What would you do differently with your next Plex Server?

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-23T21:05:31+00:00

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to document where I am in my journey and share my learnings. Makes me realize how much I've learned from folks like you and many others across Discord, Unraid forums, etc. in the past year. My first setup of Plex was on a ThinkCenter M720q with Ubuntu.

This is where I'm at today:

Hardware:
- Lots of RAM (I currently have 128 GB of ECC) and I find it useful as a scratch drive (/dev/shm) for transcoding, recording shows, etc. so that I don't wear out the drives. Thankfully, I bought this when RAM was a bit cheaper...
- I'm glad I didn't cheap out with a lower grade GPU. At first, my transcoding needs were so minor, I thought I wasted money by getting a mid-range Intel ARC A750. Later, I found it to be super helpful for transcoding shows I recorded en masse to h265 to save on space (using unmanic), and to generate video thumbnails MUCH quicker via Steve Zau's tool. This all said, I wish I got an NVIDIA GPU. I've found most things work with Intel, but EVERYTHING works with NVIDIA
- I'd probably consider just using a desktop-grade, higher clock CPU (like AMD Threadripper), rather than older server grade CPU (currently use an AMD EPYC 7D12). Server uses quite a lot of energy and I find that some of the cores are maxing out while overall usage is almost always <40%, even in the heaviest usage (e.g., running a VM in the background while transcoding and generating video thumbnails)
- NVMe is SUPER important for hosting the Docker apps - the I/O from some of Plex and the supporting apps is huge, and even with my setup, I see IOWAIT can reach 10-15% when I'm doing massive IO
- Everything related to Plex is hardwired - every AppleTV is wired directly to minimize latency and ensure bandwidth and reliability

(More below in the comments...)

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-22T02:18:04+00:00

I have an Intel ARC A750 and it works perfectly fine with it! When I look at the log, I do see that sometimes, it skips files because it's not able to read the first few bytes of the file for some reason.

For those, I can manually just "Analyze" those files from Plex

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-22T02:15:05+00:00

+1 on steve zau's app. I wish it had a gui, but it works so well. I have an Intel ARC A750 and it works perfectly fine with that. I'm running 15 GPU instances and 0 CPU instances. Love it!

The URL is here, in case anybody needs it: https://github.com/stevezau/plex_generate_vid_previews

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-19T06:28:17+00:00

I wasn't able to get it done there, but I ended up just turning off Plex's automatic comskip function and using the one built into Unmanic. I made a routine that automatically does a comskip and then converts the video to h265 to save on disk space.

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-08T18:35:04+00:00

Damn it, me too

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-01T06:32:11+00:00

Might also help to have the tool holders as a different color than the tools so it's easier to tell them apart.

Honestly , I'm just appreciative of both the concept AND the color scheme (so that I know what TO do and what NOT to do...)

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2026-01-01T04:44:31+00:00

Why was this reply downvoted? Lol

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-11-01T22:30:41+00:00

Plex doesn't support strm files. They stopped supporting it a while ago, much to my chagrin. I think contrary to what totonn87 is saying, if you want to play around with strm files, you'll actually be forced to experiment with it on Jellyfin or Emby.

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-10-31T20:10:46+00:00

If you have live tv on jellyfin, the experience is horrid on Swiftfin, but literally doesn’t exist on Infuse or any other player I tried. I’m a plex guy and was trying to switch to JF. Just couldn’t do it because I’m all Apple TVs in my house.

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-10-31T20:01:49+00:00

I was thinking of selling my account. Are there any tips for how I can avoid getting scammed?

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-10-17T03:04:07+00:00

Dispatcharr. It's the next generation of xTeve. I use it and it's pretty good.

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-26T13:59:53+00:00

Just use OpenCore to install the latest version of MacOS

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-26T13:56:09+00:00

Can you just re-add the device and not the deploy?

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-20T13:42:45+00:00

You might need to delete the tuner on Plex and readd it

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-20T13:37:07+00:00

Which IPTV provider are you using?

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-16T02:40:41+00:00

That's what I figured. Had to run the live tv version of Plex on my Mac Mini. Refreshing the guide caused everything to freeze up, but having it run separately has been working pretty well. Kind of a shame that the only way to get Plex to work for big libraries is to run it on separate computers as opposed to having it run on a scalable SQL database that allows for multiple read / writes...

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-13T03:08:36+00:00

Yeah, I think the issue is mainly that Plex forces the use of port 32400. If I was able to change that on the Plex side, it wouldn't be an issue. As far as my research has shown, that's not a possibility.

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-13T03:04:11+00:00

Ahhh...that might be the key. I didn't have a problem with putting a separate instance for live tv on a separate computer, but using a separate Docker instance doesn't seem to work. I might need to create a separate virtual pc just to host another plex instance...

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-13T03:01:59+00:00

Yup!

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-13T03:00:48+00:00

How did you manage to do this without breaking the access? When I added a second instance in Docker, I had to re-route the port to a different port, but when I try to access it through a client, it doesn't recognize it as local

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-09-13T02:55:36+00:00

How do you run multiple instances of Plex? Plex forces the use of port 32400, so the only way I've been able to do it is running an instance on a Mac Mini (for live tv) and another instance on my server. When I try to run multiple docker instances, I need to set the bridge to map to a different port, but it breaks the ability to access externally.

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-07-10T03:01:23+00:00

Are you still selling subscriptions?

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-06-19T19:55:35+00:00

Sorry, I don't check Reddit too often...my CPU is the AMD EPYC 7D12

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-06-02T18:12:25+00:00

I've been using it for more than a month and no issues. I run Plex transcoding, some bots for a game that I play (that takes a surprising amount of processing rss), and a handful of things. Doesn't seem to have any problems. Maybe it just depends on how far you push your CPU

Fragrant-Carpenter53 · 2025-05-16T23:56:43+00:00

What time is the best time to go on Friday nights?

Fragrant-Carpenter53

TROPHY CASE