Building a small/energy efficient NAS/Plex server

[kenshin251]

Hey guys and gals, I'm interested in building a small NAS and Plex server. A place where I can store files for easy access and where I can stream my media to my TV from.

 

I need help because I actually never built anything in a small form-factor and have no idea about size constraints on parts etc.

 

I don't need anything beefy since it's just me, myself and I who will be using it and most of the content I watch is 720 or 1080p.

 

As far as budget, since I'm not looking for this to be a beefy setup, and it's going to be hidden in a corner somewhere I just need it to be as cheap as possible

 

Another metric I want to consider is energy efficiency since this device will be on 24/7.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

[wilamu]

For the operating system you could use unRAID. 

 

It will handle your NAS requirements and you can use docker for the Plex server.

 

As far as hardware goes you don't need anything too powerful for just a single stream. A passively cooled GPU will do the job for transcoding too.

 

unRAID: https://lime-technology.com/

[Mira Yurizaki]

Ideally your files should be formatted to something most of your devices can natively play. That way there's no need to transcode anything and all the NAS has to do is serve the file. If you can guarantee this, you can essentially get away with using a Celeron procesor.

 

EDIT: Speaking from experience with someone who has a NAS box (prebuilt mind you, but it is running off a dinky Celeron).

[kenshin251]

11 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Ideally your files should be formatted to something most of your devices can natively play. That way there's no need to transcode anything and all the NAS has to do is serve the file. If you can guarantee this, you can essentially get away with using a Celeron procesor.

 

EDIT: Speaking from experience with someone who has a NAS box (prebuilt mind you, but it is running off a dinky Celeron).

 

 

 

So I would basically just have a NAS to serve files. Then would I use my Roku's native media player to stream the content over to my TV? I said plex because it's the solution I currently use to stream media over. I turn on my desktop and it serves as the server for the duration of the time I need to watch something. The hassle of having to turn the PC on and off everything I need to watch something is annoying

Would I be able to use my router to literally just share an external hard drive over the network with similar results?

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, kenshin251 said:

So I would basically just have a NAS to serve files. Then would I use my Roku's native media player to stream the content over to my TV?

Yeah, but it needs to be served over something like DLNA (I think this is the one everyone uses) or uPnP.

1 minute ago, kenshin251 said:

Would I be able to use my router to literally just share an external hard drive over the network with similar results?

I haven't tried this, so I wouldn't know. I'm also paranoid about doing this (not that I did it before) ever since I found out, at least for ASUS's routers (and I have an ASUS router) there was a security flaw that allowed anyone read/write access to the files.

[wilamu]

10 minutes ago, kenshin251 said:

Would I be able to use my router to literally just share an external hard drive over the network with similar results?

 

From personal experience, you get pretty slow transfer speeds.

[paddy-stone]

1 hour ago, wilamu said:

From personal experience, you get pretty slow transfer speeds.

Agree, from someone that actually tried thsi on a half decent router for a while, and it's heartbreaking the transfer speed of loading the files onto the drive through the network.. and if you disconnect it and push the files on with USB 3, then you have to remember to do that every time you update your content. I think it's much easier to have a small celeron NAS, and as above said to just pick the format and quality that all your devices can play and you're happy with, for instance 720p x264 in an .mkv file. You could even get a WD mycloud device... that is pretty good, and I used that for a year or 2 before I decided to get a better NAS to enable more streams to be active and faster up/down speed.

[Ben Potter]

Hey,

 

For energy efficiency, I would suggest an Intel NUC. They consume about 32W at full load with the i5 model. They are also relatively inexpensive. They are also small form factor, and pack a punch for their size.

 

Good luck! Let me know if this helps,

 

- Ben