I’m finally making the jump from my existing 2018 Mac Mini + external drives to a real NAS solution. I’m migrating my media to it now, but I’m trying to figure out which machine is better for Plex as a whole. I’ve got a lifetime Plex Pass, so I’m all about taking advantage of hardware transcoding.
My existing Mac Mini is a Core i5 clocked at 3GHZ and has 16 GB of memory.
The NAS I picked up is a brand new release from Terra-Master, so it’s not on the spreadsheet yet. It runs an Intel N150 “4-core, 4-thread 3.6 ghz (Turbo) also with 16 GB of memory. It claims to be capable of “8K H.265 Decoding” and it has dual 5 GbE ethernet ports.
I plan to keep the NAS hard-wired to my LAN. My Mac Mini has always been hard wired too. I am aware the N150 CPU is a “mobile” processor but looking at the Plex NAS spreadsheet, the preceding model to this NAS (the F4-424 with a x64 AlerLake-N N95 clocked at 3.4Ghz) shows “YES”.
So here’s my question: is this NAS better than my Mac Mini as a my Plex server or should I continue to run it on my Mac with the NAS only acting as storage?
Run Plex on both. Go with the one that best fits your needs. If desired, keep the other as a test / backup server.
FWIW, I’ve a N100 mini-PC running Ubuntu. It transcodes and tone maps 4K HDR media just fine. It can also decode AV1 video, which the i5 8th gen in the Mac cannot..
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That’s the thing: spec-wise I’m not sure which better meets my needs. I’m the primary in-home user but I do give access to my friends & family with 4K content, so I’d prefer the experience to be seamless.
I’ve never ran 2 Plex servers simultaneously. Are you able to expand on why that may be a good idea and any caveats? Thanks.
Running them side by side lets you compare which works best for you.
It also lets you perform a graceful migration with time to correct things instead of a hot cutover where you’re frantically trying to fix whatever is broken.
Fire up Plex on the new NAS.
Use it yourself. Make sure it is stable, plays everything it should, transcodes as needed, etc. Tweak/experiment with settings/options, etc. Get used to how to install/update/downgrade Plex on a Terramaster NAS versus a Mac. If something breaks, no big deal as you’re the only one using it.
Once you’re happy with the new server, share some libraries with one or two friends/family and see how it works for them.
Once they’ve tried it out, you can decide if you want to move everyone over to PMS on the NAS. If so, run them side by side for a couple weeks to let people move over, then decommission PMS on the Mac (or just unshare the libraries).
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Running a graceful, gradual cutover sounds like a good idea. I can run it just for me for a bit, then see how it fares with a friend or two, before making a final decision.
