Which server hardware will perform best with Plex server? I expect to enjoy using the transcoding functionality and to leverage the hardware acceleration too. Although, I have very little 4K content, I would like the most number of formats to be supported and to be able to handle 4K content as a source, transcoding on the fly to 1080P or 720P or whatever the client device can support. Which of these servers would give me the most options? BTW; the QNAP mentioned above seems to be the most powerful of all the supported NAS devices on the list, I’m just not sure where the Mac mini would perform next to the NAS as the sole device.
Thanks,
Robert
Honestly, at the moment a Ryzen Threadripper 16 core setup is king, but if you want a SUPER cheap setup you can get a $700 dual 8 core Xeon workstation used on Amazon and just load it full of NAS rated drives. Plex loves CPU cores over anything.
I started with a dual 8 core Xeon E5-2670 that came with 128 GB of ram (USED). I use a small SSD for the OS and Plex Server Software, then added 5 x 8TB SATA NAS drives and used Windows Storage Spaces to create a single volume with parity to make a 32 TB drive. Then, I used SoftPerfect RAM Disk (free and mounts on startup) to create a 100 GB Ram Disk. Finally, I set the Transcoder temporary directory (Where temporary transcoded data is stored while someone is watching a video goes) to the RAM drive and set the Transcoder default throttle buffer to 7200 seconds (2 hours).
This setup will transcode a full 4k movie down to any quality I want in less than 10 minutes and the RAM disk makes the content available on the network faster than any other storage options available. It also allows you to fast forward or rewind instantly. With most larger movies only needing 4 to 6 gigs of space you can easily support 10 to 12 concurrent streams.
I just did a quick search and right now on Amazon there are five:
“HP Z620 Workstation, 2x Intel Xeon E5-2670 2.6GHz Eight Core CPU’s, 96GB memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB Hard Drive, NVIDIA Quadro 600, Windows 7 Professional Installed”
Listed for $700
It all depends on how much money you want to spend, how much storage you need, how many clients you want to serve, and if you have any alternative uses for the systems.
You can get an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 16 core CPU for $800 and a ASUS ROG board for $400. So, for $1200 + Ram you can get the core to support 6 SATA drives with windows raid for 40 TB of storage (8 TB drives with parity). Toss in any decent GPU and you also have an awesome gaming rig to boot. Plus, ASUS supplies extra software with their ROG boards like RAM Disk Caching. With their disk cache software you can allocate any amount of RAM you want to speed up the access time of the mechanical disks. Plus, the new ASUS boards also support several M.2 drives so your software load times are insanely fast as well and reduce the need for RAM Drives for temporary Plex Transcodes.
