is my CPU enough to run 8TB mirrorred Plex on Unraid

[Phil Ash]

I am running Unraid 6.12.8 in an HP Tower with an

 

Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1270 v3 @ 3.50GHz CPU

 

The only thing the server is really running is the Plex docker with content on 8TB mirrorred data array.

 

The CPU is randomly spiking on all 8 threads to max capacity.

 

I am wondering if the capacity of the CPU is enough to run this set-up and would very much appreciate some insight.

[ConnerVT]

Your Xeon certainly isn't the most powerful CPU out there.  I was running my Unraid server with Plex on a Ryzen 1500X without much issue, and that is only a bit more powerful than yours.  But it comes down to not "Will it run" but more "How you are running it".

 

How many users?  On your LAN, or serving files over the Internet?  Are clients playing files Direct Play/Direct Stream or are they transcoded?

 

If the media is just being pulled from the drives and sent unchanged to the client/player, the CPU should be more than enough.  Once transcoding takes place (you didn't mention you have a GPU) then I could see the CPU getting overworked.

[Gragorg]

That CPU does not have quicksync so the CPU will get hammered trying to transcode with the cpu.  You could look for a used Xeon chip from the Haswell family that has quicksync built in.  A Haswell Xeon with quicksync will handle 1080p streams with transcoding all day long.  Here are E3 1275 v3 on ebay.  Worth mentioning I beleive you need plex pass to use hardware transcoding.

Edited March 4 by Gragorg