Hello,
I’m new here and wish someone can help me!!
what kind of hardware do I need to build a Plex
(CPU PassMark, RAM, Graphics card, etc…)
Not sure what OS will I use (FreeNas or Windows Server), probably FreeNas.
will have around 50 streams (that may run at the same time).
all streams will be from TVs on the same network, don’t know if transcoding will be needed or not.
will be playing videos of 1080p (Full HD)
Thanks in advance for your help 
If you’re going to be doing that many streams you’re going to need hardware transcoding, so even as a FreeNAS person I’m going to recommend you stick with Linux instead. Using TV sets as clients will actually increase the chances of transcoding being needed I think, because Smart TV Plex clients generally having support for less codecs and subtitle types. Then again, if you know your clients (like this is a standardized install of fifty LG model XXXX TV sets) then you can encode in formats you know they all can direct play. If this is BYOD, then it can be anything and the only safe bet will be encoding to 8-bit h264, AAC or AC3 audio, and stay below 10, maybe 20 mbps for stream size if you’re not building for transcoding.
lol@ using Windows for this.
Hello,
Thanks for your reply.
yes, probably all TV will be LG of the same model.
so, in this case
it is better to do a pre-transcoding (optimization) for all the videos.
In that case if I understand well, the server will not need to do any live transcoding and will be directly playing the transcoded files, right??
So, in that case what is the CPU pass mark, RAM, graphics card needed for the server.
Is it important to have high-end graphics card, or the CPU can handle this load?
I wish I can use an old workstation to handle this
Example:
HP Z800
Super link…
Here’s another one:
Thanks but , this is not an answer for my question !
If Plex Can only be used for personal stuff
any Idea what can be used for enterprise ?
Funny enough, I have an old Dell server here with me that might have this same processor specs (2xW5560). Can’t look at the specs sheet at the moment.
I would wonder about the RAM and how much storage you are going to be using. Remember the old FreeNAS adage – “1 GB of RAM per TB of storage managed”. I know that is very conservative thinking, but even if we stretch that a bit that that is not much space. What ZFS will you be using? I have mirrored pairs over here (2x2x10TB). But maybe you are thinking of a different ZRAID setup?
I think that I will be using 3 Disk each of 4TB in a similar to RAID5
RAM is not the big deal
my main concern
with the described usage, will the plex be doing online transcoding or no?
will those processors be able to handle 50 streams at the same time?
If you have things optimized for the clients they wont be trascoding. I would think it would work but I can’t say. I don’t know how much processing 50 streams would be as I have never run my server as a service for anyone outside my home. 
So the most I have is only a couple streams at a time.
A powerful Plex server should have little trouble with 50 streams if the streams are all able to direct play on their respective clients. However there is a potential bottleneck and that is network pass-through. If the bitrate is moderately high then 50 video streams could place quite a strain on on the pass-through of most consumer grade routers.
I really think if you are planing for 50 streams you need to not be looking at consumer grade computers, routers or software. There is commercial grade software that is actually designed to handle 50 or more streams or more. There is software that can do load balancing between several servers and go much higher than 50 streams if needed.
Plex is not really designed to go that high and neither is Emby or any other client/server system that is designed for just regular Joes.
Do what you want but I believe that Plex just will not do what you are trying to do very well.
Thanks for your reply
Hello,
about the network point
Server and Clients will be on the same Network so no routers used
only one Switch
if you know a names of software that is business-oriented and can handle large # of steams,
please tell me what it is?
Thanks
Everything Plex does on the network goes through both the router that is the base of the network and also through the Plex server. The route for data is: Storage->Router->Server->Router->Client. The router part between the storage and server may not be used if the storage is directly connected to the server. The switch is also a potential bottleneck depending on exact network architecture.
Just remember the router’s job is to get the data packets from one device on the network to another on that network and to do that the data packets must go through the router.
As far as the enterprise software I do not know the names, I have never had the need, but I am sure you can find plenty with a little Google searching or even better a search using an independent search engine like DuckDuckGo or StartPage.
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