For the past five years or so I’ve been using a 2011 Mac mini as my Plex server box. It served both as my way of obtaining videos, storing videos, and transcoding videos. Just yesterday it completely died on me. I’m trying to figure out what is my best option in terms of replacing it. I considered a nvidia shield, but need something that can run apps like Sonarr and CouchPotato. Should I go with another Mac mini, or is there something else I should try instead. I’m not opposed to trying something new, just not sure what the best options are these days.
how much are you wanting to spend?
Lots of requirements to consider:
- Number of transcode clients
- Noise
- Cost
- Electricity cost
*etc…
Personally I’ve just recently swapped my 2011 Mac Mini for an Intel Skull Canyon NUC which offers a reasonable speed boost and similar running costs.
@georgejolliffe said:
Lots of requirements to consider:
plus
- type of media files, especially which video codec
- are subtitles essential? if so, which type of subs (text-based [SRT] vs. image-based[PGS, VOBSUB])
Personally I build my own. Expensive, yes, but it handles anything thrown at it, including 14 users (most of whom are transcoding) As well as all the storage I need for all my Raw Rips
@georgejolliffe said:
Lots of requirements to consider:
- Number of transcode clients
- Noise
- Cost
- Electricity cost
*etc…Personally I’ve just recently swapped my 2011 Mac Mini for an Intel Skull Canyon NUC which offers a reasonable speed boost and similar running costs.
Have you noticed any significant advantages with the NUC over your old Mac mini? I’m considering doing exactly what you did, but the NUC is uncharted territory for me. Been an Apple only household for a while now.
@seannymurrs said:
@georgejolliffe said:
Lots of requirements to consider:
- Number of transcode clients
- Noise
- Cost
- Electricity cost
*etc…Personally I’ve just recently swapped my 2011 Mac Mini for an Intel Skull Canyon NUC which offers a reasonable speed boost and similar running costs.
Have you noticed any significant advantages with the NUC over your old Mac mini? I’m considering doing exactly what you did, but the NUC is uncharted territory for me. Been an Apple only household for a while now.
Do you plan to use the NUC as a client and a server?
*Assuming just as a server:
The Mac Mini was sufficient for my needs generally but the NUC allows me to convert files for sync much (about 2-3x) quicker which is a plus. The Quad Core Skull Canyon is much faster than all the ‘regular’ NUC’s which are mildly quicker than the 2.5 Mac Mini I used to use.
Beyond that everything else is unchanged. If you’re after a micro PC then the Skull Canyon takes the performance prize IMO. Not cheap but it can be hidden easily and fitted all my requirements. Naturally if you’re only serving locally with limited transcoding requirements a lower specced NUC might be a better/cheaper option though for the effort i’d over spec rather than under.
I can second that! Also got myself a skull canyon nuc as a replacement for my 2011 or 2013 (not sure anymore) MacMiniServer (The last server they offered). However I ran everything on windows already so the OS change wasn’t something I had to cope with.
Reading your first post I doubt that the NUC can be used to store (for a reasonable price) your media. So I’d suggest to get an external hard drive or even some sort of consumer nas if you fear a drive fail.
The skull canyon nuc should become quite affordable over the next weeks, as I assume Intel is going to bring an updated kaby lake version to the market pretty soon. (The price already dropped like a 100 CHF since I got mine).
