I have a Synology DS216j unit running plex and I’ve been very happy with it however it was only used as a server to watch my content on my TV but now the family want access and to having it supporting everyone in my house and a few family members remote accessing its time to build a dedicated server.
The new server must be able to do all the transcoding and be powerful enough to stream to some smart TV’s, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV stick and a few smart phones and chromecast as my family want the choice of where to watch and on what device. I’d have no more that 10 active connections if everyone watches at the same time, lol.
I’m not looking for a list of what to buy I’d just like some advice as to what CPU I’m looking at and how much system RAM I’d need, judging from what I’ve read I don’t need a graphics cards as plex doesn’t use the GPU and a onboard graphic and sound card is fine. Also what PSU shouls I look at, would a 500W be fine? I have 2x8TB Western Digtial Red Hard Drives in the synology (in RAID) and will be adding 2x8TB drives to make 16TB on RAID in total.
Also Windows 10 or 7 or Windows Server?
I just need something that can cope with all the connections and streaming the content I have, I only ask for it to do any transcoding as some of the TV’s are older model smart TV’s.
Ohh 1 more thing, I don’t do 1080 stuff, its all AVI, MP4, MKV etc with an average file size of 700mb-1.2gb.
Difficult to estimate what type of CPU you would need in such setup. If you want to really know for sure what the minimum passmark number you’d need you’d have to get down to the fine-details on what and each of the clients support and does not - and compare that to your files (codecs especially). As long as the streaming is done via Direct Play, and you have the network capability for it (both internally and especially externally with upload speed) a CPU above 5k in passmark such as a small NUC connected to your NAS would have no issues. But if there will be 10 concurrent transcodes (both video and audio), albeit perhaps not 1080p in high bitrate, that can easily take you way, way, past 10k in passmark score (and a totally different type of setup, more arching towards a real server).
If you want a unified NAS+PMS box, look at my signature for an example of what I’d recommend. You can do whatever you want with drives, but if I were you I’d max it out with 6x 8TB drives since changing the drive arrangement after the fact is difficult with FreeNAS (however swapping up in size is easy). Only other change is that in this day and age I’d go with an LGA1151 solution, so you’d adjust the MB (E3C236D2I), CPU and RAM (start with 16GB but with 6x8TB 32GB might be wise) appropriately.
