Suggestions for Mobo/CPU/Ram upgrade for Plex server around $300?


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I recently installed Plex onto my unraid server for several of my friends to access but I noticed that it's having trouble keeping up with transcoding on some of my higher bitrate 1080p files. My hardware is kind of old (ASRock FM2A85X Extreme4-M, AMD A4-5300, 4GB DDR3 1600) and was built without Plex in mind at the time so I'm looking to upgrade a bit to the best bang for the buck with Plex transcoding as the main focus. My only requirements are I would like to have at least 8 SATA ports (my array is 7 hard drives and 1 ssd cache) and to be around $300. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

Edit: In my preliminary research I was leaning toward the AMD FX-8320 Eight-Core since it seems to have one of the best bang for the bucks when it comes to Passmark score.

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How many simultaneous streams do you want to support?  I prefer at least 2,000 Passmarks for unRAID and then the standard 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream unless you have really challenging media like full BD rips.

Some of my media is full BD rips (remuxes) and it would be nice to be able to support at least 2 1080p streams at a time.

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The AMD FX-8320 should be able to handle that.  I'd go with at least 8GB of RAM and 16GB would be nice.  I'm not really familiar with AMD motherboards, unfortunately.  If you can't find one with 8 SATA ports then consider picking up SATA controller like a Dell PERC H310 or IBM M1015 from eBay.  Doing this upgrade for $300 will be a challenge but good luck.

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I already have a SATA controller but figured it would be nice to have a MOBO that can handle my current array and then use the SATA controller for future expansion. How important is RAM to Plex? I keep seeing everyone stress the importance of the CPU but I wasn't sure how much the amount of RAM affects it.

 

Also, I'm open to Intel CPU/MOBO suggestions if people feel they would be better.

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I already have a SATA controller but figured it would be nice to have a MOBO that can handle my current array and then use the SATA controller for future expansion. How important is RAM to Plex? I keep seeing everyone stress the importance of the CPU but I wasn't sure how much the amount of RAM affects it.

 

Also, I'm open to Intel CPU/MOBO suggestions if people feel they would be better.

Plex isn't a big memory user unless you want to transcode to a RAM disk, or potentially have a huge library.  My usage doesn't tend to go beyond several hundred MB, I've never seen it over 1GB.  Threads though - Plex loves to spawn many threads.  That means it loves cores.

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On 2/18/2017 at 3:09 PM, Yousty said:

For anyone curious, I ended up going with the ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Mobo ($130 after rebate) and the AMD FX-8350 CPU ($149) which Passmark shows as having an average of 9,000 score so hopefully that should be good enough for two 1080p streams.

 

I'm using a FX-8320E @ 4.5ghz in a stand alone Plex server and it can do 3-4 1080 transcodes, so you should be fine

Edited by dukiethecorgi
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On 2/18/2017 at 2:09 PM, Yousty said:

For anyone curious, I ended up going with the ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Mobo ($130 after rebate) and the AMD FX-8350 CPU ($149) which Passmark shows as having an average of 9,000 score so hopefully that should be good enough for two 1080p streams.

I'm using a FX-8350 with good success. A word of caution though about ram, whatever you decide to do in this realm make sure you pick up the largest amount you can in a 2 dimm setup. I had major issues with my server until I figured out that the 990FXA boards don't play nice with 4 dimms vs 2.  

 

Let me know how you like your board. I'm looking to upgrade to something with 8 ports. 

Edited by stublehustle
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Im running an AMD A10.  CPU was about 120 EURO and MOBO about 80 EURO.  Ad some 8GB RAM and you have yourself a brandnew 4 core setup for your price target of 300 EURO.  Does 2 PLEX transcodes with huge performance left.  Never had the need for more then 2 transcodes myself.  And even then there is still more in it, it clocked 4.5 GHZ on stock voltage.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/26/2017 at 11:08 PM, stublehustle said:

I'm using a FX-8350 with good success. A word of caution though about ram, whatever you decide to do in this realm make sure you pick up the largest amount you can in a 2 dimm setup. I had major issues with my server until I figured out that the 990FXA boards don't play nice with 4 dimms vs 2.  

 

Let me know how you like your board. I'm looking to upgrade to something with 8 ports. 

Been using my new setup for a month now and so far the board has been great! Hooked up all 8 hard drives to the mobo ports and unraid recognized all of them on the first boot no problem. As for the processor, it's had no problem whatsoever keeping up with 3 concurrent high bitrate 1080p transcodes at once, the stock cpu fan revs up pretty high during that but no heat issues. Also, I'm only using 1 stick of 4GB DDR3 ram and i've never seen it go above 60% utilization in unraid so apparently ram capacity doesn't matter much with plex.

Edited by Yousty
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