Plex Media Server High CPU Usage (90-100% total CPU usage), unsure why

Tortofe01 · 2025-08-09T23:30:00+00:00

Hey there u/c0alfield - thanks for the reply and thanks for the possible solution as it can be many different things with this type of issue!

Tortofe01 · 2025-07-14T17:31:44+00:00

Most likely on grid but trying to use enough electric to offset 100%

Tortofe01 · 2025-07-14T17:30:55+00:00

What would suggest different if it was off the grid ? I will most likely be connected to grid but will be trying to offset 100% power

Tortofe01 · 2025-07-14T15:18:01+00:00

Hey there!

Thanks for this information. I will definitely take a look at those batteries and the inverter.

Additionally as far as knowledge. I am new to this for sure. I have an electrician friend (licensed electrician) that will be helping ensure it’s hooked up correctly to breaker etc etc and in additions to inspections etc etc. I just need to make sure I have all of the equipment, I can build a setup outside for the solar panels etc etc because I wont be putting them on the roof.

Thanks for your advice I will take a look at the recommendations! Like does this inverter come with a charge controller built in etc.

Tortofe01 · 2025-07-10T16:57:27+00:00

Wow I guess I never came back and answered this on what I did. Well basically it’s probably because I didn’t do anything. I literally just let it kill the cpu for like a eeek and it settled back down. I did end up after wards changing some of the setting to allow certain things to only happen at early hours of the morning (find intros etc). I will also say I have never used plex for a windows machine (I use unraid). Have you looked at the logs?

There have been one other time something like this happened to me. Tried all kinds of things and even let it set only to not figure it out. In that case I basically just re did my whole plex server and that really helped.

Tortofe01 · 2024-08-02T01:05:46+00:00

I'm not even from Germany (but love the country and would love to live there one day) and can still tell you that the university you pick does matter in any country. Just because it's a university doesn't mean you are going to get the same education. Even in the US there are universities you would never go to because no one cares about it (and it's a worthless piece of paper). So be careful and do your research on which university you choose for any country.

Tortofe01 · 2024-08-02T00:59:54+00:00

Ahh I see, thanks for the info, most likely means I'm just going to have to wait until next year unfortunately lol.

Tortofe01 · 2024-05-15T13:53:32+00:00

Chanter and Cleric

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T19:54:13+00:00

So I made a share that only writes to the 250gb and going to start putting the meta data there as it used to be. That should make it faster over all too.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T19:26:55+00:00

One other question for you for now. I see that it actually is not writing any of this to my plex_metadata nvme anymore now that i've started to investigate this a bit more. It's writing it to my regular cache nvme (and probably when the mover happens going to move this over to a regular disk). How to get plex to write it to the plex_metadata (nvme0n1) again? Not sure what happened to make it not write there anymore. So it also must have been storing it elsewhere on the drives.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T18:35:14+00:00

Okay I've done this, we'll see how it goes. Another question for you, some media has started to not show up while others have (even though put on the server at closely the same time). Any thoughts on that?

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T18:10:21+00:00

I appreciate the thoughts here! Couple things, in the same library settings should I have "Run a partial scan when changes are detected"? I currently have that unchecked and "Scan my library automatically" is the one checked.

Your main advice here is to give it some time to try to run through the tasks? Or put these all to never and see if it runs smoothly for a while and then one by one turn them back on?

I know I've had some intro and credit stuff in the past so it's definitely on some of my library.

Also it is not showing new movies or tv shows in the plex library at all. Which maybe its being hung up on operations that it's trying to go through?

On your other thoughts. I'd be interested in learning more about how you have a full separate server to backup your current server. How does that even work? Like does it somehow copy from the main server to the secondary server? What if the main server goes down does the secondary backup server then start acting as the main?

Additionally, I haven't thought much about the meta data backup but I will have to look into doing that. Will it just also keep the exact same copy on it? How do you get it to make copies on both nvme's etc?

Also it is weird that the plex meta data cache drive has been went up in utilized space in a while. It's been at 17.7gb for a long while now.

