Plex server: Buy or DIY?

[psylockeer]

Hi,

So at the moment I'm using my own pc as a plex server but I would like to offset everything to a dedicated server. 

Given that I don't need redundancy but just storage, (at the moment 6tb should be fine)  what would be more cost efficient to do? 

Buy a sinology/qnap or similar or building my own nas? And that case free as or unraid? 

 

Most of my media is 1080 but I could start moving to 4k

[Streetguru]

6 minutes ago, psylockeer said:

Hi,

If you aren't doing anything special you can run plex on android TV devices and just plug a USB hard drive into them.

 

Otherwise just find any decent cheap used PC to use for it, or if you have some spare parts just throw that together.

[ddennis002]

22 minutes ago, psylockeer said:

Hi,

So at the moment I'm using my own pc as a plex server but I would like to offset everything to a dedicated server. 

Given that I don't need redundancy but just storage, (at the moment 6tb should be fine)  what would be more cost efficient to do? 

Buy a sinology/qnap or similar or building my own nas? And that case free as or unraid? 

 

Most of my media is 1080 but I could start moving to 4k

Do you have a decent internet connection?

[psylockeer]

14 minutes ago, ddennis002 said:

Do you have a decent internet connection?

Decent is the right word. 

60Mb/s download, 8 Mb/s upload 

[ddennis002]

47 minutes ago, psylockeer said:

Decent is the right word. 

60Mb/s download, 8 Mb/s upload 

Personally I use a 3 year old laptop with a i7-6700hk and nvidia 960m 4gb as my plex server, I subscribe to gsuite for the unlimited google drive storage. It's $12 a month and I use a program called RaiDrive free version to mount the google drive as a network drive. I upload videos to google drive, this maybe a challange for you as you only have 8Mbps upload, I am on a fiber unlimited data so no issue uploading content. And even with your 60Mbps down would be plenty for multiple streams of 1080p. I store both 264 and 265 content and have quick sync to handle the 265 to 264 works great and I am also able to do 264 to 264 conversion on the fly with the nvidia built in to allow for resolution changes. It prevents me from having to have multiple drives and redundancy and NAS. I don't see maybe 2-3 sec delay in playback vs local files.

[Sajiko]

It depends on wether you just watch at your home or outside of your local network. If you do so, you will probably need to transcode your media to watch it for example on a mobile device. 

Synology Nas systems are build mostly for storage and not for converting stuf. Because of this they usually just have a low  end CPU wich is enough for direct streaming but struggles to transcode any media.

An custom build Nas can have a better CPU which can handle the transcode and is expendable if you want to upgrade later.

If you have an old aptop laying around, this is a good way to start an independent plex Server. Building your own machine will probably cost a litle bit more but is better if you want to expand along the way.

 

Sooooo... If you just watch in your Home via direct Stream/Direct Play a prebuild Nas is probably enough but if you want to be future proof a custom Build machine is the way to go.

[ITGuy1024]

If you get something like a qnap you'll be locked into whatever cpu / memory those things have.

I run FreeNAS for storage and Emby on my media server which is hooked to some Rokus.
My media server has an fx-8350 (upgrading), 16GB memory and a 1070. Once you start trans-coding stuff higher then 1080 you'll want a better cpu. Keep that in mind.
 

I'd recommend building your own NAS if you plan to use it for a media server / trans-coding. You'll have the option to upgrade down the line.

[psylockeer]

Thanks everyone for your advice. 

[Salacious B Crum]

8 hours ago, psylockeer said:

Hi,

So at the moment I'm using my own pc as a plex server but I would like to offset everything to a dedicated server. 

Given that I don't need redundancy but just storage, (at the moment 6tb should be fine)  what would be more cost efficient to do? 

Buy a sinology/qnap or similar or building my own nas? And that case free as or unraid? 

