Been trying to help a friend out pricing out a server for as little as possible without cutting too many corners. I initially was thinking against a NUC scenario due to the limited capacity for drive bays and expensive DAS/NAS, but found a Yottamaster that’s 5 bays and under $150. I also looked into a NUCs a bit more and found some great deals such as the Beelink S12 Pro which has a N100, a 4 core 4 thread 6w TDP chip and a slot for a 2.5" drive, which makes using the M.2 as a transcoding drive and such a breeze. Dealing with a RAMDisk is annoying in itself, let alone with only 16GB, as the N100 has a limit of 16GB of RAM. This whole journey had me questioning my build with an 11400, the potential cost savings I would have with a Beelink S12 Pro or similar. The iGPU always does the heavy lifting in transcoding of course, so I wonder if it’s even worth giving up 9 HDD bays in my Node 804 for a 5 bay DAS and a NUC. Or even for my friend haha. Our power bills are $0.13/kWh and $0.18/kWh, so we aren’t dealing with EU sky-high power bills, but every penny counts when running a Plex Server 24/7.
I just bought the Beelink s12 Pro 16G DDR4ram and I would advise against it.
I have a server on an old Windows i7 that’s been working great for me using an old i5-2540m laptop as an HTPC client. The problem is the card in the laptop won’t push 4k to the tv, so I “upgraded” to the Beelink, again just as the client, not the server
Everything about this device sounds great on paper. The specs are much higher than any mini pc in the same price range using an N95, N5095 or N5105
But just as a client, this device is…………TERRIBLE
I can’t even play a 4k video on Youtube, much less a 4k HDR. It has a HUGE amount of dropped frames and stuttering. Like 2 frames dropped on my laptop against 300 on the Beelink
The HDR in Plex is also bad.
I even used a 3rd part app to calibrate the colors and brightness and it looks terrible compared to my Shield or Fire TV. My TV doesn’t have the best brightness for HDR but black levels are outstanding. Using this device what’s normally black, black, is brown with a white haze over it
The FF/Rewind is stuttering and jerky when you resume a video, even on a 720p or 1080p video
The CPU load is only slightly less playing a 1080p than my i5 client but the Beelink is using almost 90% of the gpu just for a direct play
I updated the device and double checked I had the latest drivers and I can’t find anything I’m missing
If I can’t use this as a client, I can’t imagine it would be an acceptable server
I’m not 100% convinced I’m not doing something completely stupid but I wore Google out yesterday trying to figure this out. It’s possible I just got a lemon so I’m thinking about just exchanging it for the same device but I’m not sure it’s worth the aggravation
Anyway sorry, I think I’ve reached the point of rambling lol. I’m just very disappointed and frustrated. If anybody has any tips, suggestions or explanations I’d love to hear it
LOL no need to apologize, this is the type of discussion I want to see! Your Beelink has the N100, right? Maybe I’ll just tell him to possibly look at higher end models or a refurb Optiplex from Amazon. Have you used it as a server at all? Even just loading up a test file? The difference with using it to play media vs host a Plex server is that when you transcode or even just direct play, it’s not as resource intensive playing media as transcoding will utilize the iGPU instead of its 6W 4 core 4 threads haha.
Yeah, I have the N100 that comes in the Beelink S12 Pro version with 16g of ram. The Beelink S12 has the N95
It’s only got one channel ram which I was afraid might cause me problems but I didn’t hear many complaints
There’s not really a dual channel ram configuration unless you drop back down to the N5105. But the N100 is suppose to be about 25% better, so I figured the net result would still be better on the N100
My plan was to install a server on it, just to test it out. Given the results as a player alone I’m not even considering that right now
I have 2 Optiplex machines both with an i7. One of them is my server. The problem is these motherboards can’t take a processer that will allow you to upgrade to Windows 11. I can get around the, TPM 2.0 and secure boot, but in 2 years I’ll be ready for something new anyway
Almost nothing I play transcodes even 4k remote streams so I thought a lower power unit like this would handle a server ok. It might, but at this point I’m 80% sure it’s gonna fly out my window and hopefully land back in China
Edit: I was just doing a little more testing and now I’m thinking, not the dropped frames or stuttering, but the HDR picture quality is a Plex issue
These screen shots show the difference but don’t accurately represent what I’m seeing on the TV. The black level on the TV in Plex looks brown. The regular scenes in Plex look washed out almost like there’s a white film over the entire screen
VLC seems to play the file fine.
I might have to ping and HTPC guy to see if i can fix this before I send it back
Plex doesn’t do HDR Tone Mapping on Windows with QuickSync, your device has to be capable of tone-mapping I believe.
Yes that’s true, but there shouldn’t be any attempt at tone mapping in this case
Tone mapping refers to taking an HDR Video and converting to an SDR picture because the screen can’t do HDR.
These files are direct playing and if there was a transcode the server would be doing that
My TV is 4k HDR and these same files play fine on Fire TV, Nvidia Shield, and using VLC on the new S12 Pro.
On the S12 Pro in Plex HTPC, I can do 4k SDR, 1080p or 720p 10-bit files without any problems. I’m sure I’m getting some dropped frames in that content but I really don’t notice it visually
HDR is the problem and that’s where I’m getting the poor picture and noticeable stuttering
If you or your friend are still interested, I saw this S12 Pro for about 50 bucks cheaper than the one you posted. It looks like they fumbled the name slightly which might not show up in a search
I think that’s the same exact device, as it’s showing as the same price here on my end with the $20 coupon on the one I linked. I think I may just convince him towards used hardware hopefully, no point in accepting such a downgrade when a used build could come out to the same price as this Beelink and a DAS.
