I’m trying to decided if I should upgrade my existing 7+ year old TrueNAS server, which for my current uses still works great (i.e. office storage, wireguard VPN server, and plex storage) or build a different HTPC on another platform?
My biggest reason for upgrading is transcoding, mainly audio (and to a lesser extent 4K). While I’ve installed a 7.1 surround sound system in my living room I just can’t convince my users to do the same. Usually the 4K video stream direct plays but the audio has to transcode to 5.1. I think that’s the cause of the of a lot of the buffering. Unfortunately, not all UHD files come with a 5.1 compatibility track.
What should I focus on? Is it worth it to upgrade my existing hardware and stick with TrueNAS? Should I build a Linux HTPC? Windows? I think I could benefit from keeping my plex storage separate from the PMS and it would give me more build options. Do I just go for the fastest CPU I can afford and 32 GB of ram?
Also, is HW transcoding worth pursuing? I’m not sure if that’s even capable for audio.
Thank you, I was reading about TrueNAS SCALE for the first time the other day.
I can’t decide if I want to keep storage separate from the PMS this time around. As I recall from my first TrueNAS CORE build, recommended server hardware, like ECC ram, gets expensive quickly. IDK if that’s as important with SCALE but if it uses ZFS I imagine it is.
ECC is always recommended if you value your data. That’s unrelated to the choice of ZFS, or FreeBSD, or Linux. Decide if you care enough about your data to buy ECC independently of those other factors.
The “Non-ECC Scrub of Death” boogeyman was nurtured on the FreeNAS forums, but ZFS doesn’t make anything worse, and ZFS is still better than other filesystems even if you don’t have ECC memory.
If you want ECC you’ll be annoyed by AMD’s “it works, but it’s unsupported, and maybe the motherboard vendor will enable it”, or by the strange list of Intel CPUs that include both ECC and Quick Sync support:
I have been running TrueNAS Core as well for over 8yrs. All of the client devices in my entertainment systems can pass through HD audio tracks, so there is no transcoding for my audio between the server and the client playback device.
1 receiver I use is capable of 7.1 channels and up to Dolby Atmos and DTS-X. The 7.1 tracks playback perfectly fine, obviously, with no transcoding between the server and client playback device. The 2 other receivers I own are only capable of 5.1 channels and can decode up to Dolby True-HD and DTS-HDMA. The 7.1 audio tracks on those 2 receivers get downmixed by the receiver itself to 5.1 but there is still no transcoding between the server and client playback device on my local network, everything is direct stream. I have no 4K content to advise on tone mapping etc…
If the transcoding is occurring between your server and a remote user, depending on the bandwidth settings you have set on your server, the remote users client playback device settings and capabilities and the speed of both connections, you most likely will always have to transcode regardless of whether they have a 5.1 or 7.1 channel sound system. If I try to direct stream remotely from my server I almost always get stuttering and buffering.
So if transcoding is bogging down your TrueNAS box and you have the money to spend, then building a screaming eagle to just handle Plex and the transcoding it will need to do would be a good setup. Just set up shares on your TrueNAS box and map them as network drives on your Plex box. That will make things more simple by not having to move data etc… and give you the HW transcoding option.
Thank you for the reply. Yeah, unfortunately specifically with my (remote) family members (the only users I really care about and from time to time personally have to experience buffering with) they aren’t willing to go for a receiver and multiple speakers in their living rooms lol…The best I’ve been able to do is buy them each 5.1 sound bars as Christmas presents over the years. (And strong-armed them into buying nvidia shields lol). So 1. It’s annoying for them to have to manually choose the 5.1 compatibility track. Or 2. If there isn’t such a track in the file, the audio is forced to transcode on the server since there’s no receiver.
Bandwidth doesn’t seem to be the issue. I have a 1Gbps FiOS connection (up and down) , my parents have a 1Gbps Xfinity connection (down only) and my sister has a 200 Mbps connection but it’s also FiOS and she lives pretty close to me.
4K movies direct stream (because of the Shield TVs) and as long as there is a 5.1 audio track, the entire file direct plays and buffering isn’t an issue. 7.1 to 5.1 transcoding is really the only time buffering pops up for them and I know my Xeon E3-1230v2 wasn’t the greatest when I bought it.
I guess I’ll price out a new TrueNAS Core/Scale system vs a barebones system with a great CPU and make a decision from there. But, also, migrating 33TBs of data over to a new system seems kind of daunting lol…Unless the ZFS drives are compatible between CORE/SCALE. PMS exclusive system seems like less of a hassle.
I also thought I read that Plex may stop being maintained for FreeBSD eventually which I guess has me concerned with building a new CORE system. But I was unaware SCALE was a thing at the time.
I wonder if there are any settings on the Shield that would allow the 7.1 to be sent Direct from Plex, and to allow the 7.1 → 5.1 downmixing to be performed by the Shield itself.
They are.
I don’t remember seeing that anywhere. Please share the location if you can recall it.
Just a quick google I found this, Is Plex dead on FreeBSD? | TrueNAS Community I don’t know if they was where I originally saw it but I think it looks familiar… Obviously it’s a 4 (almost 5) year old thread, so nothing has come of it…but it was around the time when FreeNAS (I think 11) was starting to implement Docker…
I would think your current TrueNAS system could stay as is. It seems plenty powerful to act just as a NAS to serve up files to your Plex box. If it is working well right now I would build a new Plex box, get PMS up and running on it, then uninstall Plex from your TrueNAS box.
I haven’t heard of support for FreeBSD ending either so I wouldn’t worry about that.
I was just started googling mini-ITX boards and whatnot and thinking how wasteful it seemed to run a whole another box just for Plex. Ideally, I’d have another Nvidia Shield sized PMS server. (But the Shield’s passmark score doesn’t seem very powerful and neither does the Intel Skull Candy NUC’s.)
Made me realize though, I just built a needlessly powerful personal computer in the past year or so lol. My best option might just be setting up PMS on it.
AMD Threadripper 3970x
32GB DDR4-3600
GeForce RTX 3090
Windows 10
Thoughts on running PMS on my own computer? Is that feasible? I guess the 3970x single-thread passmark score isn’t the greatest. Plus the biggest negative is the server going down more often. But I only restart the computer occasionally.
Personally I don’t consider Windows a “server grade” operating system, at least not the workstation version. Also you might consider the power usage if you’re going to leave that on 24/7 for Plex usage/remote access.
More power usage because of the additional workload on the 3970x? Like significantly? I don’t have that many users, 2-3 semi-frequent and 2-3 infrequent. Once I grabbed a 4K TV a few years ago I pretty much stopped serving anything other than 4K remuxes and the remote usage fell off a cliff lol. (Obviously, some stuff isn’t available in 4K so that gets 1080p remuxes.)
I just mean the idle power usage of a gaming rig vs. a lower power NAS.
If you’re not transcoding because everyone is using devices that can direct play you don’t really need a powerful system.
Usually the 4K video stream direct plays but the audio has to transcode to 5.1. I think that’s the cause of the of a lot of the buffering. Unfortunately, not all UHD files come with a 5.1 compatibility track.
