Cheapest blu-ray ripping/plex server setup?

[rudeguy]

I grabbed an old work PC to use as a Plex server/blu ray ripper. It has an Intel dual core CPU, so it met Plex's minimum requirement but its not cutting it. I want to build something that will work well but I don't want this to be a monster build.

Things I already have:
BD drive
HDD
Video card if needed but would prefer not to use

So I need:
Mobo/CPU combo
RAM
Case
Power Supply

I really want to go as cheap as possible on this. It will never be used for anything other than ripping and streaming.

 

[Batmeat]

Any i5 with any supporting mobo and 4-8gb of ram will work good. For streaming make sure your home network is wired. I seem to have issues streaming plex to my roku 3 using wireless signal, but when it's hard wired in, it's flawless. Video card wise, any midrange card from the last few years will be good. Case and power supply don't mater as long as it supports your hardware. I don't recommend generic ram or power supply though.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Woof, an i5? You don't need anything that beefy unless you're transcoding a crapton of very high quality streams for mobile clients or something.

Mobo: www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?...82E16813132083
CPU: www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?...82E16819116950
RAM: www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?...82E16820313097
Case/PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811154083

Ubuntu Server (CLI) and PLEX-server install, and you're done.

Now, if you DO have a >3 people streaming HD at the same time, well, okay. Then start looking at an i3/i5.

WiFi in my house works fine for streaming. YMMV because WiFi and houses.

 

[rudeguy]

Any i5 with any supporting mobi and 4-8gb of ram will work good. For streaming make sure your home network is wired. I seem to have issues streaming plex to my roku 3 using wireless signal, but when it's hard wired in, it's flawless. Video card wise, any midrange card from the last few years will be good. Case and power supply don't mater as long as it supports your hardware. I don't recommend generic ram or power supply though.

Thanks

The system is hard wired in, I hate dealing with wifi issues. Do you think I need a video card? My hesitation is its another thing to break and also wanting to go cheap on the power supply.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

You don't need a video card at all for this.

 

[rudeguy]

You don't need a video card at all for this.

Sweet.

Somehow your first post didn't show up when I replied to his post. There must have been a glitch in the Matrix...

Do you use Ubuntu and Plex? I have about 7 different Windows keys that I own but I really am thinking that Ubuntu would be less resource intensive and would prefer to at least try that.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Sweet.

Somehow your first post didn't show up when I replied to his post. There must have been a glitch in the Matrix...

Do you use Ubuntu and Plex? I have about 7 different Windows keys that I own but I really am thinking that Ubuntu would be less resource intensive and would prefer to at least try that.

I have a VM on my server (specs in sig) with 3GB of RAM, and limited to 60% utilization on two cores. Ubuntu Server, and PLEX. (minimum requirements are for 2GB. I've never seen memory use go past 2GB.)

It works fine for me and housemate (2 clients, but usually one of them is an SD stream because of all the DVD rips.) Of course, more streams, more HD streams, more transcoding, etc., you'll want more CPU and maybe a bit more RAM.

Configuration wasn't too bad, for a linux application.

http://www.htpcguides.com/install-plex-media-server-ubuntu-14-04/

Once the plexmediaserver package is installed and working, you can do the hard stuff through the WebUI.

 

[mvbighead]

This would likely fly through rips:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/94HRhM
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/94HRhM/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($119.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-K Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($52.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Team Elite 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($25.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($28.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($33.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $261.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-02 16:41 EST-0500

If the dual core you picked up can't do it, I would at least step into i3 range.

 

[Ken g6]

As cheap as possible?

It has an Intel dual core CPU, so it met Plex's minimum requirement but its not cutting it.

What are the full specs on that system? You might be able to trade up to a quad-core CPU. Maybe even one of those cheap LGA771 Xeons floating around.

 

[Burpo]

Exactly what I was thinking.. Q6600 or Xeon X3230 (if his board supports quad), and cheap video card.

 

[Batmeat]

Woof, an i5? You don't need anything that beefy unless you're transcoding a crapton of very high quality streams for mobile clients or something.

=

Ripping Blu-Rays are going to be high quality streams. It makes no sense to rip them to low quality, or he would have bought DVD's. I assume since he's ripping his blu-Rays, he has a large blu-ray collection. Otherwise, why rip only a few?

 

[ControlD]

Ripping Blu-Rays are going to be high quality streams. It makes no sense to rip them to low quality, or he would have bought DVD's. I assume since he's ripping his blu-Rays, he has a large blu-ray collection. Otherwise, why rip only a few?

In this case, "transcoding" refers to the Plex server doing on the fly transcoding of the BR video to whatever device you are watching the movie on. I don't believe anyone is talking about ripping and encoding the video to a lower format.

I am using unRAID on a Intel G530 for my Plex server and it seems to handle a single BR stream OK. Now that my wife has discovered my Plex server I have a feeling a slightly beefier CPU might be in order.

I will admit that I tend to re-encode a lot of my Blu-Ray movies however. I know storage is cheap, but Blu-Ray rips can be massive.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Ripping Blu-Rays are going to be high quality streams. It makes no sense to rip them to low quality, or he would have bought DVD's. I assume since he's ripping his blu-Rays, he has a large blu-ray collection. Otherwise, why rip only a few?

1) Transcoding to a lower-quality/resolution for target devices.
2) I'm also assuming some existing SD/480p content.
3) By "few" I mean concurrent streams/clients, not total number of movies.

