Plex server build recommendations?

[Ravendarat]

Budget (including currency): CAD unsure as to whats needed

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: PLEX Server

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): No current parts owned, no peripherals needed

 

Ok so basically I want to build a Plex server instead of constantly transferring movies onto thumb drives to plug into my tvs. I also have a few computers in my house and it would be nice to centralize everything. Id prefer to build a computer to handle these things as opposed to just buying a NAS. I had one and it worked well for years but it failed and I wanna go a different route this time. So my main question is what level of hardware should one go with for a machine dedicated to only this? I dont need a case recommendation as Ill chose one based on the parts suggested and where I decide to put it. And for hard drives is it recommended to get drives geared towards NAS or can I just use basic 3.5 drives? 

 

[Slottr]

How many streams at a time? What resolution? What kind of files?

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many tb are we thinking?

 

Normally nas drives are better, but any 3.5in hdd will work fine. 

 

 

Do you need to transcode in plex? If so what are your requirements/

 

[Ravendarat]

2 minutes ago, Slottr said:

How many streams at a time? What resolution? What kind of files?

Sorry, should have included that info, still new to this part. Id like to be able to do 4k files if thats a reasonable request. I wanna rip blurays onto it but the vast majority of my current files are mp4 and mkv. As for streams I live alone so it would only need to do one at a time

[Ravendarat]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many tb are we thinking?

 

Normally nas drives are better, but any 3.5in hdd will work fine. 

 

 

Do you need to transcode in plex? If so what are your requirements/

 

Im thinking I will start by raiding a couple 8tb drives together for redundancy and then when I run outta space I will add two more. I dont believe transcoding will be needed as I only intend on viewing on 4k tvs so I should be able to just keep one version of the movies I want. I have that right dont I? I only need to transcode if I have one file that I want to be changed to different resolutions based on the playback device?

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 minutes ago, Ravendarat said:

Im thinking I will start by raiding a couple 8tb drives together for redundancy and then when I run outta space I will add two more. I dont believe transcoding will be needed as I only intend on viewing on 4k tvs so I should be able to just keep one version of the movies I want. I have that right dont I? I only need to transcode if I have one file that I want to be changed to different resolutions based on the playback device?

Then almost any desktop can do this. Just get a basic desktop with a althon or pentium.

 

Transcoding shouldn't need needed then, but depends on the codec of the movies, and what codec your tvs can play.