4k Plex Nas - Asustor AS5304T Nimbustor 4 + Plex pass

[JRDR]

Hello all,
First time poster long time reader

I am retiring my old Asustor AS204T

I made the error of purchasing 4x 8TB drives only to realize that it will only support 16tb in Raid 5

So I am now forced to upgrade the Nas aswell… I had my eye on a the AS5304T Nimbustor and hoping this should be enough to run Plex smoothly.

My old AS204T didn’t like running the plex server so i used it as a Samba/SMB and installed Plex server on my Nvidia Shield Pro… this setup ran pretty well untill i tried to watch Matrix Revolutions which had an average bit rate of 80mbs it would need to buffer every 20 seconds or so…

With that said i am not sure if my bottle neck was the Shield or the NAS, if it was the NAS surely the Nimbustor should be now sufficient to play this movie along with other 4k movies i have (40-80gb files)

So the question is;

1. Was my bottle neck the Shield or the Nas?
2. Will the Nimbustor be sufficient to run Plex at 4k?
3. Will purchasing the Plex Pass aid in being able to decode the 4k content if i used the Nimbustor as the PMS

If the Nimbustor is no good, kindly recommend a NAS within the same price range that can run Plex at 4k. I also had my eye on Synology DS418

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

[skwor01]

Check out this:
Plex NAS Compatibility - Google Sheets
Your old NAS was way underrated to run anything except to push as direct play.

Your new proposed NAS should be pretty good but I would check out how you package your media and how your devices are set up. Many people still have problems with a good NAS because they do not prepare their media properly or are not using the receiving devices in the optimum settings.

Also for 4k ALWAYS refer to this post:
[INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k - General / Tips, Tricks & How-Tos - Plex Forum

Keep in mind you will need a Plex Pass to enable server hardware transcoding.

Lastly, per the chart the DS418 is actually rated lower and less capable than the AS5304T.

[JRDR]

Thanks for the excel file - this was a massive help!!

Ive shortlisted my options down to 7 units… im leaning towards the Nimbustor 4 for $709. Is it worth paying an extra 150 for the other units with NVME or other features i may’ve missed? Thanks