Okay so I have been loving PLEX since the beginning. What an awesome idea that has turned into an amazing app! I have always ran Plex through basic servers. Started out on a Macbook pro and then I built a small system about 5 years ago. Pretty basic and has worked fine until now. Time to go big…
Current System:
TV: LG OLED 65" TV
AV: Denon 4520ci running a 7.2 system
Media Player: Nvidia Shield (Best purchase ever!)
PC: Windows 10, Intel Core i3-3220 Ivy Bridge Dual-Core 3.3 GHz, 8g DDR3 1600 RAM, SSD Hard Drive & ASUS P8H77-M LE LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 uATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Storage: 4TB Seagate Network drive, 4TB External 3.0 USB drive
Content: TONS of sources with 4K and 7.1 audio
My issue is sometimes the content will freeze due to transcoding issues (duh, my CPU is old and weak). Also I am building a new home with a home theater soon and want PLEX to be the main provider of my content. I am going to add the following:
NAS server with at least 16TB (thinking synology 4 bay)
Control4 units to handle all the controls across multiple rooms
Dolby ATMOS (9.2 possibly) system in the theater with 5.1 in the family room and stereo on the outside patio areas
200" screen with a 4k projector (haven’t researched which one yet but this isn’t important)
I want this to be full-proof for at least 5-6 years. I do not want to have to build another machine within a few years.
So have at it. Which computer build or prebuilt do you guys recommend? I am hearing a NUC, or similar from some but I am not 100% sold on anything yet. I do want it to be as small as possible.
I too love my Nvidia Shield TV, what a nifty device! Sounds like you’ve got a great setup planned.
As for server hardware, I’ve recommended HPE’s ProLiant Microserver line before. I run a generation 8 Microserver with an upgraded Xeon E3-1230v2 processor. Never had transcoding problems with up to 12 simultaneous users. The Microservers are neat because they have four drive bays built-in, so you can contain your storage and high-power compute in a single chassis. And if you run headless, their iLO out-of-band management feature is fantastic.
I’m wondering why your media is being transcoded if you have a Shield TV client running Plex. I have a very similar setup to yours, but with a newer i5 CPU and 16GB RAM, and it direct plays everything to my Shield, including 4k 7.1 content.
It only happens sometimes, I assume it is my CPU just being old and a bit dated. I am also getting some overheating warnings on boot so I just want to solve these issues and bulletproof things before I build my house with the theater.
My biggest concern is that the new Gen 10 boxes have the CPU soldered down so you cannot upgrade them. I am trying to make this last for as long as possible. I will add 4 4TB drives to the unit and run either unraid or something else simple on it and Plex Media Server of course. The benchmarks for this server is very low. @4894.
