I’ve been running Plex for about 7 years running on Freenas. Current server system is running Intel® Core™ i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz with 16G Ram( ECC) on a SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C204 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server. I’m looking to upgrade my server. Looking at an ASUS board with Intel 10 and 32G.
So my question to everyone is
1)Do you really need server parts?
2)Do you need more than 16G of Ram?
I appreciate any advice/comments
Hi jimhorner67,
Regarding the Ram, I don’t think Plex needs more than like 2 or 4 Gigs. As you use FreeNAS, which caches data, like videos, in RAM; more is always better. But again, it also depends on the drives you’re using to see if you need that extra cache. SSDs don’t need a RAM cache, you’ll likely run into the network limit faster than the drive limit. HDDs probably do. Do you use any other plugins/software?
Server hardware is probably not necessary. I run my PMS on an old CPU that was becoming dusty already. They (Server Hardware) are interesting if you need tons of PciE bandwidth, memory slots&channels, cores, and if you can justify the costs with those benefits, sure, go ahead!. Depending on the server load, you’ll probably be fine. If you got dozens of people at once putting strain on the server (especially transcoding) - ehh, well, definitely look into server hardware, too.
Example for Server 64C/128T: AMD Epyc 7551P
Example for “Mainstram” 64C/128T: AMD TR 3990X
I’ve gone back to the plugin since i was having issues with the stand alone jail. I have (2) 4TB RED drives in raid for plex and then a couple other drives for music and pictures and such. I was using a USB to boot but switched to an SSD. I will probably move up to Truenas when i upgrade.
More RAM is a quality of life improvement for the server admin 
(At least as long as we are still using “spinning rust” for mass storage.)
If your files are all smaller than 4 GB, then 8 GB RAM might be comfortable.
If you regularly use files which are larger, you probably want more RAM.
Particularly if you use RAID (and not just JBOD), you want even more.
For Plex videos, pictures and music you probably don’t need TrueNAS. TrueNAS is for commercial application where 24/7 uptime is critical (Link), and I don’t think your photos need a guaranteed 24/7 uptime. Save that money and rather go for more RAM or a better CPU.
Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it. Is there something else beside freenas? I’ve tried Ubuntu but didnt care for it. The new system is gonna be i5 10th gen with 32Meg ram
I currently have 16 MG but going to 32. Yep…spinning rust 
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