I am looking to upgrade my NAS. I am currently running a DS1019+ with raid set up as SHR. I mainly use the NAS as a Plex media server. I would instantly buy the DS3617xsII, but it does not support SHR. I would then go for the DS2416+II, but it has the older Atom chipset, meaning it does not support hardware transcoding, and it has less RAM than my current Ds1019+. Ive seen the DS1821+ and the DS1621+ NAS’s, but am unaware if the AMD chips allow for hardware acceleration transcoding.
The bottom line question is, does anyone know which Synology NAS has the largest amount of bays, that supports SHR raid, and will do hardware acceleration transcoding for Plex?
Using AMD GPUs for hardware acceleration is not supported for Linux based systems.
Given your criteria, you’re basically there. You can expand to 10 drives with a DX517 expansion unit.
The DS1520+ has five bays and supports two expansion units, for 15 drives total.
You may want to consider separating your Plex Media Server from your storage. This would give you more flexibility when upgrading either. For example, you could run PMS on a NUC or other small form factor computer with an i3/i5/etc CPU. You would have much better transcoding performance than with a Celeron. Also, you can change your storage systems as needed without impacting transcoding ability.
If you do use a separate system for PMS, you’ll want a 7th gen Intel CPU or later. That’s when Intel added 10-bit HEVC decoding to QSV. Also, if it runs Linux, do not purchase a 11th or 12th gen CPU. There are some Intel video driver issues preventing hardware acceleration from working correctly right now. 10th gen and earlier CPUs are OK.
