I’ve been using plex for a while now, but just recently I’ve considered streamlining my setup for home use. I occasionally watch movies on the system - and sometimes I’d like to watch them in 4k. I also watch a lot of tv shows via plex, but those are much easier to handle.
As of right now this is what I have:
Intel NUC NUC5i5RYH with 16gb of ram and 250gb ssd running Windows 10 pro and latest version of plex server.
I have a seagate 3tb nas - this is nearly filled and it’s quite old now. Lately it’s seems to be running hotter and louder, and it may be time to look into replacing/upgrading it anyway.
I typically don’t do more than 1 stream, but occasionally two are going on at once.
So - if i’m considering getting more space already, is it sufficient to continue to let the NUC be my server and have a drive that I store the data on - or do I need to remove this from the equation to handle the 4k aspect? Do I switch to a USB 3 drive and plug directly into the NUC? or should I switch to a NAS - if so, what?
I did the thought experiment this way. I considered how long it takes me to move, over GB ethernet in my house, an average 4k video file, let’s say 18 GB in size. It was pretty clear that I can copy that file between computers in about 5 minutes.
But when I watch that film, I’m only asking to get the whole thing in 2 hours.
So I think your NUC is fine with remote mass storage on NAS or USB 3,
as long as you have only 1 user and are not transcoding the 4k.
Occasional 2 4k streams? You’ll want SSDs on the NUC for read and write cache.
If you must transcode, your NUC with Core-i5 is really nice only if it also has has a HEVC hw decoder chip. Does it? If not, transcoding on the fly is out, even for 1 user.
I hope I made some sense. It’s late, and this is a long topic.
An SSD read (and/or write) cache is not going to improve playback performance for Plex unless the same videos are being played back repeatedly. Most of the cache configurations I’ve used (SSD cache on a NAS, and SSHD drives) typically only copy a file to the cache if it is repeatedly accessed.
I think an SSD cache is great for speeding up loading of library content (posters, and other metadata) and for a transcoder cache if you have the ability to configure that (I cannot on my Synology). But it will have negligible affect on direct playback.
I would say the 4k is typically a direct play as my network is running 1gb and both the NUC and my NAS are hard wired. There is some loss as it’s going through a switch due to a whole different scenario haha. My wireless should be quick enough as well though, as I just dumped 30gb to my drive recently, in under a 2hr mark (I walked away so I didn’t notice how long) I have typically have the bandwidth at home for it, unless I happen to be doing some other things - but I try to avoid that when I want to watch a movie at its best haha.
I don’t currently envision the need for the two 4k streams, as it just doesn’t seem to come up much at my house. I’m sure it COULD but it hasn’t yet, so I’m not inclined to worry about it.
I agree with @nibbles that your NUC is probably fine. I would lean more towards a NAS than a USB 3 drive for future expansion of storage, and that way you can re-use the drive in your current NAS (assuming it’s still viable)
If you continue to use the NUC as a server, then you don’t necessarily need one of the more expensive NAS units that can handle video transcoding. The biggest 4K movie I have direct played so far is only 60Mbps so your single gigabit connection on the NUC is more than sufficient to handle the simultaneous up and down throughput of most any 4K file from a NAS.
Following that link to the processor specs there is a spec for Intel Quick Sync Video which should allow you to enable hardware transcoding with a Plex Pass subscription. So you should be good to go with that NUC, however I am not sure it supports HDR?
A switch won’t cause a loss of gigabit signal unless the switch is a Fast Ethernet switch (100Mbps) But it sounds like you might have more going on in your network
Oh nice it has QSV. Enable Hardware decoding on the PMS, and force it to do so by having the player demand a 480p stream from a 1080p origianl, then open the Dashboard details and see if it says Transcode (hw).
Do the same test but ask it to play at 480p a 4K original. Does it HW transcode that?
Test with reasonable streams, under 20 Mbps if you have em.
I have a little bit of a bottleneck that is occuring because of my FIOS setup. I have it going into a google wifi mesh system, but it’s double natting on me and it’s been a nightmare to adjust settings. So, I suffered some speed loss. I have more than enough typically, so I just gave up on it. Ideally, I should just call verizon and have them switch me to an over ethernet connection and then I can bridge everything properly. I just don’t want to deal with them.
I was considering going the NAS route - something basic from someone like synology or any of those companies would be fine and just toss in the sized drives I want? I hadn’t considered pulling the drive out of the current one, I can probably copy it off and format it and swap it though - good idea.
Gotcha, yeah I have AT&T (the only option in my neighborhood) but luckily I was able to set their router to IP passthrough mode and use my own router without any issues.
