I currently have my PMS set up on my Windows 10 Gaming PC - this PC also handles any downloads and file storage with additional drives.
I have an old N40L MicroServer in my tech graveyard and was considering converting into a NAS and looking into an Intel NUC or similar to handle the PMS and downloading side of things to reduce the power consumption of having my high specced gaming PC on 24/7
Does this sound like a worthwhile exercise? Or just a waste of time ?
I have 3 NUCâs
A i3,i5 and a celeron.
All have been used as Plex servers and all work well.
All my media is mp4 and generally movie size is upto 2gb .
Which Nuc works for you depends on your library and how many concurrent streams.
Other will have many more options and opinions - I am keeping it simple
I am pretty confident the NUC will be able to handle the PMS side of things.
More wondering if it is worth the change over to NUC+NAS combination to move away from a gaming rig for power savings?
Depending on what âgaming pcâ means, it might save some dollars on an annual basis. You might want to obtain a Kill-a-watt or similar device and examine the actual power usage of the âgaming pcâ. Just a normal pc could save similar dollars (possibly more), be a lot quieter and cost significantly less while providing more transcoding power (just something to keep in mind).
I have two NASâs connected to a NUC and it works beautifully. The NUC apparently only needs 19W of power as opposed to a PC running a 400W+ power supply. The NASâs spin down when not needed and have power saving features.
I have exactly that setup and Iâm really happy with it.
PMS is running in a NUC with an SSD drive streaming to an Aople TV4 and various other clients.
Data is sitting on the HP NL40 running W10 on the internal USB port with all internal drive bays fitted with WD Reds and in a storage pool.
I did look at Linux distros for the NL40 but had the free W10 upgrade license so went with that.
All runs really smoothly streaming from the NUC. I also installed a âtestâ PMS server on the NL40 as well just to testt new releases and channels in the test server before making changes to the NUC.
Intel nuc i5 + synology nas here! Super happy with the results! About power⊠I am conscious but not overly analytical about it, but I have my nuc to go to sleep after 2 hours idle time. Since I want to be able to access my stuff 24/7, I needed to be sure that I could power it up easily. Wake on Lan / wan was of course the way to go, but a little tricky to get totally free of hazzle (the kids should just be able to start plex from the iPad and then start using it, even if it is sleeping). So I stumbled across a script that I could program into my router (asus 66ac) so that every time something wants access to port 32400, it starts WOL on the nuc /server. Works beautifully, both at home and outside. I can dig up the script /instructions if you are interested. Itâs for a variety of asus routers.
@cyanopsis said:
Intel nuc i5 + synology nas here! Super happy with the results! About power⊠I am conscious but not overly analytical about it, but I have my nuc to go to sleep after 2 hours idle time. Since I want to be able to access my stuff 24/7, I needed to be sure that I could power it up easily. Wake on Lan / wan was of course the way to go, but a little tricky to get totally free of hazzle (the kids should just be able to start plex from the iPad and then start using it, even if it is sleeping). So I stumbled across a script that I could program into my router (asus 66ac) so that every time something wants access to port 32400, it starts WOL on the nuc /server. Works beautifully, both at home and outside. I can dig up the script /instructions if you are interested. Itâs for a variety of asus routers.
I would be interested in this script as I too have an ASUS router. Asus routers are based off DD-WRT so I would assume it would work on any open source router firmware. DD-WRT, Tomatoe, etc.
Watch too that just because a PSU is capable of 400W, doesnât mean itâs producing 400W of power (and so drawing a little more than that). The power draw depends on the load and efficiency of the components - at work Iâve got some (commercial rackmount) servers with 2.2KW of PSU that idle under 200WâŠ
I have a 6th gen i5 NUC running ESXi. One of the VMs is running Ubuntu and PMS. The data store for that VM is an SSD. Actual media is stored on a Synology NAS. Works great! Previously I had PMS running in an Ubuntu VM on my desktop i7 running 24/7.
If I did the math right I am saving around $5 a month plus my office where the desktop and NUC are is noticeably cooler now. Of course it will take years to make back the money on the NUC/RAM/SSD, but power savings was only part of why I switched.
Caveats: I do transcode BluRay rips to something the majority of my clients can direct play (manly Roku 3s). My server is used only by close family. Iâve never had more than 2 concurrent streams.
@redrocker1988 said:
I would be interested in this script as I too have an ASUS router. Asus routers are based off DD-WRT so I would assume it would work on any open source router firmware. DD-WRT, Tomatoe, etc.
