Use old parts or buy new parts for Plex Media Server?

[Dave3000]

I might be upgrading my CPU, motherboard, and RAM next month for my gaming PC and use some my old parts to build a Plex Media Server. I'm currently using as a gaming PC:

i7-4930k
32GB DDR3-1600
2TB SSD
6TB HDD
GTX 1080
CM690 II Case
800W PS

If I upgrade my gaming PC to an i7-7700k along with other new parts, I might build a Plex Media Server with my i7-4930k, 32GB DDR3-1600, 2x6TB HDDs, AMD 6450 graphics card (old card I have lying around), old 850W PS, CM690 II Case (gaming PC will get a new case). I would buy a 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO to hold the OS and the two 6TB HDDs to hold my media. I would use Ubuntu for my OS on the Plex Media Server. Is this a better idea than selling my old parts and buying new parts for a Plex Media Server if I'm going to be replacing some of those parts anyways for my gaming PC?

 

[you2]

The parts are over-kill but they are also free. The only consideration is power cost as you could get buy with a system that draws less power. Also I guess heat might be an issue if you use a tiny case. Some might argue you should sell the I7 and simply replace the processor with a pentinum or low power i3. Also you could keep the 800W ps for the new system (which is overkill in that system) and pick up a silent 400W psu for the plex.
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To be honest I'm not even sure why you are upgrading the gaming system. I guess if you ahve the $$ it doesn't really matter but kaby isn't going to make your gaming experience more enjoyable.

 

[Dave3000]

I might not upgrade to a faster CPU in my gaming system and wait for Skylake-X or whatever the next Intel high end platform CPU will be. It's just the I was thinking about building a Plex Media Server powerful enough to transcode to my Roku Ultra and I can always set it to sleep mode automatically after specified time of inactivity.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That's fine. If you're going to be streaming HD content, that CPU actually isn't all THAT overpowered.

For a streaming server (as opposed to a playback device) I don't think you need a GPU though... or does that CPU not have an IGP? That would complicate setup.

 

[rchunter]

I'd use the old parts for now. Thing is if you think you will be doing 4k plex transcoding sometime in the future your 4930k most likely won't even be good enough. Best to just use what you have now and then upgrade later if you ever need to. Once HD Blurays are able to be ripped I can see a whole lot of people wanting to upgrade their server hardware all of a sudden....but by then we will know more about what hardware it will take.

 

[Face2Face]

I'd use the old parts for now. Thing is if you think you will be doing 4k plex transcoding sometime in the future your 4930k most likely won't even be good enough. Best to just use what you have now and then upgrade later if you ever need to. Once HD Blurays are able to be ripped I can see a whole lot of people wanting to upgrade their server hardware all of a sudden....but by then we will know more about what hardware it will take.

I have a couple of low bitrate HVEC 4K videos, around 7mbps each, and my 3470s can handle transcoding them through Plex, but all cores sit at 100% the entire time during playback. I would imagine a lossless 4K bluray would destroy most CPUs. I'm hoping the PLEX devs will move transcoding to the GPU. They're doing it in the NVIDIA Shield, so it can be done.

 

[Valantar]

The thing is that GPU transcoding is fast, but quality is far worse. I guess that might be a worthwhile tradeoff at times, though.

I'd use your current parts for now, and then to optimize for low idle power. Having a plex media server automatically sleep seems quite ridiculous, though. Unless you want to mess with setting up WoL at the same time (which in my experience is hell on earth to get working), keep it awake. But why use Ubuntu, and not, say, PFSense (or perhaps freeNAS?) and use the PC as a combo router/firewall/NAS/media server? From the guides I've seen, it seems like a great (and very flexible/extensible) OS, and you'd save the SSD money by running it off of a flash drive (which seems to be the recommended boot medium).