 

Most of my media is 1080 but I could start moving to 4k

Retired computer is your cheapest and most hardware expandable option start with a processor with an IGPU and if you get heavy into 4K you can always add a GPU to the mix my I7 6700 is my main unRAID server and plex media server along with my home assistant and it runs like a champ can't be more happy with it

[Donut417]

On 11/12/2019 at 3:25 AM, psylockeer said:

Hi,

So at the moment I'm using my own pc as a plex server but I would like to offset everything to a dedicated server. 

Given that I don't need redundancy but just storage, (at the moment 6tb should be fine)  what would be more cost efficient to do? 

Buy a sinology/qnap or similar or building my own nas? And that case free as or unraid? 

 

Most of my media is 1080 but I could start moving to 4k

Ok, so most NAS's run on low powered hardware. So Transcoding can be tough if you need multple streams. That being said, 

 

"

The Guideline

Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark score requirements are a good guideline for the following average source file:

• 4K HDR (50Mbps, 10-bit HEVC) file: 17000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
• 4K SDR (40Mbps, 8-bit HEVC) file: 12000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
• 1080p (10Mbps, H.264) file: 2000 PassMark score
• 720p (4Mbps, H.264) file: 1500 PassMark score

The CPU Benchmark website is a good resource to see what sort of PassMark score a particular processor received."

 

The guide lines on their website are fairly clear. I myself use my Old gaming rig, an i5 3570K, 16 Gigs of Ram. Id heavily suggest a newer Intel CPU or using an Nvida GPU, for the hardware transcoding. See my CPU doesnt have a new enough iGPU to do hardware transcoding and my GPU an HD7950 cant do that duty either. So I do software transcoding. It works fine for me. I run at max 2 transcodes at a time any thing from 480p to 1080P content. I store all my Plex movies and recodings on my NAS, so just keep that in mind. Plex is very DIY. It allows you to do many configs.

 

The real trick is putting your media in to a format that doesnt need transcoding. So finding a file format that works for all or most of your streaming devices. In my case, its not feasible because OTA TV is done in MPEG2 and the Roku sticks my parents have are new and dont do MPEG 2. 

 

 

*******IMPORTANT*********

Reading on the Plex fourms on 4K. The first rule of 4K, DONT TRANSCODE 4K. It takes a shit load of power to do. So you need to take a hard look at your streaming devices to make sure your not transcoding. ALSO if you are going to be streaming to devices that are not 4K capable, then you need to make sure that the content is in both 4K and the lower resolution. Because if Plex has to change the resolution, its Transcoding. 

https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-4k-transcoding-and-you-aka-the-rules-of-4k-a-faq/378203

 

[isamaro]

Personally, I found that if you throw any Nvidia Turing line of GPUs in your server, you can transcode any video file with ease and have it look great (including 4K but careful about HDR content, it will look washed out).  I paired an atom CPU with a GTX 1660 and after patching the driver to allow more than 2 video encodes, was able to transcode 5 4K steams at the same time.  

[Thirdgen89GTA]

On 11/13/2019 at 7:07 PM, Donut417 said:

Ok, so most NAS's run on low powered hardware. So Transcoding can be tough if you need multple streams. That being said, 

 

"

The Guideline

Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark score requirements are a good guideline for the following average source file:

• 4K HDR (50Mbps, 10-bit HEVC) file: 17000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
• 4K SDR (40Mbps, 8-bit HEVC) file: 12000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
• 1080p (10Mbps, H.264) file: 2000 PassMark score
• 720p (4Mbps, H.264) file: 1500 PassMark score

The CPU Benchmark website is a good resource to see what sort of PassMark score a particular processor received."

 

The guide lines on their website are fairly clear. I myself use my Old gaming rig, an i5 3570K, 16 Gigs of Ram. Id heavily suggest a newer Intel CPU or using an Nvida GPU, for the hardware transcoding. See my CPU doesnt have a new enough iGPU to do hardware transcoding and my GPU an HD7950 cant do that duty either. So I do software transcoding. It works fine for me. I run at max 2 transcodes at a time any thing from 480p to 1080P content. I store all my Plex movies and recodings on my NAS, so just keep that in mind. Plex is very DIY. It allows you to do many configs.

