Good morning guys, I’m new in the forum and also in the Plex world. Right now I’m running plex on my secondary pc, an old Intel Q9550 just for test, to understand the software and prepare my media. But I’m almost ready to buy a dedicated server and this is the reason of this topic. I’m a Linux guy, I have a Windows machine but I’m using linux on daily runs. I have a little Qnap 453 with 9TB of media with backups of all my BD, DVD, Music and digital purchases and for now it’s my main NAS and media library. I’m here because I want to build a home server and use the Qnap only for backup tasks for my photos and important documents. Regardless of my OS preference, I think I will put FreeNas as OS to manage/store all the datas and backups. The main purpose of this server will be manage and take care of media files and this work will be led to FreeNas. The second thing that I want is a good Plex server runnging 24/7. So, I’m here because I need some advice on how to get the most out of Plex.
HARDWARE
I had a baseline to start and I need you to understand if is ok or if something is wrong with it. I had build few pc for me and my friend but never a server, always desktop or htpc. So this is what I think I wuold buy:
CPU: Dual Xeon E5-2665 - I think 17k passmark it will be enough, isn’t it?
COOLING: hmmm, we need to see
MOTHERBOARD: here I need help. I think one Supermicro but like I said, I had never bild a server pc.
RAM: 32GB EEC - any advice on what brand or frequncy to choose?
HDD: for begin I think WD RED 8TB x 4 (to make a RAID5 for multimedia) + 1 of XXGB for other things like photos
SSD: maybe for cacheing, maybe I’m wrong but I’d read someone said that you can cache separately on ssd
NETWORK: 1 x 10Gb lan output is necessery for file transfer
SUPPLY: don’t know
PLEX INSTALLATION
Will I loose some performance by installing Plex into FreeNas vs into a VM? I think. I had read that someone had an alternative way to install plex on FreeNas, something like a “jail” ???
Use the SSD for more than caching… run the OS off of it too (I use a weekly rsync cron to backup to my raid). I try to reduce the I/O wear on my raid as much as possible. Also not sure if you can really boot linux to RAID-5? Used to be you could only really boot to raid-1. Anyway, you want to keep your RAID and OS separate to make maintenance easier as well (offline operations etc.). That being said, I don’t know much about FreeNAS.
RAM seems overkill… 16GB should be fine. I wouldn’t sink too much money into ram, and ECC isn’t necessary for plex. This is a media server, it can crash every couple months, that’s fine. Just get a basic pair of 16GB RAM from a mainstream brand like Patriot, Crucial, Kingston or something.
For the power supply… this is an always on computer, so get an efficient power supply. If you get a beefy power supply that overshoots your power needs, it will not be efficient, even if it is a 80 Plus Titanium power supply (beefy power supplies are inefficient at low loads). You’re not doing SLI gaming here, so a ~500W power supply is about right. 80 Plus Titanium is a lot more expensive than 80 Plus Platinum… so I’d get an 80 Plus Platinum ~500W power supply.
For my use cases I’m primarily CPU bound - transcoding takes a lot of CPU power. I have a fair number of users though (friends, family, roommates), so this may differ for you. I put an old Nvidia card in my box after they released hardware transcoding, but the superior supported transcoding uses Intel Quick Sync video.
Which brings me to your CPU choice - it does not, as far as I can tell, support Quick Sync. My recommendation is to ditch the Xeon platform, and use the motherboard/RAM cost savings to grab a decent Intel Core Kaby Lake CPU. Again, you’re not hosting a mission critical webserver. Supermicro and ECC RAM is massive overkill. Put that money into performance instead.
*Note: hardware transcoding is a Plex Pass only feature, but my overall CPU advice still stands.
No cpu will handle HEVC 4K transcoding, so unless your client supports HEVC decoding like a 4K Roku, stick to at least a 7th generation Intel processor. They offer hardware transcoding and will offload the transcoding for you. You’ll see only about 5-10% cpu utilization. Otherwise transcoding 4K HEVC will bring your dual Xeons to their knees and you’ll be living in bufferland.
And no, the current AppleTV 4K doesn’t support HEVC within an MKV container and Plex doesn’t demux HEVC MKVs for appleTV yet.
