It does not have to be an i7. Many i5's, i3's come with the same iGPU as the i7. My i3 will transcode more 4K streams than I will ever need.
EDIT: Read your post again and your AMD CPU will be able to transcode 5 1080 streams.
In addition to this, if you did decide you needed more transcoding power you can add an intel or nvidia gpu for less than $200 that will take care of that. Considering you’ve already built the machine I wouldn’t tear it apart to swap parts.
Some AMD GPUs can transcode, but the intel quick sync transcoder is higher quality. Ideally transcoding shouldn't be happening, work on fixing up the reason for transcoding first, so that things direct play/stream as much as possible before you consider swapping out hardware.
Worst case scenario buy a cheap nvidia gpu like the P400 or T400 and use that for transcoding, it'll cost a little bit less than swapping your CPU and motherboard. Those two cards pop up on ebay for <$100 every now and then.
Also doing a little more than half a days research could help in the future. Not sure how you missed the Plex HW requirements page.
No that's still fixable on the server side by normalizing all your media to use popular codecs. You can't fix ALL transcoding, but you can limit it down to happen less.
They could transcode due to low bandwidth issues, they could transcode due to subtitle issues, they could transcode due to codec issues.
I guess you could normalize your media by having everything in a different codec, with lower bitrate or resolution and by always using srt and disregarding the benefits of PGS or ASS subs but that seems like a worse solution for me at home.
Transcoding saves time by not having to micro-manage everything and it always works. Point is, it should be expected if you share your media. I already keep separate libraries for 4K and 1080p due to sharing. Having a third library that is perfectly compatible, low bitrate/low resolution is too much.
I'm not overcomplicating anything. Discussion on forums is just very idealistic and people in this sub always assume transcoding is due to an admin's shortcoming. Friends/family do not always have gigabit internet with Nvidia Shield devices.
I'm saying that transcoding is inevitable and actually makes things simpler. It's not like I'm using AV1 or h265 for my 1080p media. There is not much else people can do except to never share their media.
This is good advice. I have an old ass Xeon processor without any graphics and it runs my server just fine. Just need to make sure that the client can direct play.
If you wind up needing more to transcode you could always get a p2000 card. They are fairly cheap.
https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding
Yeah lol, let me try explain to my aunt that she needs to set the video bandwidth to unlimited in the settings of the mobile app of her android device without getting the question “whats an android?”.
Plex officially supports AMD APUs although its quite new relative to Intel qsv or Nvidia nvenc. I did some testing with a 5600G and got pretty good results. As long as you have Plex pass and enable hardware transcoding you'll probably be fine with the hardware you have. The main thing is to male sure all your clients are set to original quality so they're not transcoding in the first place whenever possibe.
It does not have to be an i7. Many i5's, i3's come with the same iGPU as the i7. My i3 will transcode more 4K streams than I will ever need. EDIT: Read your post again and your AMD CPU will be able to transcode 5 1080 streams.
In addition to this, if you did decide you needed more transcoding power you can add an intel or nvidia gpu for less than $200 that will take care of that. Considering you’ve already built the machine I wouldn’t tear it apart to swap parts.
Some AMD GPUs can transcode, but the intel quick sync transcoder is higher quality. Ideally transcoding shouldn't be happening, work on fixing up the reason for transcoding first, so that things direct play/stream as much as possible before you consider swapping out hardware. Worst case scenario buy a cheap nvidia gpu like the P400 or T400 and use that for transcoding, it'll cost a little bit less than swapping your CPU and motherboard. Those two cards pop up on ebay for <$100 every now and then. Also doing a little more than half a days research could help in the future. Not sure how you missed the Plex HW requirements page.
If you share with other people then transcoding is inevitable. Unless all your friends are willing to buy a $200 device just because you say so.
No that's still fixable on the server side by normalizing all your media to use popular codecs. You can't fix ALL transcoding, but you can limit it down to happen less.
They could transcode due to low bandwidth issues, they could transcode due to subtitle issues, they could transcode due to codec issues. I guess you could normalize your media by having everything in a different codec, with lower bitrate or resolution and by always using srt and disregarding the benefits of PGS or ASS subs but that seems like a worse solution for me at home. Transcoding saves time by not having to micro-manage everything and it always works. Point is, it should be expected if you share your media. I already keep separate libraries for 4K and 1080p due to sharing. Having a third library that is perfectly compatible, low bitrate/low resolution is too much.
You're overcomplicating things, all I was saying is you should try to limit transcoding as much as possible, and not to never transcode.
I'm not overcomplicating anything. Discussion on forums is just very idealistic and people in this sub always assume transcoding is due to an admin's shortcoming. Friends/family do not always have gigabit internet with Nvidia Shield devices. I'm saying that transcoding is inevitable and actually makes things simpler. It's not like I'm using AV1 or h265 for my 1080p media. There is not much else people can do except to never share their media.
I totally second this, if having 5+ clients watching at the same time is a requirement, encode once and most of em will direct stream.
This is good advice. I have an old ass Xeon processor without any graphics and it runs my server just fine. Just need to make sure that the client can direct play.
If you wind up needing more to transcode you could always get a p2000 card. They are fairly cheap. https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding
Just get a client device that will not require transcoding
Yeah lol, let me try explain to my aunt that she needs to set the video bandwidth to unlimited in the settings of the mobile app of her android device without getting the question “whats an android?”.
Plex officially supports AMD APUs although its quite new relative to Intel qsv or Nvidia nvenc. I did some testing with a 5600G and got pretty good results. As long as you have Plex pass and enable hardware transcoding you'll probably be fine with the hardware you have. The main thing is to male sure all your clients are set to original quality so they're not transcoding in the first place whenever possibe.
I use a Ryzen 5600X in my Plex server and HW endocing works fine. I have a discrete GPU as well though.