Ultimate 4K Plex server with Top 20 Graphics cards for multiple 4K video Transcoding streams
I am starting a Plex Media Server and initially plan to setup a 150TB server, with plans to expand in the future as my 4K media collection grows. I would have really liked a setup like the Storinator Q30 from 45 Drives (based in Canada) – something simple, looks aesthetically good and most importantly really quite but I can’t seem to find something similar here in the UK. I have an old iMac 2009 (3.4GHz Core i7, 16GB RAM with upgraded SDD memory) it amazingly still performs really well so I have little appetite to replace it !
Having said that, I have also been thinking, instead of the dedicated server such as the Q30, why not replace my old (but still well-functiong iMac) & build a PC/Plex Media Server combo in a Thermaltake Core WP200 (the case has a capacity to host up to 60 HDD’s so plenty of future expansion).
The server will be for me, my family & a small group of friends so it will have to be able to handle multiple streams/transcoding (including 4K) & have 10Gbit network connectivity (for future home network project).
For the HDD’s I will need some help, I have started buying WD portable 14TB drives and the plan is to ‘shuck’ them and use them to save some money on storage. Most of them are in fact WD Red HDD’s from what the research I have done.
First of all, you could use your MAC and build a Plex server with it. The i7 CPU is quite capable of transcoding quite a few types of 4K videos. But it surely will not cope with multiple 4K streams being transcoded.
What you can do to improve things is getting an external GPU box with a decent graphics card. The best cards will be mentioned later on in this post.
But how to store 100TB of data? It is a popular choice to use Mac mini inside the Netstor case with an additional RAID card (like Areca ARC-1883ix-24 or similar) to keep your data safe. But instead of Mac mini, any mac can be connected to this RAID enclosure via Thunderbolt.
This solution is basically an identical solution like Storinator box (just for half price or less).
But if do not want to have multiple devices connected to each other and taking space on the table, you may be interested in to something like you mentioned – Thermaltake Core WP200.
You can practically build your own Plex PC. Have a good graphics card, RAID card and 10GbE card.
But you may not want this custom built PLEX server to serve only for multimedia. You might not stream 24/7, so why not use this for other things.
In a similar price range, Qnap TS-2888x with a decent graphics card would perform equally well as Storinator. It’s Xeon GPU could transcode most of the 4K, but multiple streams of 4K will overload it. It comes with many PCI slots and is made for machine learning, but surely it can be used for PLEX server, virtualization and even bitcoin mining if need to.
But you will likely find it a way too expensive. But luckily there more affordable model – Qnap TS-1685. It also allows you to install PCI GPU card and enable multiple 4K video stream transcoding. Some graphics cards will need more power, so you would need to upgrade the power supply, just like on a PC. Don’t need to look for Qnap compatible ones.
Qnap Supported GPU (tested ones. Real compatibility list is much longer) graphics cards are:
Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000
ASUS DUAL-RTX2080-O8G
ASUS DUAL GeForce RTX™ 2080 O8G GAMING EVO
ASUS TURBO GeForce RTX™ 2080 8G
ASUS DUAL GeForce RTX™ 2080 O8G GAMING
GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 OC
GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 XTREME 8G
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2080 GAMING OC 8G
EVGA RTX2080 8GB XC GAMING GDDR6
EVGA RTX2080 8GB FTW3 ULTRA BP GAMING iCX2 GDDR6
GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 8G
MSI GeForce RTX 2080 GAMING X TRIO
ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX™ 2080 O8G GAMING
EVGA RTX2070 8GB FTW3 ULTRA BP GDDR6
MSI GeForce RTX 2070 VENTUS 8G
EVGA RTX2070 8G XC Black Edition GAMING GDDR6
GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 2070 8G
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 WINDFORCE 8G
EVGA RTX2070 8GB XC GAMING GDDR6
EVGA RTX2070 8GB XC ULTRA BP GAMING GDDR6
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 GAMING 8G
GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 2070 XTREME 8G
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 GAMING OC 8G
EVGA RTX 2070 Black Edition
MSI GeForce RTX 2070 GAMING Z 8G
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2070 AMP Extreme
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2070 AMP
ZOTAC RTX 2080 AMP 8G
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2070 OC MINI
ZOTAC GAMING Geforce RTX 2080
GALAX GTX 1060 EX OC 6GB DDR5 WHITE
GALAX GTX 1050 Ti EX OC White 4GB
