Socket LGA 2011 single socket can support E5-2600 CPU’s up to 22 cores. It provides power efficiency, a Micro-ATX form factor, and a dedicated IPMI Port for management. The Supermicro X10SRM-F motherboard is perfect for our Plex Media Server needs, it fits in with most of our criteria above. However, if you are putting together a multi-purpose Plex server like us, we recommend the Supermicro X10SRM-F. If you are building a dedicated system utilizing the Intel 9600K CPU, the Asus Prime Z390-A is a good board to have. Best Plex Media Server Motherboard/System Board Considerations We sourced our Xeon off eBay for our old ESXi server build, and it is still running strong after a year. Newer variants of Intel Xeon processor can be costly if bought brand new, you can often find used deals on eBay. It has a TDP of 135 W and includes 35 MB Intel Smart Cache, which suits our purpose. E5-2690 is a 14 core processor with a base speed of 2.60 GHz and a boost speed of 3.50 GHz. We will be using the E5-2690 V4 Xeon Processor in this build. We are going with a socket LGA 2011 motherboard for our build, here is a full list of Xeon 2600 V4 processors that this motherboard can support. Honestly, we feel that it would be a waste to build a computer dedicated to Plex as it may be sitting idle most of the time except while transcoding, and even then, the graphics card does the transcoding. Xeon is built for servers and provides many more cores for running additional virtual machines. Here are also the top considerations and thoughts that went into building this new VMware ESXi server.īest Plex Media Server Processor/CPU ConsiderationsĮven though the best-dedicated media server processor is probably a Core i5 or i7 with a Quick Sync integrated GPU (iGPU) like the Intel Core i5 9600K, we love utilizing the Xeon for any server builds. Here are the components that are going into our new ESXi Plex Media Server. It will also be a backup server for our primary VMware ESXi File Server. We intend to use this extra capacity to run virtual lab machines in the future.

Our new build will be much more powerful more cores and memory capacity for additional VM’s.

Plex media server build cpu xeon