Crash while watching Plex

[SgtSeamonkey]

I've been inconsistently crashing while watching movies through Plex. I'm not sure the extent of the crash, I lose connection to my server, run downstairs to check it and it's still powered on. By the time I return upstairs the connection is restored but the array is stopped.

 

Happens inconsistently. I watched multiple episodes of a TV show in a row multiple nights in a row without issue. Sometimes I can watch an entire movie, other times I can only watch minutes. Turned on Syslog mirror to flash but I'm not sure what to look for, nothing is standing out.

 

I recently upgraded my Unraid server from an i3-8100 to an i9-9900k to help with movie transcoding in Plex. I did not upgrade my motherboard hardware, which is an ASRock H370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX, I did however upgrade my BIOS to the latest. This is the only issue since the upgrade and I had no issues before that.

 

Has anyone else run into this?

Versions: Unraid 6.8.3, Docker 19.03.5, tried the latest Plex and Plexpass dockers.

Edited January 20, 2021 by SgtSeamonkey

[SgtSeamonkey]

For anyone else who might be following this or for future search help I will update with my findings:

 

Response on Plex app support thread: "this sounds to me like a hardware issue, my guess would be memory or psu but a full diagnostics dump may tell you what the cause is, you are best off posting in general support as this wont be related to this docker image and there are people with more systems knowledge than me on there, link to general:- https://forums.unraid.net/forum/55-general-support/"

 

Diagnostic logs appear to start from the first startup after the crash - no crash data found. No other information appears to be useful in diagnosing the issue.

 

Tried keeping an eye on CPU utilization and temp while watching a show - nothing out of the ordinary.

UPS is displaying only 120w-150w consumed while idling. My PSU is only a Bronze 250W Flex ATX - PC part picker estimates 244w usage with the i9-9900k. Investigating PSU upgrade.

Edited January 20, 2021 by SgtSeamonkey

[Hoopster]

1 hour ago, SgtSeamonkey said:

My PSU is only a Bronze 250W Flex ATX - PC part picker estimates 244w usage with the i9-9900k. Investigating PSU upgrade.

I would suspect this may be the issue.  I have the Xeon equivalent of the i9-9900K (E-2288G) in my server and when doing multiple stream transcoding work, it can require some juice.  Depending on what other things are going on with your system, of course more wattage from the PSU is required.  

 

I seriously doubt your CPU is drawing anywhere near 244 watts unless your have some heavy AVX transcoding jobs and the CPU is going into Turbo Boost, nevertheless, I would probably not be comfortable with anything less than 450 watts in a typical server PSU and more if you have graphics cards for VMs and a lot of drives in the system.

 

A PSU should also be over provisioned and not just capable of providing what the maximum draw may be.  PSUs tend to lose efficiency over time.  It is a good idea to have 20-25% more capacity than anticipated maximum demand.

 

My 600W PSU is probably overkill for my system, but it does give me room to grow without wondering if I need to upgrade the PSU.

Edited January 20, 2021 by Hoopster

[SgtSeamonkey]

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

I seriously doubt your CPU is drawing anywhere near 244 watts unless your have some heavy AVX transcoding jobs and the CPU is going into Turbo Boost, nevertheless, I would probably not be comfortable with anything less than 450 watts in a typical server PSU and more if you have graphics cards for VMs and a lot of drives in the system.

Sorry, I meant that PCPP estimates my full build will consume around 244w. I just did some research and realized that my PSU was the stock one that came with my case (IP-S265AU7-2) - it's a crappy 265w Bronze that I probably intended to upgrade and forgot about. I just purchased a 500w Gold (SS-500L1U). I'll report back here when it arrives and I install it. I suspect you're correct, the PSU is likely my issue which would explain my brown-out type shutdown during high CPU loads.

[Hoopster]

Sorry, I meant that PCPP estimates my full build will consume around 244w.

Noctua estimated that the i9-9900K/Xeon E-2288G could require up to 220W when under very heavy loads in Turbo Boost.  They spec their CPU coolers a little differently than most manufacturers and don't base recommendation purely on how may watts of heat they can handle; nevertheless when I wrote them about my E-2288G and recommendations, they replied that they had seen it draw up to 220W in a very heavy AVX workload test.  That just seems nuts to me.
 
I think the larger PSU will help; especially since a "generic" 265W PSU is likely a bit under-powered with your new CPU.

[SgtSeamonkey]

Update 1/28/21: New PSU is installed. Haven't tested extensively but I ran two movies at once on different platforms through Plex, transcoding both, for ~20min. Did not see a crash. 

I'm fairly confident this was the issue after watching my UPS display occasional spikes of ~260w while I was testing.

Edited January 29, 2021 by SgtSeamonkey

[Hoopster]

2 hours ago, SgtSeamonkey said:

New PSU is installed

And I just had to do the same yesterday on my desktop Windows machine.  The computer just all of sudden shut down and would not turn back on.  The next day, it powered on fine and then shut down again after a few minutes.  Several times I could not get it to power on unless I flipped the PSU power off and then on again. 

 

I suspected the PSU was the problem so I took the MB out of the case and connected a spare power supply and my OS and Data SSDs, monitor, keyboard and mouse to it.  It booted up fine and ran for two days without issue.  I connected up the "bad" power supply again as a test and it powered up and ran.  Less than a hour later, shutdown. 

 

New power supply installed yesterday and it is purring along with no issues.