Morning all!
I’m currently running Plex Media Server on a beefy dual processor Xeon with lots and lots of RAM, etc. Its a PowerEdge T630 running Linux. I initially had high hopes for running some home automation stuff and whatnot on it, but for the past year+ its been doing nothing but running PMS. It’s worked fantastically, but is definitely overkill and pulls a lot of power.
I’m thinking about replacing it with a NAS, as it would cut my power bill significantly. After some minimal research, the QNAP TS-453Be looks like it would fit the bill, and if I add back Plex Pass I can apparently do hardware transcoding up to 1080p on it.
Most of my media is 720p, but I do have a few things that are 1080p. Plex is serving two Roku boxes at my house, and I have my library shared to my parents as well who have a Amazon Fire stick for when my kids come over. Generally I’d say no more than one stream is going at any one time.
I’ve heard the Plex app that comes with the QNAP software is rather old and to upgrade it to the more recent versions (or to the PlexPass version) can be rather complicated, but I do work in IT and have a Linux background so I think I can handle it 
Any comments on my choice of NAS, or anything else I should look at instead? I don’t want to buy anything super-expensive, but can go up a bit if it would make a significant difference. As I said, my main goal right now is cutting back on my energy usage, especially since I am considering going solar at my home.
Thanks!
I too work in IT and I use a TVS-471. I have 4 3GB NAS Drives configured as RAID5. I use all 4 1Gb ports as a Team. I have the latest everything and installing and updating Plex is so easy and current. Just create your media shares and point Plex Libraries to them. It will s a piece of cake.
Just make sure you use a good ISP that provides good service and speed.
Thank you,
John M. Clark
I’d like to suggest a review of the NAS models supported, with their specs, and what they are natively (out of the box) capable of with PMS.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility-list/
You will see the spreadsheet by following the link.
Hi Chuck, that spreadsheet is actually what I based my decision on for the TS-453Be. It claims to support hardware encoding up to 1080p and some 4k, and from what I’ve seen is available at a decent price (~$500). According to the tech specs it runs typically at only 30 watts which will end up costing me something like $4.10/month to run (in comparison the server I’m using now runs at about 200 watts, which costs me just over $27/month to run).
At this point I think I’m just looking to see what others experiences are with that particular unit. All looks good on paper, but in reality?
The J3455 (Intel® Celeron® J3455 quad-core 1.5 GHz, up to 2.3 GHz) is the ApolloLake architecture / ASIC.
It’s good for a lot of 4K. It is flawless for 4K HEVC SDR and, at minimum, 1080p HEVC HDR. I think it will decode 2160p HEVC HDR just fine.
The J3455 class CPU is the limiter for audio transcoding. Some of those heavy audio codecs (7.1 -> Stereo) are hard on the processor. That’s the only caution
Excellent, thanks for the feedback. I think I’m going to go ahead and give it a try!
Make sure you get enough memory. 8GB works extremely well on Synology’s J3455. It happens to be the J3455 maximum.
If you don’t order it with 8GB in it, be certain to put in a matched (same size and speed) pair. That enables dual-channel mode and helps because the ASIC (transcoding) can run on the memory bus while the CPU is doing other things. It’s a notable gain
hi 16 gb has been found to work 8gb x2 sticks
even with 2 gb the 2 intel chips and 4 cpus work great
Yep I can confirm I run mine with 16GiG ram and runs perfect…streaming outside the local network is good as long as you have the up speed…would definitely recommend
Agreed. 16 gb works
This thread was due to close long ago.
Closing now.
