Why does plex max my CPU on my server. Any shitty computer should be able to play videos. Aight?

Why does plex max my CPU on my server. Any shitty computer should be able to play videos. Aight?

its encoding on the fly

It means your streaming in a codec that is not able to be processed defaultly by whatever device you are watching the movie on. Plex will transcode it into a format that is understood (which is basically like converting the movie on the fly)

Transcoding is very hard work. It's also bad if your device doesn't support direct play, or you've neglected to enable it. You can also try lowering the quality of the transcoding to say 4Mbps, rather than the default 10Mbps

Ah I see.

Usually helps. Didn't understand why it would be that heavy though.

Uninstall hyper-v.

>hyper-v
>linux-server

transcoding like others said most likely

if you have any decent cpu and you are the only user it shouldnt be a problem, i watch x265 stuff all the time from plex on devices not supporting it and i have no issues, just loads few seconds longer than x264 before playing the file due to transcoding, and the cpu is a old core 2 quad based xeon

plex has a fucking faq for this shit. in a nutshell, you'll need to look up your cpu on cpubenchmark.com. now, for every 1080p stream you plan on doing, your cpu will need at least 2000 points on cpubenchmark.com. so if you plan on doing just one 1080p stream, your cpu should score at least 2000. for 2 simultaneous streams, you need at least 4000. if your cpu has the proper score and its still acting up, then there's something else wrong.

Related question, does this seem like a suitable build for a home media server? It's a little overkill, but I wouldn't buy all the hard drives at once.