I am wanting to create a simple plex home setup for my family, in the modern age bluray and dvd are taking up to much physical space and im running out of room on my pc hd, this is what im thinking for a setup and was wondering if i can get some advise from users on here that will have way more exp than me.
Server= Synology Disk Station DS1621+ - NAS Server - 6 Bay
Storage= 32tb
Home network= 1gb down & 50mb up Virgin media broadband
Most files we have are 1080p with some 4k blurays, will this server above be easy to install plex on and link up my family (total around 6-10 users), i have heard great things about synology and i want something that can transcode to save any headaches where i can pin there tv’s and they can watch there favourite films. Also would that network speed be ok???
Thank you so much for looking and helping if you can.
I also couldn’t find any PassMark benchmark scores for the embedded AMD Ryzen V1500B CPU used by that NAS model. You’ll need that to get an impression of its transcoding capabilities (if transcoding will be needed). Edit: you can find some information on the CPU requirements for transcoding in the related support article.
As for your network… the 50 Mbps upstream will be relevant when it comes to streaming any videos from outside your home network. Depending if you’re using raw blu-ray / 4K material this might turn into a bottleneck (I have raw blu-ray rips that have an avg 40 Mbps bitrate, peaks will be up to 50% higher). If you’re using optimized versions things might be less critical. Otherwise Plex will attempt to transcode the video.
If you’re only trying to stream your videos inside your home network, the Internet download/upload speeds won’t matter… in that case it’ll come down to your own equipment. Keep in mind a lot of TV sets only offer 100 Mbps LAN ports (that can be troublesome with 4K raw material)… make sure to directly wire the Synology NAS to your router and take a look at those other connections one step at a time.
At this time, there is no HW transcoding support for any AMD CPUs so the 5000-6000 (estimated) passmarks of the CPU will be a considerable limitation when transcoding in Plex.
As for raw CPU power, it’s well above its comparable Intel counterparts but unfortunately doesn’t have Intel QSV hardware transcoding capabilities.
So what best Nas to get to hold say 32tb or more of space and have a good comparability with Plex, 95% of time will be used at home with no remote watching
your best bet is to find one that you can afford that has an intel cpu 7000 series or newer, with intel gpu 600 series or newer (example uhd 630).
of course, it should be noted that unless you intend to get plex pass, you will be stuck with cpu only transcoding, in which case you should attempt to find the nas with the most powerful cpu you can afford. You can check benchmarks at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/
