is there a reason that you are transcoding at all? it is a big drain of system resources and can be averted by just direct streaming everything. if the media is in certain formats though you won't be able to direct stream. most of my stuff is MP4 and direct streams just fine to all my devices

The majority of my streaming goes to my TV, which can't handle certain formats. When the processor was pegged it made the movie skip back in time by upwards of 10 minutes. Very annoying. Also at some point I'm going to be forced to run tdarr to free up some space.

I do think I solved the problem though, looking into some video cards, I discovered that the processor has Intel Quick Sync. After an hour of fishing around in the bios, I turned on IGPU, and set onboard graphics to preferred. Other than one weird hiccup where the video card changed numbers after a reboot, I haven't had any issues since.

The way to do plex these days is pay one of the mega providers for insane library size and managing the ball-ache of it all.

Zyf is my go to, most of the others are hosted off Hetzner because: cheap

Until the rights bodies people acquire plex it's a bonanza that far exceeds streamers. Before the Warner/Discovery merger that turned HBO into MAX and lead to the culling of a ton of great programming, piracy was only somewhat justified. Now it's practically a moral necessity. DM if you want an invite to Zyf

Two highly recommended shows you can't really see on streamers (in the US) but can on Plex:

Pantheon 🍅Rotten Tomatoes 🎬IMDb

Beforeigners 🍅Rotten Tomatoes 🎬IMDb

edit: I've tried everything I can think of and cannot figure out how to embed an image properly. ah well