Looking for input on Plex "server" build

[Maverickfftytwo]

Budget (including currency):  Price conscious but flexible. 

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Plex Media 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):  My Plex server is currently an Intel NUC7CJYH (Celeron J4005 CPU) with 4GB of RAM, a 250GB Samsung SSD, and a 1TB Western Digital external HDD. I also have a 4TB 3.5" Western Digital Green internal HDD in a FIDECO external HDD enclosure that I plan to add to it soon, but I'm currently organizing and removing data from this drive onto my Synology NAS, I'm doing this as the 1TB drive is almost full. Also, I have a lifetime Plex Pass so hardware transcoding is available to me. Most of my media is 1080p and h.264.

 

My current Plex server solution was a bit of an eBay special (as in it wasn't something I was intending to implement, but I got a great deal on it) and it's serving it's role very nicely. Every member of my household can have their device streaming from Plex without any issues, IIRC the CPU load gets up to 60-80% when doing that. My main issue with it and my desire for upgrading is that my path forward for increasing my storage revolves around external drives, and I don't really want to keep collecting external drives like I'm currently doing. They clutter up my entertainment center area where everything is setup. My only other issue is that I would like to extend the use of my Plex server to close family or friends (like 3 or 4 households) and I'm not sure how well the NUC could handle the potential additional load. 

 

So, due to all that, here's what I'm looking at putting together.

 

CPU: Intel Pentium Gold G5420 3.8 GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($64.03) 
Motherboard: ASRock H370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($109.99) 
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2400 CL16 Memory  (Purchased For $0.00)

Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($39.99) 
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB OC Video Card  ($0.00) 
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($86.98) 
Power Supply: Fractal Design Ion SFX-L 500 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply  ($99.99) 
Total: $400.98

 

Here are my reasons for my choices so far...

 

CPU: It has Intel Quick sync for transcoding and it's inexpensive while also being much more powerful than the Celeron J4005 that I'm currently using. I figure it should handle things and if not I could upgrade CPU's or use GPU transcoding.
Motherboard: It simply has enough SATA ports to populate all the drive bays available in the case. The only other motherboard I see that also does is the Z390M version of this board and it's more than twice the price.
Memory: I already have this RAM as a leftover from another build.

Storage: Boot drive & metadata storage. Using a NVME drive doesn't disable a SATA port according to ASRock's user manual.
Video Card: I have this with a $0 price tag because I don't actually plan to purchase it, at least right off the bat. This is a placeholder for if I decide to move to GPU transcoding. I need to see the actual usage of the server before I would buy this.
Case: It looks good, it's small, and it appears to have nice airflow for all the components. Most importantly, it can have six 3.5" hard drives in it.
Power Supply: Same PSU I used in another build and I liked it. I figure going with SFX over ATX will give a little more room for cables, the GPU, and air flow.

 

For hard drives I'll probably start out by just putting my WD Green 4TB drive in it for storage, but from there I can add whatever. I'm planning to just use the drives as a single storage pool and not a RAID setup. It's not irreplaceable data that I always need access to so I figure a periodic backup is good enough. I currently have a Backblaze B2 subscription which allows me to backup unlimited data from a single PC for like $10 a month. Currently it's installed on my work PC and if I mount the NAS as a drive on my work PC I can backup both. I figure something similar can be done with the Plex server and that way I'll have a backup in case of a drive failure, but again it's not irreplaceable data so it's not that big of a deal.

 

So what do you think? I know I could go much more powerful from this point but it seems like that might be overkill considering what's working currently. Price wise this is already a bit more of an investment than the $100 I spent on the NUC (ready to run) but I think it gives me a ton of flexibility moving forward, and I think it should allow me to share my server without worry.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Since you have quicksync, no need to have the nvidia gpu, Id take it out to save power.

 

Id probably try to go i3 9100, not much more, and a good amount faster if you need to use cpu power(will come in handy)

 

Look at storage spaces for storages, let you make one big pool, and easy to manage and upgrade. Id personally run linux, but storage spaces is what I run on windows systems.

 

Have you tested restores on backblaze? Make sure it has a reasonble restore plan. Make sure to test youre backups.

