CPU advice: regular use vs. Plex transcoding needs?

[the_jest]

I'm starting to try to figure out my hardware needs for a new home NAS.

On the one hand, for most of my daily uses—media storage and lightly loaded jails/VMs for a small number of users—I know that my CPU requirements are low. And when I look through the advice threads, it's pretty frequent to suggest people use older CPUs and older mobos, which are well proven and less expensive. (My current TrueNAS Core box uses an i3-6100 and it's still holding up fine.)

On the other hand, the one thing I do want is better Plex transcoding. My current system really can't handle 4k encoding at all, and even 1080p encoding often fails if there are multiple streams at once. I'm considering adding a GPU for hardware offloading (I'll be switching from Core to SCALE), but I want to make sure the CPU can process what it needs to.

On the gripping hand, I don't care much about spending a little more on a CPU that will last for many years.

How should I balance these contradictory needs? (I can provide more details on other aspects of the system I'm considering, but I think I'm not at that point yet for the purpose of this specific question.)

 

[joeschmuck]

Can you not transcode and let your appliances do the work? I find that works best for me. For some on my content I have changed the format to make it compatible with the devices, but most of my content works just fine.

If you need to transcode, I'd check out the Plex forum to figure out the minimum CPU you would need. If you could reuse your current system and just pop in a faster CPU, that would be the most practical solution. I do not know if Plex would use multiple cores so check that out. 4 cores may be fine and 16 a total waste. There are CPU's up to 4.7GHz now if your motherboard can support it. Look into your motherboard to find out, maybe you need a new BIOS update to support it.