Hardware upgrade question

[gunnahafta]

I am presently running a TrueNas on an old Dell Optiplex PC with i5-3470 (4 core/4 threads) @ 3.20 ghz, 16 GB ram (max allowable). I run a few small jails and one Ubuntu VM for PiHole. One of my jails is Plex and it struggles when trying to play 4K videos. Usually only if its transcoding but even direct stream sometimes causes it to chug out and stutter on playback.

I want to run a bunch of other VM's but just don't have the cores and GB for it. I was considering an upgrade and throwing something like a Xeon D-1581 into the mix. It only runs at 2.40 GHz but it has 16 core and 32 threads. Plus I can throw a boat load more ram into the system.

Will Plex respond better with more Cores or does it purely depend on speed?

 

[GBillR]

I am presently running a TrueNas on an old Dell Optiplex PC with i5-3470 (4 core/4 threads) @ 3.20 ghz, 16 GB ram (max allowable). I run a few small jails and one Ubuntu VM for PiHole. One of my jails is Plex and it struggles when trying to play 4K videos. Usually only if its transcoding but even direct stream sometimes causes it to chug out and stutter on playback.

I want to run a bunch of other VM's but just don't have the cores and GB for it. I was considering an upgrade and throwing something like a Xeon D-1581 into the mix. It only runs at 2.40 GHz but it has 16 core and 32 threads. Plus I can throw a boat load more ram into the system.

Will Plex respond better with more Cores or does it purely depend on speed?

This is probably a question better suited for the Plex forum. I highly suspect you will not get the plex performance you are seeking with a 1.8/2.4 GHz CPU, at least not when transcoding. If you are having issues with direct stream, that could be your pool structure or NAS resources holding you back, or your network config. An i5-3470 with a "few" jails and a VM is likely not enough cpu left for plex. Plex does not need a lot of ram, but it can be very CPU hungry, certainly when transcoding. My suggestion would be to run plex on a different machine, either as a VM or on bare metal. By itself, that Optiplex might give you what you want if it were only a plex machine. You could add a GPU to help with transcoding if you wanted to, just make sure it supports H.265.

If you wanted to upgrade to run additional VMs or Jails, you could still do that, and probably be satisfied with the D-1581 if you kept plex on it's own hardware.

Just a thought. If you are dead set on using one machine, I suspect you will need to look for something with a little more horsepower.