Hardware to support 4-5 plex streams

[lovingHDTV]

I'm hoping someone has a suggestion.  My current unRaid box is an AMD Phenom II X3 710 with 8GB of memory.  It does fine with a single plex transcode, but I'm finding that my family is wanting 3-4 now and it just can't handle that many.  I'm looking to upgrade my CPU, Memory, motherboard to something that can handle it.

 

Is there any advantage for unRaid to run a Xeon?  I know that it has better/bigger L3, but not sure that really helps with this issue.  I've looked at an A10, or maybe a i5.  I'm "hoping" to keep it around the $200 mark.

 

Suggestion?

 

thanks

david

[bkastner]

I would be surprised if you can hit your price mark.

 

Basically, when looking at Plex streaming most people use cpubenchmark.net to determine the best CPU for their needs. You need a passmark of 2000 for each Plex stream you want to run.

 

If you look at your current CPU you see the following:

 

AMD Phenom II X3 710 Passmark: 2460

 

This is why you can only do a single stream successfully.

 

If you want to do 5 streams you are looking at a passmark of 10,000, which puts you into the Xeon range, and likely $300+, not including a motherboard replacement and potentially memory replacement. You are likely looking at $600-800 for the upgrade. Trying to manage 4 streams is a little more manageable.

 

Use that website in conjunction with your preferred retailer and figure out what will actually meet your needs. If you are having difficulties, or need clarification, just post here and someone can offer some suggestions. Many of us are well versed in this.

 

Another consideration is to look at using Kodi inside your house. I use Plex for my daughter's iPad and external parties, but use Kodi clients in the house - this means that the clients do all the heavy lifting rather than the backend server, and you can buy a good client for $100-$150 to run Kodi. This may be a better solution for you.

[lovingHDTV]

Thanks for the pointer.  I don't do any transcoding inside the house, this is all for external streams.  This helps a lot.

 

david

[StevenD]

You will need a xeon or i7 to do what you want. My config is a bit older, but it can handle 4-5 plex transcodes at a time, if its a mix of tv and bluray.