 

 

[Jumballi]

I'd go with a core i5, if at least not a core i3. Just with the amount of data throughput that these CPU would be able to handle.

Since you're going with a GPU you already have, I'd also consider switching to ryzen, since most ryzen 3 are 4 cores and 8 threads, which you'd have to go to the intel i3-10300 to get. A bit cheaper, especially if you go used.

[LIGISTX]

Lots of info to convey here, but I’ll start with your ideas are sound and valid. Good thought process and good plan forward. I would also go with an i3 since the cost is not much more, and it may be handy if you evolve your “homelab” over time.

 

To put Plex into perspective tho..... the homelab in my sig is an older i3, and with that I am running ESXi as my hypervisor, Freenas, 3 Ubuntu VM’s, and a windows 10 LTSC VM all under it.... and my i3 is plenty fast for all of that. Plex lives on one of the Ubuntu VM’s, and I only give that VM 2 threads and 3 Gb of ram and I can transcode 3-4 1080p streams down to 720p at once. So, ya, don’t really need much power and you have understood that and specked a solid build based on that.

 

Intel vs AMD tho, that is harder. I think your opinion on intel for the use of their hardware encoder is a good choice. You really don’t need more cores or more power then a modern i3; seeing as I can direct play as many streams as I want and transcode 3 at once literally on half of an old i3 without even using hardware transcode as I don’t have Plex pass.  

[Maverickfftytwo]

55 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Since you have quicksync, no need to have the nvidia gpu, Id take it out to save power.

 

Id probably try to go i3 9100, not much more, and a good amount faster if you need to use cpu power(will come in handy)

 

Look at storage spaces for storages, let you make one big pool, and easy to manage and upgrade. Id personally run linux, but storage spaces is what I run on windows systems.

 

Have you tested restores on backblaze? Make sure it has a reasonble restore plan. Make sure to test youre backups.

 

 

As I mention in the OP I will only consider adding the GPU if I find the CPU struggling to keep up. I don't really expect that. I'm glad we're on the same page about the ideal setup omitting the GPU.

 

The 9100 is the CPU I originally considered. Although it is 2x the cost of the Pentium, but as they're both fairly cheap that isn't a huge difference in the budget. I'll probably buy the 9100 if I feel like spending the extra cash when it comes time to buy, but for now I wanted to plan around the Pentium.

 

That's the plan if I run Windows. I'm currently running Windows on the NUC and it seems fine, but Linux (unraid probably) does seem like the better route. So far my only experience with Linux is a Retropi, and IMO that barely counts.

 

Backblaze has worked well when I've tested it, thanks for the advice though! It is important to verify.

[Maverickfftytwo]

42 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Lots of info to convey here, but I’ll start with your ideas are sound and valid. Good thought process and good plan forward. I would also go with an i3 since the cost is not much more, and it may be handy if you evolve your “homelab” over time.

 

To put Plex into perspective tho..... the homelab in my sig is an older i3, and with that I am running ESXi as my hypervisor, Freenas, 3 Ubuntu VM’s, and a windows 10 LTSC VM all under it.... and my i3 is plenty fast for all of that. Plex lives on one of the Ubuntu VM’s, and I only give that VM 2 threads and 3 Gb of ram and I can transcode 3-4 1080p streams down to 720p at once. So, ya, don’t really need much power and you have understood that and specked a solid build based on that.

 

Intel vs AMD tho, that is harder. I think your opinion on intel for the use of their hardware encoder is a good choice. You really don’t need more cores or more power then a modern i3; seeing as I can direct play as many streams as I want and transcode 3 at once literally on half of an old i3 without even using hardware transcode as I don’t have Plex pass.  

Thanks for the reply!

 

It's really easy to overkill simple things like this so I appreciate you recognizing that I'm not asking this thing to handle the kind of work load I need my 3700x work PC for, lol. Still, you're probably right that I'm going a little too conservative with the Pentium, even if it were just from a price to performance aspect and not outright performance. The Celeron J4005 handling things as well as it did gave me quite a bit of confidence in not needing to go big with the CPU.