Introduction
It all started when I noticed my Plex server was working overtime. Even though I had beefed up the CPU cores on my Ubuntu VM in Proxmox, the CPU was still grinding hard—especially during those crucial binge sessions with family. We were getting 2–3 streams at once, and while that load was relatively light, things would occasionally stall. Buffering would interrupt movies and shows, particularly on our WiFi-connected PC, despite our robust networking setup (a Ruckus R710 and a multi-standard Optiplex 3090 handling Wi-Fi 4, 5, and beyond).Curiosity (and a healthy dose of “I can do better”) led me down the rabbit hole of offloading transcoding tasks to a GPU. I started reading about CUDA cores, VRAM, and how GPUs could efficiently handle the heavy lifting that was keeping my CPU in perpetual overdrive. The more I learned, the more I was sold on the idea. After some research, I found the Nvidia Quadro P2200—a card that didn’t break the bank. With a bit of crude chassis modification using a PCI-E riser and a hacksaw to cut aluminum brackets, I managed to cram the full-profile card into the tight confines of my 1U Dell PowerEdge R630. Then, to the terminal I went!
