Building a new Plex Media Server - Need some guidance

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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So I’m planning to build a new PMS, and I need some guidance. First of all, here is my current setup:

  • OS: Windows 10 Pro
  • CPU: AMD FX-6100 6-core Processor @ 3.30GHz
  • RAM: 16GB RAM
  • Primary Drive: 250GB Samsung Evo SSD
  • Video Card: Nvidia GTX 550Ti
  • Storage: Mediasonic H82-SU3S2 ProBox 8 Bay 3.5" Hard Drive External Hard Drive Enclosure
  • (8) Western Digital HDD’s (not in RAID)

I have another PC that is more powerful as well that I could use to run the PMS from, and these are the specs:

  • OS: Windows 10 Pro
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.4GHz
  • RAM: 16GB RAM
  • Primary Drive: (2) 250GB Samsung EVO SSD’s in RAID
  • Video Card: AMD Radeon R7 370

A few months ago I lost 2 HDD’s at the same time and lost a TON of media. When I first started collecting media, I never expected my collection to get so big, so setting up a RAID array never crossed my mind. I just started buying more hard drives as I filled them up. Well, things have now changed and I know I need a new setup.

I’m looking into purchasing the Synology DS918+, doubling the RAM to 8GB’s, putting in a 250GB m.2 SSD in it for cache, and throwing in (4) Western Digital Red 6TB drives in them using their hybrid RAID array. After speaking to a buddy of mine who recommended this particular NAS, he said I should be able to just load and run PMS directly from it, but after doing a little research it might not be the best solution for my scenario.

Almost all of my media is currently 1080p, and I probably won’t be doing any 4K media for a while. I share my Plex library with a handful of family members, and I’ve never really had any issues, but sometimes I can have upwards of 3 or 4 people connected at the same time. My wife and I only use Plex from home, so it’s always direct play.

I’m wondering if running the PMS directly from the NAS will be able to handle the load if I have that many connections at the same time, or if I should only use the NAS as storage and run the server from my PC.

Any help and guidance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

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I agree with some of the above post, but not all of it.
Couple of things I would suggest to all new plex server builders

Consider a newer CPU, even a cheaper one, and take advantage of quicksync for transcoding. You may have HEVC or x265 content that another user is not capable of natively decoding. If you want to reduce load or optimise your compute - I would suggest a newer core. Even an 8100 would be better than the 3770

Consider a software raid solution, Unraid etc, over a hardware raid. As mentioned above, losing mutliple drives can happen and will break a hardware raid. It becomes messy to recover data. Software raids like Unraid will cause you to lose the data of the 2nd or 3rd disk, but you can retain the block data on the other disks fine, add in a new drive and re-obtain the files you’ve lost.

If you are using Radarr and Sonarr etc, that isn’t a difficult task. (Also something to research for new players)

If you are remote sharing with users, I’d plan to accommodate transcoding.

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