I’ve currently got a very old Netgear NAS and a laptop running Linux as a Plex server. I need to upgrade the NAS, and I want to get the best one possible, perhaps one that can even run Plex on it. Does anyone here having kept up with all of the support news on all of the different brands & models and their various technical issues, have a recommendation on which NAS with which CPU is the best? I’m thinking of at least a 2 bay with dual 8TB drives. By the way, I have a Plex Pass, so I plan to enable hardware transcoding, and we usually stream to 2-3 devices simultaneously. Thanks
My research thus far suggests a Synology DS220+ with Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives. How much RAM, and does 5400 vs. 7200 RPM matter?
So I have a DS 918 with 8GB RAM and WD_Red disks and am very happy with it
I built my own server so I have a build that I wanted and using Unraid software for NAS. Unraid supports VMs and Docker and have Plex running in a docker container on the NAS. I have never had any issues with running Plex.
Clients:
Shield Pro
Fire TV Cube
Server:
MB: B450 TOMAHAWK
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core @ 3200 MHz
MEM: 16 GID DDR4
OS: Unraid 6.9.2
Ya know, you bring up a great point! MY main home desktop computer desperately needs upgraded (totally replaced actually), so I wonder if it would be cheaper with equal or perhaps better performance if I built it right? For example with a gaming graphics card best for transcoding.
That is how I started is with an old PC. Unraid runs off of a USB Flash drive. Don’t transcode 4K but make optimized 1080p version for remote users and non 4K TVs. Most decent computers can transcode 1080p streams with no issues without hardware transcoding.
depending on your requirements, I can confirm none of the consumer grade Synology NAS’ will transcode UHD stream(s). I would recommend using a dedicated NAS for media storage only and run PMS on a dedicated device where the CPU meets your Plex requirements i.e. a NUC. Last thing, imho the device needs to have an SSD otherwise your Plex experience will suffer. Of course everyone has different requirements and libraries so you will need to take that into consideration - this is a good guide from Plex…
Is that still true if you get a NAS with Plex-compatible hardware transcoding?
It would also depend on how much transcoding you do, which is driven by both the format of the file and the player you are using on the other end. Transcoding UHD down to 1080p is a much heavier lift than transcoding 1080p to a different codec or an MPEG-2 DVD rip to H264. One of the reasons I use NVidia Shield TVs is that they can play damned near anything natively, which reduces the need to transcode.
I was running an old desktop PC as a Plex server with an 8-Bay NAS for data storage. Unfortunately, the NAS had a massive thermal failure that cooked my drives and the PC hit end of life. Now I have to start over. This really, really sucks given my 1200 disc library and how long that will take to rip. Again. This do-over has me contemplating whether I still need a separate server or if a NAS with hardware transcoding will do the trick. My plan is to try it and simply build another server if it does not work out. That seems a pretty low risk option to me.
With drives being cheap, just create optimized versions of the 4K movies. The issue is that yes you can use hardware transcoding but to convert the HDR still requires heavy CPU usage. I checked in to using off the shelf NAS, I ended up building my own using a gaming MB with Unraid as the NAS OS. I have been using this for years without any issues running PMS in a docker container on the NAS. I don’t transcode 4K movies although I can using just my CPU but I opted to just create optimized versions for my non 4K TVs and remote users.
best nas. 
FreeBSD Enterprise 1 PB Storage
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