So, I have been at this a while, so making a post to help motivate me… heh.
I rebuilt my network at the house, new router, modem, switches… time to replace my main PC.
To that end, I was thinking of getting something that would actually host PMS and maybe Blue Iris for my cameras.
I do not do 4k videos… don’t care to store that much. I set transcoding to like 720 on anything outside of our network, inside can be anything, but 1080 is probably the highest we do.
I was thinking a NUC?
I share with a few friends, but really do not notice any sort of “drag” on my network or resources. Speed is no huge concern…
Ideas?
Suggestions?
Trying to keep the cost down… (I know, we all are)
I am not sure what your cost threshold is but, I drug my heels on getting a Synology DS418Play, but having had it for about 5 months now, I absolutely love it. It does a fantastic job at PMS, can handle some cameras, as well as whole house NAS. Also has some nice apps for management from phone.
So, you will love this. I bought a Synology 418 from Walmart. I was totally happy with it, but decided to “pony up” the difference and buy a QNAP to run Plex.
I tried to return it to Walmart, only had it a week or less. I went to hell… I got so frustrated I was about to give up and got ahold of someone at Walmart that said, "we have refunded the entire cost. You can ‘dispose of it however you like’… "
So, No way in the world do I need another NAS… and no way am/was I selling it for like 350 and paying even more for a qnap… so…
I have a DS-418. It will not host PLEX, but eh… it has lots of storage and does an excellent job as storage. I WISH it had more IP camera licenses… debating BI vs more licenses.
Since you already have the NAS for storage, pick up a decent used PC on ebay. Something with an Intel i3/i5 4th gen or later, has (or can be expanded to) 8GB RAM, gigabit ethernet port. You won’t need much storage, just enough storage to hold the OS, a few applications, & Plex metadata, as all your media will be on the NAS.
You can use the internal GPU to help with transcoding H264 video (hardware accelerated transcoding). If you will be using HEVC/H265 video then you’ll need a 7th or 8th gen CPU for hardware accelerated transcoding. VC1 video is transcoded on the CPU. Audio is transcoded with the CPU, but requires much less cycles than video.
HP, Lenovo, & others make small business class systems that don’t take up much space.
There were a couple of threads on this recently. I’ll update if I can find them.
I’m a fan of separation of church and state, and use the PC/NAS model, myself.
If you go combo, you can sacrifice a lot of power if you ensure that your files are Direct Play compatible ahead of time. Avoiding transcoding saves a lot of CPU power.
Okay, so… thanks for the links… the key here is setting it all to direct play.
If it is all direct play, then I should not need a lot of horsepower, thus the PC/Unit can be a low cost unit.
Still need a good enough processor that it CAN do transcoding in a pinch, but, if it is expected to run windows 10 anyway, it should be good enough for that.
As a rule of thumb, you’ll want a CPU with a Passmark score of 2,000 for each simultaneous 1080p stream you plan on transcoding. Google should provide easy to find results regarding those scores.
Honestly, I was doing 2 streams on a really crappy AMD box I bought probably 10 years ago with no issue, but better safe than sorry.
Oh, you bet. And, to be honest, this “old pc” would do fine… has done fine… but it is a huge Alienware PC and I was trying to go smaller and… it will not run windows 10… lol.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a HOSS… but I am sure it uses a lot more power and it takes up half the house… ok, maybe not that much lol.
Oh, my goal is to build a new gaming PC… and offload Plex and maybe add BI to a “server-ish” that is small and out of the way…and the NAS will be the storage.
If everything is direct play, you need very little horsepower. My DS918+, with a Celeron CPU, happily serves up 4K HDR video to my LG TV & Nvidia Shield.
Definitely take advantage of hardware accelerated streaming. It will let you get by with a lower power CPU. The i3-8100 has the same iGPU as the i7-8700K (UHD 630). No reason to use a $350 CPU when a $150 CPU will handle things (unless needed for other tasks).
The HD630/UHD630 iGPUs in Kaby Lake (7th gen) & Coffee Lake (8th gen) CPUs handle both H264 & H265.
The Wikipedia pages for Kaby Lake & Coffee Lake show which CPUs have which iGPU.
Plex can use the iGPU to decode MPEG2, H264 & H265 video. VC1 video is decoded by the CPU, irrespective of iGPU support. Not sure what happens with VP8 or VP9. Plex encodes all video to H264.
For 7th & 8th Gen CPUs, look at Datasheet, Volume 1, Section 2.4.3, Media Support (Intel QuickSync & Clear Video Technology HD). The tables show what video formats can be decoded/encoded with the iGPU.
Okay, so, looking at the Passmarks, a Ryzen 5 2600 would do just about anything I want it to do, since I simply do not have any 4k videos going outside my home network unless “MY” ipad streams it.
So, correct me if I am wrong in my understanding, but each 1080 stream needs 2000 passmark.
A Ryzen 5 2600 does like, 13,300-ish.
Theoretically, I could do 6 at once, right?
Since I set them all to do 720 or direct stream (I set direct stream the other day heh)…that should not be an issue. I have maybe… 2 people that use the server outside of my house… and then not that frequently.
So, that CPU should handle it all day and night no problem, right?
So, if I build a small frame system with that CPU, will it need a high end video or RAM setup?
The NAS handles the storage, so a nice gigabit card, which I have, should do the trick…
I could then set that same system up to handle the cameras I think.
@jrbarnard05 said:
So, that CPU should handle it all day and night no problem, right?
You’re pretty spot on, with one missing consideration.
If you can aim to snag an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync (Google is your friend) then, as a Plex Pass subscriber, you can enable Hardware Acceleration which will render the Passmark scores obsolete. Hardware Acceleration takes a TON of processing off the CPU.
@AmazingRando24 Yep, looks like the best overall choice for Intel is the i7-8700 for like $299 on Amazon or 301 on newegg.
Then, whatever motherboard and case.
Will research memory and gpu needs and a ssd with 250gb running windows 10 should work.
Thanks for the input!
Looks like 8gb of RAM would do, 16 if it is cheap enough, then any 2-6gb video card will suffice, I have a couple laying around. So, that will make a good plex and whatever else server!
