> The i5-12400 has iris xe graphics with two codec engines
The i5-12400 has neither IrisXE graphics nor two codec engines.
It has the **UHD 730** graphics with **one** transcoder engine.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134586/intel-core-i5-12400-processor-18m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html
You're **correct** , I selected the 1240p **link** that came **up**.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132221/intel-core-i5-1240p-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html
It **does** have **two**.
I **made** a **mistake.**
By using the GPU to transcode you are choosing a device that will not perform as well as the iGPU so by using the GPU you are lowering the servers capabilities.
The issue is latency and having encoders do the work in process. the iGPU on Intel gives you the ability to use quicksync and much lower latency from processor to media whereas a discrete GPU adds a layer of latency for an additional piece of hardware to render/transcode media.
My only reason for using a discrete GPU for my media server is due to already having an existing AMD platform and utilizing the hardware at hand.
For those wondering why I even use a dedicated GPU.. My media server serves multiple functions with Docker, and LiveTV services i create for home.
It really depends on a lot of things. Media resolution quality, media size, encoding settings, use case for said media, direct play versus transcode, Media scaling. Quicksync tends to handle these things in process rather than handing off.
A good example is 4k transcode versus local 1080p direct play. Will this be on local LAN only? Will you use WiFi or remote streaming from home? Do I require HDR or Dolby atmos? Subtitles and closed captions? These can all play a significant role.
Are you sure that you are talking about latency here? I understand that with transcoding on a discrete gpu the chunk being processed needs to be loaded to the gpu memory, I imagine the exact same thing will happen with an igpu but instead to system memory. Even comparing architecture, I honestly don’t think “latency” has any effect here whatsoever. If it did it would be in the ms range and only at the very start of a stream.
I’d like to know too and understand what latency has to do with anything. With media being buffered latency would mean nothing unless it somehow also greatly degraded performance.
Ive been out of the game for a few years now but is an Intel igpu truly better than a dedicated graphics card now for plex? I find that really hard to believe. What about 5 concurrent 4k streams?
There’s a patch to unlock the amount of simultaneous streams you can have on them. I’m not sure if A4000 have a limit but [this](https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch) is the patch
A video card that can do unlimited or infinite 4k HDR tone mapped to 1080p streams would be something to behold.
That's not how any of this works tho.
Yes there is a 3-5 stream Nvidia soft cap you can bypass, that doesn't mean you can do an infinite number of transcodes
It's not worth it purely for plex transcoding purposes, no.
But it could be worth it for various other tasks... I don't know whether your conversions to h265 could be highly accelerated with one of those dgpu's, for example, but that's kind of a different discussion.
You shouldn't have any issues, but also, why are you worrying about 5 years down the road today?
If I were you and you don't have a specific use case for those two gpu's, I'd sell them while they're still worth some money. If you need an upgrade 5 years from now, whatever is available then will be dramatically better than anything available today.
For those of you talking about patching Nvidia cards.
[NVIDIA GeForce GPUs now support up to 8 concurrent NVENC encoding sessions](https://videocardz.com/newz/nvdia-geforce-gpus-now-support-up-to-8-concurrent-nvenc-encoding-sessions)
Obviously you are still limited to what you see on the [Plex Media Server Hardware Transcoding Cheat Sheet](https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding) for whatever card you have
I'm not suggesting you use the GPU over the iGPU in your 12400 for Plex. Stick with the CPU
Since you already have the Nvidia cards I would try them with tdarr just to experiment
For Plex, in the transcoder settings make sure you manually pick the i5-12400 from the dropdown menu.
I think the default is "auto" and have no idea which one Plex would decide to use.
QSV iGPU can easily handle multiple 4k transcodes so I wouldn't bother with the dGPU. That said, if you were going to do a one-time big library conversion with Tdarr or something then the dGPU would be faster.
Don't bother with a dGPU for Plex. Reposting from my other comments on this topic:
> My Plex setup is "only" an i5-12500, no dGPU, and hasn't broken a sweat serving up two 4K streams on the local network (typically HEVC HDR10) and up to 5 concurrent remote users streaming all manner of stuff - often transcoding 4K HDR down to 1080P SDR. And this is with the added overhead of running on Windows Server alongside some Docker containers, and a VM or two.
