Some help re:upgrading a plex server

[PittsburghRed]

So some background:

About 9 months ago I built a dedicated plex server based around an Intel S2600CP board.

Basis specs:

Intel s2600CP
Two V2 2680's
64 gb ram (I know to much but just to future proof for other uses)
One 500GB SSD for OS - Windows 10 pro 64 bit
32TB of drives - JBOD - backed up daily to a QNAP running raid
Did not add graphics card.

Updated all BIOS, BMC and Fan control settings all latest, and yes restored Bios defaults.

So here is the issue; decided to upgrade transcoding capabilities. Got a cheap Quadro P2000 for dedicated GPU transcoding.

I have been having all sorts of issues getting it installed. Eventually got it installed in PCIe slot 5 (though others state that's a bad idea?). Every other slot either did not work (would not boot) and also tried a riser card which also failed. But as I said eventually got it working by installing in slot 5 (which for the S2600CP says runs off CPU 2?). Basically I installed it in slot 5 it booted to Windows, loaded rivers, rebooted and it seemed to be OK but with one issue.

I still had the legacy VGA cable attached to the same monitor and windows recognized the two connections to the same monitor and "split the screens" with the VGA being primary. No big issue got second monitor made card monitor 1 and VGA monitor 2. So now I have the HD view after it boots to windows but i don't get splash screen and can't boot to bios unless I still have the other monitor attached with VGA connection.

In Bios under PCI config I have the following:

1. Onboard Video Enabled (greyed out and cant select)
2. Legacy VGA socket says CPU Socket 1
3. Dual Monitor Video Disabled and greyed out.

Why don't I have add in adaptor showing?

Should I change the VGA Socket for Legacy?

Bottom line I want to kill legacy VGA and just have card running video - is that even possible?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Ixian]

You have 20 cores/40 threads of CPU, why would you need to add a GPU for transcoding? If your system is struggling using software transcoding with (2) E5-2680v2's you have other issues somewhere in your setup. Or have you dedicated most of those cores to VMs?

Plex should handle numerous transcoding streams with that kind of horsepower without bringing other system processes to their knees.

The onboard video is shared with IPMI which is probably part of the problem you are having there. You are better off leaving it enabled and using a VGA loopback plug to keep the adapter alive. Then just use IPMI for console access and the external GPU for everything else. Like I mention above, if the only reason you have the external GPU is for hardware transcoding, ditch it and figure out where your problem is. You are throwing a lot of horsepower at this.