GALAX GTX 1050 OC 2GB DDR5
GALAX GTX 1060 EX OC White 3GB
GALAX GTX 1060 OC 3GB
GALAX GTX 1060 OC 6GB
GALAX GTX 1050 Ti EX OC 4GB
MSI GTX 1070 Ti ARMOR 8G
MSI GTX 1070 GAMING 8G
MSI GTX1060 AERO ITX 6G OC
MSI GTX 1050 Ti AERO 4G OC
MSI GTX 1050 Ti GAMING X 4G
MSI GTX 1050 2GT OCV1
MSI GTX 1050 3GT OC
MSI GTX 1050 AERO 3G OC
MSI GTX 1050 AERO 2G OCV1
MSI GTX 1060 AERO ITX 6G OC
MSI GTX 1060 ARMOR 6G OCV1
MSI GTX 1060 ARMOR 3G OCV1
MSI GTX 1060 GAMING X 6G
MSI GTX 1060 GAMING 6G
EVGA EVGA GTX1070 8GB SC ACX 3.0 Black Edition
EVGA GTX1050 2GB GAMING ACX2.0 GDDR5
EVGA GTX1050 3GB SC GAMING ACX2.0 GDDR5
EVGA GTX1060 6GB SC GAMING ACX2.0 GDDR5
EVGA GTX1050 Ti 4GB GAMING ACX2.0 GDDR5
EVGA GT1030 2GB DDR4 64bit Passive Low Profile
EVGA GTX1060 3GB SC GAMING ACX2.0 GDDR5
EVGA GTX1060 6GB GAMING ACX 2.0 GDDR5
EVGA EVGA GTX1050 Ti 4GB SSC GAMING
EVGA EVGA GTX1060 6GB SSC GAMING ACX3.0 GDDR5
EVGA EVGA GTX1050 2GB SSC GAMING ACX3.0 GDDR5
EVGA EVGA GTX1050 2GB SC GAMING ACX2.0 GDDR5
EVGA EVGA GTX1060 3GB GAMING ACX 2.0 GDDR5
GIGABYTE GTX 1050 D5 3G
GIGABYTE GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 3G
GIGABYTE GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 6G
GIGABYTE GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G
ASUS STRIX-GTX1060-A6G-GAMING
ASUS CERBERUS-GTX1050TI-O4G
ASUS STRIX-GTX1060-DC2O6G-GAMING
ASUS STRIX-GTX1060-DC26G-GAMING
ASUS STRIX-GTX1050TI-O4G-GAMING
ASUS DUAL-GTX1060-O3G-GAMING
ASUS DUAL-GTX1060-O6G-GAMING
ASUS PH-GTX1060-6G
ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1070 Ti Mini
ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1060 3GB AMP Core Edition
ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1060 Mini
ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition
ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti Mini
ZOTAC GeForce® GT 1030 Low Profile
ZOTAC Z-GTX1050TI-OC-4G
ZOTAC Z-GTX1050TI-M-4G
ZOTAC Z-GT1030-2G
EVGA GTX1050TI 4G SC GAMING
EVGA GTX1050 2G SC
GIGABYTE GV-N1050D5-2GD
ASUS PH-GTX1050TI-4G
ASUS DUAL-GTX1050-O2G-GAMING
ASUS PH-GTX1050-2G
ASUS PH-GT1030-O2G
GIGABYTE GV-N1050TOC-4GL
ASUS GT1030-SL-2G-BRK
MSI Geforce GT1030 2G LP OC
GALAX GT1030 EXOC White 2GB GDDR5 Low Profile
GIGABYTE GV-N1030D5-2GL Low Profile
EVGA GTX1060 6G SC GAMING
Leadtek Quadro K2200
Leadtek Quadro P4000
GIGABYTE GV-N1070IXOC-8GD
EVGA GTX 1050 Ti SC GAMING, 04G-P4-6253-KR, 4GB GDDR5, ACX 2.0
MSI GTX1060 AERO ITX 3G OC
GIGABYTE GV-N105TD5-4GD
GIGABYTE GV-N1080IX-8GD
MSI RX460 4GT LP
MSI GTX1060 6GT OCV1
Leadtek Quadro P2000 5G
ASUS PH-GTX1060-3G
But now the most important thing. What graphics card can cope with how many 4K transcoding streams?
These are the cards sorted by performance – transcoding 4K videos down to 720p which is comonly used resolution for tablets or online TV streams.
| Graphics Card | Supported streams |
| Titan RTX (24GB) | 20 |
| Quadro P5000 (16GB) | 11 |
| Quadro P6000 (24GB) | 11 |
| Quadro GV100 (16GB) | 11 |
| Titan V CEO (32GB) | 11 |
| GeForce Titan X (12GB) | 10 |
| GeForce Titan Xp (12GB) | 10 |
| Titan V (12GB) | 10 |
| GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB) | 9 |
| GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11GB) | 9 |
| GeForce GTX 1070, 1070 Ti (8GB) | 7 |
| GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB) | 7 |
| Quadro P4000 (8GB) | 7 |
| GeForce RTX 2070 (8GB) | 7 |
| GeForce RTX 2080 (8GB) | 7 |
| GeForce GTX 1060 GP106 (6GB) | 5 |
| Quadro P3000 (6GB) | 5 |
| GeForce GTX 1060 GP104 (6GB) | 5 |
| GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB) | 5 |
| GeForce GTX 1660 (6GB) | 5 |
| GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6GB) | 5 |
| Quadro P2000 (5GB) | 4 |
| GeForce GTX 960 (4GB) | 3 |
| Quadro M2000 (4GB) | 3 |
| GeForce GTX 1050 (3GB) | 3 |
| GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB) | 3 |
| Quadro P600 (4GB) | 3 |
| Quadro P1000 (4GB) | 3 |
| GeForce GTX 1060 GP106 (3GB) | 3 |
| GeForce GTX 1070, 1070 Ti (4GB) | 3 |
| GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB) | 3 |
| GeForce GTX 950 (2GB) | 2 |
| GeForce GTX 960 (2GB) | 2 |
| GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB) | 2 |
| Quadro P400 (2GB) | 2 |
| Quadro P600 (2GB) | 2 |
| Quadro P620 (2GB) | 2 |
So I would recomend to get GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6GB) OR Quadro P2000 (5GB) GPU.
But if all of this seems too expensive anyway, then why not consider a TVS-873e or even TS-453Be with offline transcoding. Or even TS-1685 if you need more drives and more storage space. Offline transcoding will automatically generate additional videos in a your defined resolution. So, in this case, there is no transcoding function needed anymore. Here is how: https://ask.nascompares.com/question/can-i-transcode-a-1080p-prores-lt-mov-file-to-1080p-h264-mp4-with-qnap
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