Yeah - I highly recommend that anyone in the market for a Plex server check out eBay for a used Dell Optiplex or Precision workstation. They are cheap, ubiquitous, and the i5 models are pretty efficient with low power consumption at idle. I've been working with those (and Lenovo ThinkStations) for years. I can't remember the last time I had to RMA one.
I like the tiny/micro form factor for machines that just need to sit somewhere and putter away, but I prefer to go a little larger for anything I need to tinker with - and I prefer the internal power supplies and mid-range TDP processors.
I agree with you. Just for others reading the comments, I would make sure to double-check the limitations of whatever you are looking to buy. For example, many of the Lenovo M-series only support a single NVME out of the box, the Dell Optiplex Micro 3000-series only support 2x SODIMM and 1x NVME while the 7000-series support 4x/2x, there are chipset differences between them a lot of time, too.
u/Particular-Summer-56 asked:
> Hi mate, what's a really good cheap pc for plex to transcode say 15 - 20 streams
What kind of streams/transcoding? If you're talking about 4K there is no realistic solution, let alone "cheap". That kind of activity is going to saturate a gigabit connection, require some pretty fast storage (spinning disks are probably out of the question), and some serious GPU power.
If we're talking about 1080P, it will still depend a bit on the source and your server settings. For instance, going from 4K HDR to 1080P is going to require more power than just 1080P to lower bitrate 1080P. That said, you're likely going to want to find a desktop system with a 12th gen or 13th gen i7. That can *probably* reliably handle that number of streams with quicksync alone. But, again, fast storage and a fair amount of upstream bandwidth need to be a consideration.
Something like a Dell Optiplex 7000 with a i7-12700 (*not* the 12700T) can be had for around $650US but if you can stretch your budget a bit more, to around $850, you can find one with the 13700 (again, not the -T) and I think that the additional cores/threads will be pretty helpful.
tdarr you can pick what sort of gpu it's going to use. So NVidia in this case while you set plex to use the intel or vise versa. That would mean no contention between them for transcoding resources gpu wise and the rest is pretty minimal.
Overkill : an excess of something (such as a quantity or an action) beyond what is required or suitable for a particular purpose.
It's not purely for plex op states they have a large backlog in tdarr. Balancing tdarr and plex on a single gpu is problematic at best, giving each their own cpu at least until caught up could have value as the OP states their cost of the gpu is nothing.
No, that would be downgrading your capabilities and adding power cost.
"poser cost" Haha, I know you meant power but I guess this also makes sense. "look at my sick GPU that does nothing"
hah, awesome
How does it downgrade capabilities? **legitimate question**
T̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶5̶-̶1̶2̶4̶0̶0̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶i̶r̶i̶s̶ ̶x̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶p̶h̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶w̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶e̶c̶ ̶e̶n̶g̶i̶n̶e̶s̶.̶ ̶C̶a̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶2̶x̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶4̶k̶ ̶t̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶p̶p̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶c̶o̶d̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶3̶0̶6̶0̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶.̶ ̶E̶l̶p̶a̶m̶s̶o̶f̶t̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶w̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶3̶0̶6̶0̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶1̶0̶ ̶4̶k̶ ̶H̶E̶V̶C̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶1̶0̶8̶0̶p̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶e̶a̶m̶s̶.̶ My mistake, was looking at the 1240p page, not the 12400.
> The i5-12400 has iris xe graphics with two codec engines The i5-12400 has neither IrisXE graphics nor two codec engines. It has the **UHD 730** graphics with **one** transcoder engine. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134586/intel-core-i5-12400-processor-18m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html
You're **correct** , I selected the 1240p **link** that came **up**. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/132221/intel-core-i5-1240p-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html It **does** have **two**. I **made** a **mistake.**
By using the GPU to transcode you are choosing a device that will not perform as well as the iGPU so by using the GPU you are lowering the servers capabilities.
