Plex server harddrive question.

[nbouwhuis]

Hi guys.

 

I built a cheap general purpose with a Intel Celeron G1820 with 4GB's of memory and a MSI H81M-P33 as motherboard. 

 

I want to make this into a plex server by getting a bunch of 1TB HD's. 

 

My question is: Is there a reason I should go with 7200RPM drives instead of 5400RPM?

 

Is there anything else I should change? Processor intergrated graphics should be good enough to encode on-the-fly?

 

 

Thanks!

[Samdb]

Has the PC already got a drive? If so just test it out, if playback is good then you can buy cheaper drives. I have Plex running on my PC with two 1TB 7200 RPM drives and a 2TB 7200 RPM drive and there is no problem with video playback.

[Ssoele]

For playback, 5400 will be more then enough. The CPU can be a problem when you will start transcoding. You'll at least need a quad core.

[Createinator]

It is better to purchase 7200 RPM drives as they provide a good boost in speed without being too expensive, although video playback will not be hindered by 5400 RPM drives unless you are dealing with 4K or RAW video files. G1820 will be enough in most cases but it can bottleneck high bit rate videos. It will be better to go with an i3.

Hope it helps!

[nbouwhuis]

Has the PC already got a drive? If so just test it out, if playback is good then you can buy cheaper drives. I have Plex running on my PC with two 1TB 7200 RPM drives and a 2TB 7200 RPM drive and there is no problem with video playback.

 

It has a 120GB SSD that I had lying around

 

 

It is better to purchase 7200 RPM drives as they provide a good boost in speed without being too expensive, although video playback will not be hindered by 5400 RPM drives unless you are dealing with 4K or RAW video files. G1820 will be enough in most cases but it can bottleneck high bit rate videos. It will be better to go with an i3.

Hope it helps!

 

Thanks for the help. Turns out I can get 7200 drives cheaper than 5400rpm . First going to try with the 1820, see how that's doing. But thanks for the info. Now I know what I can expect

[dalekphalm]

It has a 120GB SSD that I had lying around

 

 

 

Thanks for the help. Turns out I can get 7200 drives cheaper than 5400rpm . First going to try with the 1820, see how that's doing. But thanks for the info. Now I know what I can expect

When building a media server, just buy whatever is cheapest. There is no tangible benefit of going 7200 over 5400. I use a mix of 7200 and 5400 rpm drives and I can still serve HD content to multiple clients over gigabit, even if the particular content is coming from the 5400 rpm drive.

 

So if you can get 7200 rpm drives cheaper, then go for it. Thing of note: 5400 rpm drives do consume less power and are generally quieter/cooler in operation. Though in practice it's often a very small difference.

[MrBucket101]

As said above, the CPU will be the limiting factor in your ability to stream content.

Plex transcodes media to a format playable on the client before sending it off. If your CPU isn't able to transcode at a rate >= that with which the client consumes...you'll start buffering.

[dalekphalm]

As said above, the CPU will be the limiting factor in your ability to stream content.

Plex transcodes media to a format playable on the client before sending it off. If your CPU isn't able to transcode at a rate >= that with which the client consumes...you'll start buffering.

With that in mind, it will only transcode if necessary. If the client is a computer, or a media streaming box like Roku 3 of WD Live TV, then most likely no transcoding will be necessary. The transcoding is really mostly for mobile/tablet devices, or for viewing content over the Internet.