware transcoding is still an Alpha feature of Plex, and it only works with Intel iGpus that support QuickSync, am I correct?

Does it work well enough, or software transcoding is still 100% preferable?

I ask because I want to buy a dedicated machine to use as Plex server, and I was thinking about a NUC/Mini pc, but I don't have much to spend.

I was specifically looking into Atom x5-Z8350 based mini pcs, since they're really inexpensive.

According to this: What kind of CPU do I need for my Server? its Passmark score is way too low to handle software transcoding, but it should have QuickSync support, as well as hardware h.264/h.265 decoding and h.264 encoding.

Considering that we're talking about 720p/1080p files with fairly average bitrate, and only one stream at a time, could the Atom do the job? Or I have to save for an i3 box?