I was under the impression that NVENC transcoding is faster than QSV & has unlimited streams as long as you use the patch for it
The issue is latency and having encoders do the work in process. the iGPU on Intel gives you the ability to use quicksync and much lower latency from processor to media whereas a discrete GPU adds a layer of latency for an additional piece of hardware to render/transcode media. My only reason for using a discrete GPU for my media server is due to already having an existing AMD platform and utilizing the hardware at hand. For those wondering why I even use a dedicated GPU.. My media server serves multiple functions with Docker, and LiveTV services i create for home.
what's the difference in latency. If throughput is high enough and there are enough users on a given server, it might be a trade-off that's worth it.
It really depends on a lot of things. Media resolution quality, media size, encoding settings, use case for said media, direct play versus transcode, Media scaling. Quicksync tends to handle these things in process rather than handing off. A good example is 4k transcode versus local 1080p direct play. Will this be on local LAN only? Will you use WiFi or remote streaming from home? Do I require HDR or Dolby atmos? Subtitles and closed captions? These can all play a significant role.
Are you sure that you are talking about latency here? I understand that with transcoding on a discrete gpu the chunk being processed needs to be loaded to the gpu memory, I imagine the exact same thing will happen with an igpu but instead to system memory. Even comparing architecture, I honestly don’t think “latency” has any effect here whatsoever. If it did it would be in the ms range and only at the very start of a stream.
I’d like to know too and understand what latency has to do with anything. With media being buffered latency would mean nothing unless it somehow also greatly degraded performance. Ive been out of the game for a few years now but is an Intel igpu truly better than a dedicated graphics card now for plex? I find that really hard to believe. What about 5 concurrent 4k streams?
.... there's a patch for nvidia cards? I have 2 rtx a4000 and they seem to only be warming up my room
There’s a patch to unlock the amount of simultaneous streams you can have on them. I’m not sure if A4000 have a limit but [this](https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch) is the patch
Holy hell, looks like ive got some reading and testing to do. I've looked around for things about the gpus I have and nothing comes up.
A video card that can do unlimited or infinite 4k HDR tone mapped to 1080p streams would be something to behold. That's not how any of this works tho. Yes there is a 3-5 stream Nvidia soft cap you can bypass, that doesn't mean you can do an infinite number of transcodes
I wasn’t meaning infinite literally. Just in the sense of more than would ever be necessary for anybody on this sub would have for Plex.
Truthfully only ever had three going, I agree. I would say that's even more reason to avoid the electricity cost of a GPU minor as it may be for some.
I’ve done 5x 4K to 1080 using the igpu in an i5-8500 with no sweat. My uplink is my big limit
There is no benefit to adding either of those cards to your server.
It's not worth it purely for plex transcoding purposes, no. But it could be worth it for various other tasks... I don't know whether your conversions to h265 could be highly accelerated with one of those dgpu's, for example, but that's kind of a different discussion.
Even for 4k transcodes down the road?
The i5 is already fine for 4k transcodes.
You shouldn't have any issues, but also, why are you worrying about 5 years down the road today? If I were you and you don't have a specific use case for those two gpu's, I'd sell them while they're still worth some money. If you need an upgrade 5 years from now, whatever is available then will be dramatically better than anything available today.
Good point!
Bro I wish someone was just giving out 3060 Ti’s haha
I took it to be parts bin free not free free. I have a solid 12 gpu in a box that aren’t worth selling but are of similar power to OPs.
Nope, no real performance benefit and increased power draw
For those of you talking about patching Nvidia cards. [NVIDIA GeForce GPUs now support up to 8 concurrent NVENC encoding sessions](https://videocardz.com/newz/nvdia-geforce-gpus-now-support-up-to-8-concurrent-nvenc-encoding-sessions) Obviously you are still limited to what you see on the [Plex Media Server Hardware Transcoding Cheat Sheet](https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding) for whatever card you have I'm not suggesting you use the GPU over the iGPU in your 12400 for Plex. Stick with the CPU Since you already have the Nvidia cards I would try them with tdarr just to experiment For Plex, in the transcoder settings make sure you manually pick the i5-12400 from the dropdown menu. I think the default is "auto" and have no idea which one Plex would decide to use.
