Ah that’s unfortunate. And just curious, is this something you found while testing yourself and/or is it documented by Plex as a known issue?
Two other quick questions –
I’ve had no issues with 19.04 on my IdeaPad 330. You shouldn’t be using WiFi for your server anyway, but I can confirm that both the WiFi and the trackpad work fine.
Those presets are for background conversions only, leave them at default along with the other transcoder settings.
Love this idea. Was just thinking about buying a P2000, but this seems like a much better (and cheaper) route. I was hoping to find a pre-build 1U or 2U rack option in the sub $200 range… Essentially the HP290 but rack mountable.
Possible? And if so, any recommendations?
The G1820 is Haswell (4th-gen), which is too old IMO.
You’re not going to find much in the way of pre-built rackmount options for this - you’d have a better time buying a 2U Rosewill case and building your own.
Which would still be way more expensive than buying a rackable shelf and putting a HP 290 on it sideways.
Just grabbed a HP 290.
Can I utilize Ubuntu server 18.04.3 for this to work?
Also, can I keep Plex running via Docker? Or do I need to do a full install?
You need 19.04 desktop for it to work out of the box. If you deviate from that, you’re on your own. I haven’t seen anyone successfully use 18.04.
got it.
Is there a google spreadsheet or chart that breaks down iGPU “model”, transcoding performance, power usage, price, etc anywhere? Like the ones in the other build guides.
I’m a little late to the party, but I’m about to jump into a NAS and QuickSync PMS.
this 'is what I think you are asking for in general
https://www.serverbuilds.net/cpu-comparison/
This is a very nice write-up, and I can see this being super useful for anyone building a small/medium sized Plex server. But for anyone who needs a larger core count (You need the Xeon E series to even get 8cores/16 threads and they aren’t cheap), NVDEC is really the only option one has. AIO home servers are becoming more and more popular as they are so much more manageable than having multiple hosts. I myself used to run a 4-node vSAN cluster at home, now just a single AIO server gets the job done while freeing up my time (what little of it I have with a 1 year old running around). But I need a high core count for VMs.
But I digress. The point is NVDEC on a cheap consumer card is very effective for anyone building a larger core count all-in-server. I use a GTX 1660 for the Turing encoder. And it only uses roughly 20-30w when under heavy trancoding load.
You can get coffee lake i9 cpu’s that have 8c/16t and are lower cost than their Xeon counterparts. Coffee lake i7 are 8c/8t and are even lower cost. I have a large UNRAID 16c/32t 256GB RAM box and currently running plex in a container. Currently building a HP 290 ($120) [Official] HP 290-p0043w Owner's Thread that comes with a coffee lake dual core 3.2ghz celeron that can encode/decode 21 1080p streams at a very low power draw. I am going to move my plex server to this box and connect via 10G to my UNRAID box for media access. This will allow me to move this currently inefficient CPU bound process off of my unraid box and potentially either move to a more efficient unraid box or use those cores for other tasks.
The i9’s are not really any cheaper than than the Xeon E-2x00 series chips. Also, you’re stuck with dual channel memory and only 16 PCIe lanes. Sure this is all fine if all you need is a simple Plex/storage server and nothing else. But for those of us running VMs (especially with passed through GPUs) and/or want lots of fast storage (NVMe’s), then a desktop series CPU is just not going to cut it. As I said, that works fine for a lot of people who either need just a basic storage server or want to run their services across multiple pieces of hardware. For those who want one high performance all-in-one storage/VM/Media server, a more server level CPU with more cores, memory channels, and PCIe lanes are necessary.
@KC8FLB I also currently run my server on Unraid. I’m running an EPYC 7302p CPU and use a GTX 1660 to do all my transcoding. It can handle 20 1080p transcodes with the latest Turing encoder and rarly uses more than 20-40w even under heavy load.
So I have the following hardware that I will inevitably replace in due time:
Currently I have Plex in a Docker on my Unraid box that is on a E3-1230v2 and a very convenient motherboard for unraid.
Would it be worth at all to transition either the desktop/laptop to offload Plex in the future when I do upgrade them, or just sell them off and get a P2000 or its future equivalent?
Have you considered the HP 290 instead? It’s much cheaper than a P2000.
I think this has 6th gen quicksync, but you could probably sell it for more than an HP290 (with 8th gen quicksync) and use that as JDM suggested.
Hmm is there a rack mountable alternative? Or I guess it’s small enough to just get a rack shelf for…
Would you say the HP290 is better than just taking the GTX 1080 and putting it in a current Unraid setup for HW transcoding?
Absolutely.
Thanks for the guide! I’ve been using it to much success, but I wanted to convert (optimize) my 4K files for those folks who don’t have the ability to direct stream it. I was going to use the Plex optimize function, but it says “Converted files cannot be written to the server’s disk”.
I’m mounting the directory using the following command:
192.168.1.15:/mnt/user/plex_version /mnt/plex_version nfs defaults,noatime 0 0
Do I need to use a special tag to make it read/write in fstab?
Thanks!
Regardless of your current inability to write to the share, transcoding 4K will strip HDR and cause it to tone map incorrectly. It looks quite awful. It’s better to obtain 1080p content and not share 4K.
Your network share permissions issue is likely unraid based.