Has Plex matured enough to utilize SSD Cacheing on the Synology NAS? I notice my 718+ struggles sometimes when I first load up Plex on a Roku the drives are thrashing looking for whatever it needs? Then it’s usually smooth sailing with a few delays especially after watching a long show or movie. The reason I ask is if I decide to share my Plex with a few others that a functional SSD Cache will help. I know the 718+ doesn’t nativity support a SSD Cache unless I swap a drive out loosing the redundancy (I think Synology misrepresent the feature on this model) or I have to get a expansion box to put the SSD in. I was thinking of just upgrading to a 4 bay with M2 support? But it would be a waste of money there was never going to be any benefit.
At this time, only Synology can control how the SSD cache can be used. There is no support to manually choose what does and does not go on the cache. My understanding is that it operates as a typical cache; frequently accessed files get moved to the cache for faster access/less wear on the physical drives.
However, you could set up a volume on an SSD and install the Plex Server to it, increasing read/write performance. (Note: this will only work with 2.5" SSDs installed in a drive bay. Currently Synology does not support creating disk volumes on M.2 drives.)
Ok so throw a SSD in install Plex then point it to the files on a mechanical drive?
Pretty much.
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Thanks guess I still have to get a expansion or exchange it for the next model up.
Or, you can also do what many of us have done… Get a QNAP with the same - or bigger - processor. Synology’s CPU choices are not the best.
If your budget allows, you can also pick up a micro-PC to act as your Plex server. I have a DS1815+ and the Atom CPU is fine for anything direct play, and it can do some fairly light transcoding if it’s just a downsample (i.e. no change in codec, just different bitrate or resolution). But if it had to do true transcoding, like an HD WMV stream to h264, it would choke pretty badly. I ended up getting an Intel Bean Canyon i5 NUC and installed Plex onto a Samsung 970 EVO SSD. I transferred the library files to the NUC’s SSD, while the content continues to live on the Synology NAS. The UI loads much faster now, both on my local LAN and remote.
I have a few old gen 1 I7s on EVGA P55 classified Mobos I was thinking of using for a server if I can find a small atx case to put it in? The one has 16 gigs of RAM so it can handle any NAS function.
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