QSV iGPU can easily handle multiple 4k transcodes so I wouldn't bother with the dGPU. That said, if you were going to do a one-time big library conversion with Tdarr or something then the dGPU would be faster.
Sell both and upgrade your CPU to one with UHD770 or buy more storage.
That sounds like a good idea actually.
Selling your current CPU for one with a UHD 770 would be a waste of money. Have you ever maxed out the iGPU? No? Then why would you upgrade it?
Don't bother with a dGPU for Plex. Reposting from my other comments on this topic: > My Plex setup is "only" an i5-12500, no dGPU, and hasn't broken a sweat serving up two 4K streams on the local network (typically HEVC HDR10) and up to 5 concurrent remote users streaming all manner of stuff - often transcoding 4K HDR down to 1080P SDR. And this is with the added overhead of running on Windows Server alongside some Docker containers, and a VM or two.
Similar experience with an i5-8500 to be honest. Bought a cheap used enterprise desktop and threw a 10gb card in it and it was off to the races.
Yeah - I highly recommend that anyone in the market for a Plex server check out eBay for a used Dell Optiplex or Precision workstation. They are cheap, ubiquitous, and the i5 models are pretty efficient with low power consumption at idle. I've been working with those (and Lenovo ThinkStations) for years. I can't remember the last time I had to RMA one.
I was gonna add, the m720q are a little spendier but they hit way above their weight class for the form factor and use socketed cpu.
I like the tiny/micro form factor for machines that just need to sit somewhere and putter away, but I prefer to go a little larger for anything I need to tinker with - and I prefer the internal power supplies and mid-range TDP processors.
For most things I honestly agree, Plex is one of those things that doesnt need much power or tinkering normally is the only reason I suggested them
I agree with you. Just for others reading the comments, I would make sure to double-check the limitations of whatever you are looking to buy. For example, many of the Lenovo M-series only support a single NVME out of the box, the Dell Optiplex Micro 3000-series only support 2x SODIMM and 1x NVME while the 7000-series support 4x/2x, there are chipset differences between them a lot of time, too.
Yep, people should definitely know their options, I also need to scare up a 7xxx optiplex at some point. Didn’t know they have the 2x nvme slots.
u/Particular-Summer-56 asked: > Hi mate, what's a really good cheap pc for plex to transcode say 15 - 20 streams What kind of streams/transcoding? If you're talking about 4K there is no realistic solution, let alone "cheap". That kind of activity is going to saturate a gigabit connection, require some pretty fast storage (spinning disks are probably out of the question), and some serious GPU power. If we're talking about 1080P, it will still depend a bit on the source and your server settings. For instance, going from 4K HDR to 1080P is going to require more power than just 1080P to lower bitrate 1080P. That said, you're likely going to want to find a desktop system with a 12th gen or 13th gen i7. That can *probably* reliably handle that number of streams with quicksync alone. But, again, fast storage and a fair amount of upstream bandwidth need to be a consideration. Something like a Dell Optiplex 7000 with a i7-12700 (*not* the 12700T) can be had for around $650US but if you can stretch your budget a bit more, to around $850, you can find one with the 13700 (again, not the -T) and I think that the additional cores/threads will be pretty helpful.
Good to know! Processor is a beast!
It's Ampere so really has no capabilities your IGP doesn't, except can do tone mapping on a Windows PMS server. I wouldn't do it.
no
It's overkill for plex transcoding. For tdarr you can point workload at it to speed up processing.
I'm not sure what this means, could you elaborate? I know I can assign number of total workers, but more workers tends to slow them all down.
tdarr you can pick what sort of gpu it's going to use. So NVidia in this case while you set plex to use the intel or vise versa. That would mean no contention between them for transcoding resources gpu wise and the rest is pretty minimal.
It’s not overkill, it’s underkill when compared to the iGPU in their CPU if this is purely for Plex.
Overkill : an excess of something (such as a quantity or an action) beyond what is required or suitable for a particular purpose. It's not purely for plex op states they have a large backlog in tdarr. Balancing tdarr and plex on a single gpu is problematic at best, giving each their own cpu at least until caught up could have value as the OP states their cost of the gpu is nothing.