When you're doing the initial ripping, a faster CPU will help encode those rips faster, regardless of what quality settings. But that's a one-time cost: I'd probably just rip all the BDs first, then set up a batch encode and walk away and drink my beverage of choice for however long it takes.

 

[rudeguy]

As cheap as possible?



What are the full specs on that system? You might be able to trade up to a quad-core CPU. Maybe even one of those cheap LGA771 Xeons floating around.

I can post the speccy tonight but this was the first thing I checked into. It is an HP Pro rig, so there is no support for i5 but I guess I didn't look into Xeons.

The mobo is a foxconn 2ABF.

 

[Ken g6]

Whoa! It's Sandy Bridge! I was thinking Core 2-generation.

I see a claim here that your mobo doesn't support i5. But I've never seen an H61 chipset that didn't support at least the Sandy Bridge generation. I do see a claim here of a (different) mobo that wouldn't support a 95W i5 due to power delivery problems. But an i5-2400S has the same TDP as a supported Sandy i3. I also see somebody installed an i7 2600 on your mobo, though not necessarily in an HP.

If it was me I'd probably go looking for an i5-2400S on ebay.

 

[ControlD]

Just a general rule of thumb from the Plex website on CPU requirements:

Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark scores are a good guideline for a requirement:
1080p/10Mbps: 2000 PassMark
720p/4Mbps: 1500 PassMark

So, you can look up the Passmark numbers for various CPUs and try to get something that fits your requirements.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-computer-

 

[rudeguy]

Whoa! It's Sandy Bridge! I was thinking Core 2-generation.

I see a claim here that your mobo doesn't support i5. But I've never seen an H61 chipset that didn't support at least the Sandy Bridge generation. I do see a claim here of a (different) mobo that wouldn't support a 95W i5 due to power delivery problems. But an i5-2400S has the same TDP as a supported Sandy i3. I also see somebody installed an i7 2600 on your mobo, though not necessarily in an HP.

If it was me I'd probably go looking for an i5-2400S on ebay.

Exactly what I was thinking when I saw this one get pulled from the fleet! And the rabbit hole you went down with those compatibility issues was the same one I did. However I know nothing about CPUs other than Core2= old and P4=space heater.

For $100, I think I will pick up a new CPU. If it works, great. If not, oh well. I'm still really debating on Ubuntu. I suck so bad at Linux that its not even funny. Maybe my progression should be: CPU and RAM, then Ubuntu, then new build?

 

[bbhaag]

Just a general rule of thumb from the Plex website on CPU requirements:



So, you can look up the Passmark numbers for various CPUs and try to get something that fits your requirements.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-computer-

Do you know if those numbers are for single threaded or multi? My 965 has a score of 4050 for multi but only 1100 for single. It might explain why I'm having some stuttering issues when watching 1080p videos.

I looked through the link you provided but didn't really see any mention of it.

 

[ControlD]

I'm pretty sure they are talking about the "average CPU mark" rating like you would see here:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5+750+%40+2.67GHz

Those are the numbers I have seen discussed in the Plex related forums at least. I would be interested to see if any of the CPU gurus here have a different take on this.

My G530 has a Passmark rating of 2155 and it seems to handle a single 1080p stream OK. Are your 1080p videos straight BR rips or are they ripped and encoded? I have yet to try two streams at one time, but I'm not sure I actually want to know how well that works. I will most certainly want an upgrade if I do that

 

[bbhaag]

Hmm I'm by no means a cpu guru so I'm not sure but it looks like my average is 4050 which should be more than enough to handle a BR rip of around 10gb.

It must be a networking issue then. Thanks for helping answer my question DaveStall. Much appreciated.

 

[ControlD]

This is sort of an aside to the original question, but this Passmark thing is interesting. Out of curiosity, I looked up my desktop CPU (i5-4670k) which has a Passmark score of of 7673. So I was curious what would be better than that for the cheapest price. It looks like the AMD FX8350 has to be the best bang for your buck streaming CPU out there. That thing has a Passmark score of 8990 and can be found online for something like $170! To do better than that you would have to jump up to a Core i7 at $305. Interesting indeed.

 

[Batmeat]

1) By "few" I mean concurrent streams/clients, not total number of movies.

Now I understand what you meant. Yes, if he plans on streaming one video to to one or two devices, then the cpu doesn't need to be as strong. If he plans on multiple videos to multiple devices, then something beefier would be needed. I first generation i3 or even a core 2 duo would be good enough for a single stream.

 

[mfenn]

For $100, I think I will pick up a new CPU. If it works, great. If not, oh well. I'm still really debating on Ubuntu. I suck so bad at Linux that its not even funny. Maybe my progression should be: CPU and RAM, then Ubuntu, then new build?

If you have a bunch of Windows keys and you're more comfortable with Windows, then there's no reason you can't use Windows. It'll have a higher RAM footprint, but that's not the limiting factor unless you start talking about lots of simultaneous clients.

 

[rudeguy]

If you have a bunch of Windows keys and you're more comfortable with Windows, then there's no reason you can't use Windows. It'll have a higher RAM footprint, but that's not the limiting factor unless you start talking about lots of simultaneous clients.

Just 2 clients max. Always wifi, never 3g or local.

Looks like the CPU is a G645. Reads out at 2.9gh and is Sandy Bridge.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Looks like the CPU is a G645. Reads out at 2.9gh and is Sandy Bridge.

That should be adequate. Give it a try and watch the Resource Monitor on the server to see how it goes.