GPU for home server

[KentState]

Looking for recommendations on a GPU to throw in a 4U server to help with Plex transcoding and other remedial tasks. I have an available PCI-E 3.0 x 16 slot so it can take a regular card, but is limited to the more compact ITX length cards. Also do not have additional PCI-E power cables so it will have to run 100% off the slot.

It seems like a 1050 or below is probably the best I can do unless I go with a Quadro P2000 but those are a lot more.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I would have recommended a GTX1650, but it seems that for some reason, the TU117 GPU in those, has the Volta media hardware, and not the Turing media encoder/decoder that is supposed to be better, that's in the 1660 and higher. NVidia really screwed the pooch on proving a solution for the lower-powered HTPC/transcoding crowd.

 

[NTMBK]

I would just go with a Geforce 1030. So far as I'm aware it has the same encoder as the rest of the Pascal lineup, it's cheap, and you can get it in single slot half-height cards because it's so power efficient: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125972 Just make sure that you get a model with GDDR5, the DDR4 model is about half the performance.

 

[Homerboy]

it entirely depends on how many simultaneous transcodes you will be doing and from what to what.
The easy answer is "the most powerful one that you can afford"
But if you're just looking at 1-2 transcodes from 1080p to a lower bit rate or something, you can get a lesser card.

 

[Rifter]

If 4k and multiple streams are involved id spring for that P2000