Budget Friendly Plex Server Build

[Cgermino89]

Hi everyone. Me and my sister are looking into building a Plex Server PC for our home. I'm trying to keep the budget as low as possible as well. I don't need a fancy looking HTPC case nor do I need a GPU seeing as I don't plan on gaming. I'll most likely have 2 streams going at once tops. Also I own a copy of windows 10 and I don't have any of my external drives on my network as I plan on keeping everything local. I already own a 64GB SSD for the OS and have 4GB of DDR3 ram on hand. I'm open to any AMD or Intel build as well. Hope to hear from you guys. 

[Rohime]

11 minutes ago, Cgermino89 said:

Hi everyone. Me and my sister are looking into building a Plex Server PC for our home. I'm trying to keep the budget as low as possible as well. I don't need a fancy looking HTPC case nor do I need a GPU seeing as I don't plan on gaming. I'll most likely have 2 streams going at once tops. Also I own a copy of windows 10 and I don't have any of my external drives on my network as I plan on keeping everything local. I already own a 64GB SSD for the OS and have 4GB of DDR3 ram on hand. I'm open to any AMD or Intel build as well. Hope to hear from you guys. 

key question is ... do you need to transcode files ?  ie: depending on the format of files you acquire, do the various playback devices you use support all the codecs?    

 

If you dont need to transcode, any old second hand pc/laptop will be fine.

If you do need to transcode, you will need atleast a modern i3, preferable a lower end i5 or better.

[Cgermino89]

I guess I would need to transcode some of my shows as my formats are in between AVI, MP4 or MKV

[ChuckMaurice]

I own a dedicated Plex server shared among friends, with i3-4130, 8GB DDR3 and a small SSD (and a lot of HDDs). This has been enough for 6 simultaneous remote streaming (more on lower-quality media) but struggles for people who needs transcoding (I think it can transcode up to two streams at once). For local you don't even need to worry (assuming Plex can stream in Direct play mode and don't have to transcode/compress anything), a lighter setup will do it. If you begin sharing it with a lot of friends, you have to consider performance, but if it's only local even a Raspberry Pi can act as a server.

 

4GB is enough, go for maybe an i3 (2 cores, 4 threads)

[Cgermino89]

2 minutes ago, jldjul said:

I own a dedicated Plex server shared among friends, with i3-4130, 8GB DDR3 and a small SSD (and a lot of HDDs). This has been enough for 6 simultaneous remote streaming (more on lower-quality media) but struggles for people who needs transcoding (I think it can transcode up to two streams at once). For local you don't even need to worry (assuming Plex can stream in Direct play mode and don't have to transcode/compress anything), a lighter setup will do it. If you begin sharing it with a lot of friends, you have to consider performance, but if it's only local even a Raspberry Pi can act as a server.

 

4GB is enough, go for maybe an i3 (2 cores, 4 threads)

Thanks. So a last gen i3 will do the trick then? I forgot to mention I do own a Micro ATX LGA 1150 Mobo 

[ChuckMaurice]

1 minute ago, Cgermino89 said:

Thanks. So a last gen i3 will do the trick then? I forgot to mention I do own a Micro ATX LGA 1150 Mobo 

Yes, go for it. Ours (4130) is one of the cheapest Haswell i3, maybe a Pentium will do it too if you don't have to stream to specific devices (like PS4 which don't handle a lot of codecs and can't do Direct Play right). But the price difference is low, so I still advice for a i3.

[Cgermino89]

5 minutes ago, jldjul said:

Yes, go for it. Ours (4130) is one of the cheapest Haswell i3, maybe a Pentium will do it too if you don't have to stream to specific devices (like PS4 which don't handle a lot of codecs and can't do Direct Play right). But the price difference is low, so I still advice for a i3.

Thanks. I appreciate it. Also what hard drive do you suggest for storage. I already own a ssd for the OS, but would also like to have a rather large HDD for files on top of my external Hard drive. 

[ChuckMaurice]

We have Western Digital 4TB Red (NAS range) but they are pretty expensive (something like 200$ each). I'd advice for Seagate Barracuda series. RAID1 (or RAID5 if you get more than two disks) is also interesting depending on the level of safety you want for your media.

[Cgermino89]

Awesome. Thanks for the advice. 

[Cgermino89]

40 minutes ago, jldjul said:

Yes, go for it. Ours (4130) is one of the cheapest Haswell i3, maybe a Pentium will do it too if you don't have to stream to specific devices (like PS4 which don't handle a lot of codecs and can't do Direct Play right). But the price difference is low, so I still advice for a i3.

Would a Pentium G3220 do? My buddy said he would let me just have the cpu seeing as he is upgrading to a kaby lake build

[ChuckMaurice]

Just now, Cgermino89 said:

Would a Pentium G3220 do? My buddy said he would let me just have the cpu seeing as he is upgrading to a kaby lake build

mmh, which device would you stream your media on? You need to see if they are compatible with Direct Play.

[Cgermino89]

Just now, jldjul said:

mmh, which device would you stream your media on? You need to see if they are compatible with Direct Play.

an Xbox One and a iPad Air. I'll definitely look into that

[ChuckMaurice]

1 hour ago, Cgermino89 said:

an Xbox One and a iPad Air. I'll definitely look into that

I know Playstation 4 is a pain to use with Plex because poor codec compatibility making transcoding mandatory (with poor performance). One of my friend has one and can barely stream movies in 1080p/3Mbps sometimes. Xbox One may be similar.

One thing you can try (other than looking for info) is to create a Plex Server on your current computer. See if it streams in Direct Play or Transcoding on your devices, and what performance you have when you limit your current CPU and RAM performance (e.g. by using a virtual machine and disabling cores, lowering freq...).

I guess there is multiple methods to limit a CPU to match the specs of the G3220.