Raspberry Pi as Plex server?

[AncientPistol]

Hi all, 

 

I am thinking about buying a raspberry pi to make a plex server, something that can handle a 1x4K or 2x1080p streams without transcoding. I have a few questions:

1. What model and ram capacity would be good enough for my use case? Do I need to buy heatsinks/case with fans?
2. I have an old 2.5" HDD that I took out from my laptop when I upgraded it to an SSD. How do I use it for storing the data for the server? I am guessing the Pi won't be able to deliver enough power if I try to put it in a external enclosure and connect via USB
3. What other things I can do with the pi while it is working as a plex server?

Also if you can give links to some guides that would be helpful as I am a noobie in this department.

[TukangUsapEmenq]

From here it might be work, it's using Pi 4 that's actually still a decent performer. Perhaps 2 GB ought be just enough as it won't do much other than share the folder anyway. For the heatsink/case/fan, I guess it's optional. I personally use an old laptop with 3 GB of RAM on Windows 10 to share a 1 TB 2.5 HDD just with network share (probably Plex will do the same without transcoding anyway), the fan barely spin and kept on idle even for 24/7.

23 minutes ago, AncientPistol said:

I have an old 2.5" HDD that I took out from my laptop when I upgraded it to an SSD. How do I use it for storing the data for the server? I am guessing the Pi won't be able to deliver enough power if I try to put it in a external enclosure and connect via USB

You can still use an external enclosure (make sure the enclosure support USB 3, otherwise performance wise it'd be sucks for even 1080p play), tbh I don't have any experience using Pi with external drive, but to negate that perhaps a powered (so the power came from another 5V brick) USB 3 hub ought do the job fine. Or actually, just try it firsthand from the enclosure to the Pi, you'd know when you'll need the hub.

 

23 minutes ago, AncientPistol said:

What other things I can do with the pi while it is working as a plex server?

Home automation I guess?

[Guest willies leg]

Yeah I used my 4 as a plex server, no problems as long as you don't have to transcode. 2 external mirrored USB hard drives with all the media on it, no problems at all. I usually have no streams, 1 or 2 streams going, not more than that because I don't have a need.

Also use one as a pihole and one as a retropie. Work very well.

You could probably do plex + pihole on the same pi 4 without any problems.

I have the Cannakit 4GB RAM kits, they come with a case, power supply and fan. I like having separate pi's for the separate systems.

I'd think it might have enough power to run the external drive, but maybe not. My external drives are all powered drives.

 

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Should be fine support wise, but there are a couple things

Make sure your format is somthing thats widely supported like h264, so the pi doesnt have to transcode.

Make sure you get a pi with a cooler, then use the built in overclocking in the config.txt in the boot partition to up it to the max speed. Thats 2147mhz on old pis, 2300mhz on the newer 8gb pis and the cm4 and pi400 iirc.

Just add

arm_freq=2147
over_voltage=6

to the bottom and it should work, that what I did with my pi4 and it was fine.

If you run a os with a gui, id also add

gpu_freq=750

to the end.

should run fine, might need to drop to 2000mhz or over_voltage more, but over_voltage past 6 voids waranty with a physical fuse and requires mroe config.txt stuff to do, so thats your choice

[Jarsky]

4 hours ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Make sure you get a pi with a cooler, then use the built in overclocking in the config.txt in the boot partition to up it to the max speed. Thats 2147mhz on old pis, 2300mhz on the newer 8gb pis and the cm4 and pi400 iirc.

Just on this, its worth noting for the OP there are 2 different revisions of the Pi4. 

The older one with the SoC 2711ZPKFSB06B0T are 1.5Ghz stock, the newer 2711ZPKFSB06C0T (the same as the Pi400) is 1.8Ghz stock so he should be mindful of this and overclock accordingly. Also don't exceed 2Ghz unless you have a cooler on it