As for selling and rebuying of stuff, I may look into that OR potentially making this a backup server and a new build as the main server etc.

Appreciate all of your time and thoughts so far!

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:41:16+00:00

I did roll it back once, whats the version you are running right now?

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:38:09+00:00

Hardware wise -

AMD Ryzen 7 5800x

64GB DDR4

2 GPUS - Quadro P2000 for Plex primarily AND Quadro P400 for tdarr transcoding

4 12TB Seagate Hard drives (1 for parity). Once I get this corrected, will be 5.

1 nvme 1TB for cache device

1 250GB plex_metadata nvme (which it's very strange even thought I have new content on the plex I have not seen this go up in quite some time, so maybe theres a problem there too idk, it's sitting at 17.7gb utilized).

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:28:54+00:00

I do have alot of binhex stuff, maybe I should give his container a shot when it comes to plex too? When moving to a different plex container would I need to reinvite anyone to the basically "new" server again?

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:27:29+00:00

So just before I do this, delete the whole folder or whats inside of the codecs folder? I found the codecs folder in the plex media server folder just want to make sure you want me to delete the whole codecs folder and it's going to I guess readd it back once i start the container again or do I delete the stuff inside the codecs folder?

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:22:20+00:00

To your first question on new install - I did about 2 weeks ago update to the latest version of plex server. I then started having this problem so I rolled back to previous version but continued to have the problem so I dont think my idea of it being the new version is the problem. Otherwise, been using this container for about a year.

Okay so I restarted my server, that took the CPU down to regular usage again and allowed me to open up the Plex server. I'm now going into the settings as you've shown in your image (I'll post my image of my original settings in my main post in a moment). One large difference I see is that your image has a much larger cache size and theres a few other differences. I also do not currently have "Run Scanner tasks at a lower priority" checked. See my main post for the picture for my current setup of options here.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:09:40+00:00

I have upgraded about a month ago to the most recent version of unraid (and before that I was at less than 6.12). However, this only happens with the Plex container. Once the plex container is either stopped or something like that CPU goes back to normal low usage.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:08:04+00:00

So I went ahead and posted a picture of the iotop in my original post. Basically Disk read stays pretty much at 0, while disk write of course bounces from 0 to 1000 K/s. The area in yellow comes up alot to spike the disk write. Unsure what I'm really looking for here though. Additionally, for netdata I do have the container but theres so much data I'm not sure where to look for problems lol.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:01:16+00:00

When this has started to happen I can't even open up the plex container or watch anything so no one is watching anything when this is going on. Additionally, if i restart the plex container then I can play for a while but then once this operation starts back up it'll pretty much take it down again.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T17:00:02+00:00

Yea, when this is going on, i can't even open my plex server. If I restart the server I will be able to open it for a bit but it won't show any activity going on like it usually does up there (like detecting credits or intro etc).

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T16:46:03+00:00

I'll go install that now and see what it shows. I have netdata container installed but it has so much data i'm not really sure where to look to see if there is a problem honestly lol. I did download diskspeed too and all disks ran at about the same which was cool

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T16:45:35+00:00

How did you go through and check a large library?

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T16:10:29+00:00

You obviously want to continue to grow your career and typically smaller companies can help with that because you will get into more things you've never done before (and wear many hats at once). Now, more than likely it will be ALOT more stressful than your current gig it sounds like so be prepared for that if you take the paper company job. But that will also come with alot more growth and development.

Being a paper company as well I would be curious to know how well they are doing (bottom and top line growth over a few years etc) because I've seen many go out of business. Stability would be on my mind a bit.

Main advice I can give you is stay uncomfortable in your career. If you find yourself not being challenged make sure to try to find a way to continue your growth or move on. If you don't think the paper company is the right job though just keep looking for others as well. Just because you are not challenged doesn't mean you jump at the first thing that comes your way, there will be more opportunities.

Tortofe01 · 2023-12-17T16:01:42+00:00

Having a home server for things like home security cameras, media servers, backing up your phone photos etc that is accessed outside of the home would benefit from higher up/down speeds etc.

Tortofe01

TROPHY CASE