

EDIT: I meant QSV Gen 7, which would be intel Gen 11. Kaby Lake and up can still handle HEVC in hardware but they have to use software as well for 4K.
worth mentioning that any intel cpu with an iGPU from generation 7 (kaby lake) and up can handle 4k hevc transcode in hardware. i just upgraded my plex box to an i7 8700K and it works quite well. an old office workstation with like a 9th or 11th gen intel cpu would probably rip through transcodes.
For sure the quality will be worse than software but typically if I’m away from home I’m watching on an ipad and then you really can’t tell the difference.