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Ryzen 5 3600 vs E5-2680v2 for Plex—real numbers inside

Dedicated Servers Locked by netop_mares 28 replies 1.6K views
This thread is locked — new replies are not accepted. (Necro-bump on a two-year-old thread)
netop_mares

Member OP

#1

Always chasing watts and efficiency. Back in my day we measured servers by how many tape drives you could stack on them.

Anyway. I ran plex on an e5-2680v2 for six years. Never skipped a transcode. The ryzen kids talk about power draw like the electricity bill broke them. My whole lab pulls less than the dehumidifier in the basement.

Here are my numbers. 45w idle for the xeon box. 55w for the ryzen 3600 build I tested for my nephew. Both transcode two 4k streams fine. The ryzen finishes faster but plex doesnt care. Its not a race.

The young people forget. These xeons cost nothing now. The motherboard was $45. Ram was $30. The ryzen board was $110. Ddr4 prices. Ridiculous.

Cloud nonsense. All of it...

pieter_rtm

Member

2 #2
  • Platform cost: low
  • Power at load: 130W
  • Transcode performance: adequate
  • Platform age: 10+ years, capacitors aging

Ryzen 5 3600:

  • Platform cost: moderate
  • Power at load: 88W
  • Transcode performance: superior
  • Modern features: PCIe 4.0, NVMe boot

As said, if you run 24/7 the efficiency gap pays back in 14 months at $0.15/kWh. I have measured this at OVHcloud with 200+ units.

My €3 VPS on Contabo transcodes zero streams. Numbers do not lie.

Containers before it was cool
uma

Member

99.99% or bust

#3
pieter_rtm said:
Platform age: 10+ years, capacitors aging

Ticket open. Waiting.

Xeon box stable 4 years. Ryzen build died twice. Bios bug.

Dont trust new. Old works.

436 days. reboot is surrender.
marcus_qc

Member

#4

Lol u guys still selfhosting plex in 2025 lmao

Just use Hetzner shared plex box for €8/mo lol

My €3 Contabo vps runs jellyfin fine for 1 stream lol

Who cares about 45w vs 88w when ur paying rent for a whole rack lmao

42U and still growing
Budi

Member

#5

Teh numbers dont lie.

Got my e5-2680v2 from Hostinger surplus for $35 adn its been CRUSHING plex for 8 months straight.

My ryzen 3600 build cost 3x more and teh transcode difference is like 2 seconds per file. Not worth it.

Old xeons are teh hidden gem of homelab. I run mine on a $20 CloudCone colo deal its amazing.

Gg wp to @pieter_rtm for teh data tho!

GroupStockholm

Member

1 #6

Both platforms are memory unsafe by default, zero-cost abstractions unavailable

Rewrite plex in rust, run on riscv, achieve true efficiency

Go and c++ have no place in modern media serving

My rust transcode wrapper has zero memory leaks since march, beats ffmpeg in benchmarks

Doug

Member

New Jersey

#7

20 years vs cloud nonsense vs rewrite in rust

Here we go again

Surprised nobody mentioned the real win: neither needs a $15/month RackNerd "dedicated" that reboots weekly

Kasper_quelle running jellyfin on 512mb ram is the real villain here

grabs popcorn, checks /r/drama
gaithrack

Member

SPARC collector

#8
Doug said:
Rewrite plex in rust, run on riscv

I actually have a Milk-V Jupiter on my desk right now. RISC-V transcoding is a disaster. No hardware encode, ffmpeg patches are experimental.

Your rust wrapper benchmarks mean nothing if you're just wrapping ffmpeg C calls through unsafe blocks anyway.

SPARC had the same problem in 2006. New ISA, no codecs, wait five years.

GroupStockholm

Member

#9
gaithrack said:
Your rust wrapper benchmarks mean nothing

The unsafe surface is 47 lines. Measured. The wrapper overhead is 0.3% vs raw ffmpeg.

Memory safety is not negotiable. Go ahead, run valgrind on your plex process. I'll wait.

RISC-V vector extensions will close the codec gap by 2026. I am already compiling.

pieter_rtm

Member

#10
GroupStockholm said:
0.3% vs raw ffmpeg

I do not care about 0.3%. I care that my bill at OVHcloud is predictable.

Back to the actual thread.

netop_mares said:
The ryzen finishes faster but plex doesnt care

This is correct for direct play. For transcode, the faster finish means lower sustained power. My 88W vs 130W measurement was at the wall during identical 4K HEVC to 1080p h264 tasks.

The Xeon holds 130W for 90 seconds. The Ryzen holds 88W for 55 seconds. If you queue ten files, the difference compounds.

Containers before it was cool

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