 

The real trick is putting your media in to a format that doesnt need transcoding. So finding a file format that works for all or most of your streaming devices. In my case, its not feasible because OTA TV is done in MPEG2 and the Roku sticks my parents have are new and dont do MPEG 2. 

 

 

*******IMPORTANT*********

Reading on the Plex fourms on 4K. The first rule of 4K, DONT TRANSCODE 4K. It takes a shit load of power to do. So you need to take a hard look at your streaming devices to make sure your not transcoding. ALSO if you are going to be streaming to devices that are not 4K capable, then you need to make sure that the content is in both 4K and the lower resolution. Because if Plex has to change the resolution, its Transcoding. 

https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-4k-transcoding-and-you-aka-the-rules-of-4k-a-faq/378203

 

My 5 year old+ i7-4790k can transcode a 4K H265 HDR MKV to anything I want without issue.  Average CPU usage never goes above 80%.  So needing 17000 is an gross over estimation.

 

But I do agree, don't transcode 4K, Plex hasn't fixed their HDR to SDR tone mapping yet so it washes out all the colors.  I keep 4K HDR and 1080P SDR versions around.

 

If Plex ever fixes the Tone Mapping issue I will happily delete my 1080P versions of the videos and let it transcode.

 

Also, if you are running the full client, Plex can resize the video from 4K to 1080P without transcoding it.

 

 

 

 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Thirdgen89GTA said:

My 5 year old+ i7-4790k

That chip also have the ability to off load that to the iGPU. Which is probably why it does so well. For someone like me I have to do Software transcoding. Which is where those numbers above come in. If your using 4th Gen Intel chip or Newer Nvidia chips they can do the hardware transcoding. Ive seen people who used Atom CPU's and just have a decent Nvida graphics card for the transcoding. 

 

Plus how many 4K transcodes can that chip do at one time? Thats the key. For me Plex is a whole home solution as im sure its for many others. I can have up to 3 streams at a time with 2 of them being transcoding. Of course Im talking 480p to 1080p content (Over the air TV). 

 

 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

2 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

That chip also have the ability to off load that to the iGPU. Which is probably why it does so well. For someone like me I have to do Software transcoding. Which is where those numbers above come in. If your using 4th Gen Intel chip or Newer Nvidia chips they can do the hardware transcoding. Ive seen people who used Atom CPU's and just have a decent Nvida graphics card for the transcoding. 

 

Plus how many 4K transcodes can that chip do at one time? Thats the key. For me Plex is a whole home solution as im sure its for many others. I can have up to 3 streams at a time with 2 of them being transcoding. Of course Im talking 480p to 1080p content (Over the air TV). 

 

 

Running my Plex in a FreeNAS 11 Jail which doesn't support GPU Offload, its 100% CPU doing the work.  I have my quality setting set to Make My CPU hurt.  FreeNAS 12 is when GPU offloading will be supported as it was just added to FreeBSD 12.

 

I don't allow 4K streaming so its not an issue, and the issue will disappear when I upgrade it to a 3950x next year.

 

For 1080p H264 standard bluray fair it will handle up to 9 simultaneous transcodes.  I have the transcode limit set to 5 streams and I've capped my outbound quality settings to 1080p 10Mbit.  If I had more than 25Mbits upload I'd let it fly at 12mbit.

 

NVEnc encoding reduces quality to gain speed.  Its also not as efficient, so CPU makes big gains in quality at the same transcoded bit-rate.

 

I never have more than 2, maybe 3 people streaming at once.  And when the streaming is in-house every device is capable of direct play.

[Jarsky]

16 hours ago, Thirdgen89GTA said:

Running my Plex in a FreeNAS 11 Jail which doesn't support GPU Offload, its 100% CPU doing the work.  I have my quality setting set to Make My CPU hurt.  FreeNAS 12 is when GPU offloading will be supported as it was just added to FreeBSD 12.

FreeNAS 11.2 has a module that enables QuickSync in an iocage/jail for Plex. They added this last year since it would be some time for an upgraded FreeBSD version that supported it.