caribpapi

@Electronics Wizardy At home, I have 2 4K TVs, but I would want to aim for 5-6 streams total for some of my family members. They would primarily be using their iPads or mobile phones to view from my Plex server. And you seriously think a 710 will do? I have a 970 that I was going to put in my build, but didn't bother since I read so many people sticking to Nvidia 10 series cards.

Thanks for the input @Wauthar I'm assuming you're on an Intel build for FreeNAS? Just curious since I haven't read anything about FreeNAS supporting hardware transcoding. @Electronics Wizardy This is why I should have gone the standard NAS route, but I would still have to get a GPU I'm assuming since my Ryzen doesn't have integrated graphics to do transcoding? Right now, my files are in X264 format with AAC or DTS audio.

Thanks for the feedback @ddennis002 I've put in around $300+ (memory and mobo as well) so far just to experiment and now I'm thinking I could have gone with just a Synology bay. I'll do more research, but it definitely seems like I'm going to require a solid GPU for some kind of transcoding. I will look into getting a cheap M.2 in case I go the Windows route unless I can find better details on a pure NAS solution that I can run with my current hardware that supports HW transcoding.

So I was hoping to get some basic help with setting up a FreeNAS/Plex server. I don't have all the components yet, but thats why I'm here. My intention is to upload a bunch of 4K content, playing locally at home on a 4K TV and let a few of my friends view my media. I've read a bunch of forums and I need help to confirm I'm on the right track or if I'm missing anything: Right now I have: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 16GB DDR4 3000 memory My questions are: Would I need to invest in something like a Nvidia 1050 or 1060 card to assist with 4K transcoding since my processor doesn't seem like it would do the job and I would like to attempt to stream 1-2 4K streams? Although I want to setup FreeNAS, I want to focus primarily on using the server for movie storage. Would it be better if I just run Windows instead with Plex server? If Windows, should version 10 be fine? I wanted to get 2 8TB drives and 1 SSD. The 8TB drives would be in a RAID and be for movie storage while the SSD would run FreeNAS or Windows. Would the SSD be overkill in terms of FreeNAS? To avoid my server from processing too much in case multiple streams are playing, any specific settings in Plex or FreeNAS that can help such? Any recommendations to editing movie files for better playback? I usually avoid keeping ATMOS audio streams in my files since I don't have the hardware to support playback and it makes files ways smaller.