What do you use as Plex Media Server ?

@rowin-1996@live.nl said:
You guys are right about a 500watt power supply are not always using that much power. But is there anyway to check how much it costs IF the HTPC is always on ? At the moment I used a website to figure it out, called: “http://powersupplycalculator.net/”. But Im not 100% it’s right. Because If its true, it costs so much every year.

Alas, the only way to know for sure is to measure. Those power supply calculators are intended to size power supplies for peak power consumption. It doesn’t mean the build will run 24/7 using that much power. Just that at 100% load on all parts, it might use that much. The PSU calculators are also pretty conservative and tend to provide quite a bit of headroom.

Having plenty of headroom is critical, as start-up power draw is significantly higher than running draw. Especially if you have lots of hard drives, which can require 25W each on initial spin-up.

Thanks again for the great response everyone! I think I have a new option and it will solve al my wishes:

HP Microserver Gen8

It’s under the 200$ price tag, and idle 35 watt!

You guys agreed? Or are they disadvantages I haven’t seen yet. Beside, Im not sure which OS I want. Xpenology, Windows 10 or FreeNas. I dont know what OS Performs best for Plex.

I rent a dedicated server at online.net it’s a Xeon E3 1220 with 32Gb of ram and 2x4To HDD in raid 1 and with a fiber connection everything is super fast, I love it.

@rowin-1996@live.nl said:
HP Microserver Gen8

It’s under the 200$ price tag, and idle 35 watt!

You guys agreed? Or are they disadvantages I haven’t seen yet.

Very nice solution IMO, small enough, cheap enough, low enough power consumption. If you’re not looking for an “extreme” small size and low power solution (i.e. NUC) this one gives you much more options for growing storage. Absolutely approved ;D

Beside, Im not sure which OS I want. Xpenology, Windows 10 or FreeNas. I dont know what OS Performs best for Plex.

I like to have a “full” Linux installation (mine is Desktop but in your case you can use a Server installation) and SSH to my server, it gives more freedom.

Where is the HP Microserver Gen8 under $200
What is the CPU?

On Amazon the HP 819185-421 is sold at 192 euro, the cpu is a Celeron G1610T with passmark around 2300, not bad at all for the price

yeah and in my country (the netherlands) there are several websites they sold them for 200 euros. Because zpaolo started talking about NUC’s and there power consumption, I’m still in doubt. To be honest, a NUC can do what I want, but it’s so tiny. I think the storage will be an external hdd, but yeah i dont know about that. But a big advantage for me is the power consumption.

@rowin-1996@live.nl said:
yeah and in my country (the netherlands) there are several websites they sold them for 200 euros. Because zpaolo started talking about NUC’s and there power consumption, I’m still in doubt. To be honest, a NUC can do what I want, but it’s so tiny. I think the storage will be an external hdd, but yeah i dont know about that. But a big advantage for me is the power consumption.

A NUC can run Kodi as well

I have a celeron NUC that works as a server but haven’t tried it streaming to more than 1 device.

Will give it a try.

The NUC is a good solution for an hybrid client/server, it can be very quiet but the high pitch of the fan is still noticeable in a quiet room, more than a slow flowing larger fan. A “fanless” NUC won’t be suitable for transcoding tasks, and in general NUC specs are lower than the HP. To be honest the noisiest part of my NUC is the mechanical drive hum while spinning and the noise when it read/writes data. The HP is a good solution if you don’t want to have limits on the storage, it should be quiet enough. There is some “middle ground” though, like the Vivo PC from Asus, in certain configurations it can accomodate a full size 3.5" hard disk together with a 2.5" SSD, it’s larger than a NUC (the NUC is about 12 x 12 cm, the Vivo is 22 x 22 if I remember well) and is marketed as a quiet client for Kodi etc.

Wait, what? How did you switch the metadata to the MicroSD?
Link2SD

Kodi and Plex Server Gateway PC - AMD Athlon II X2 M300 2GHz, 4GB DDR2, 500GB HDD, Windows 10 64-bit. No idea what kind of power consumption but for a 5 year old laptop it serves my needs. I have been downloading a lot lately from Kodi and been looking into adding a couple 5 TB external drives for 110 bucks a piece on amazon. Poor mans setup lol
my Plex clients are a Roku 3 in the bedroom an XBOX 360 in the den and my HTC One M8. My Kodi client is MXQ pro in the living room.

@rowin-1996@live.nl said:
Thanks again for the great response everyone! I think I have a new option and it will solve al my wishes:

HP Microserver Gen8

It’s under the 200$ price tag, and idle 35 watt!

You guys agreed? Or are they disadvantages I haven’t seen yet. Beside, Im not sure which OS I want. Xpenology, Windows 10 or FreeNas. I dont know what OS Performs best for Plex.

I run OpenMediaVault on my Microserver. Works very well.

@cscottmccoy@gmail.com said:

Wait, what? How did you switch the metadata to the MicroSD?
Link2SD

Kodi and Plex Server Gateway PC - AMD Athlon II X2 M300 2GHz, 4GB DDR2, 500GB HDD, Windows 10 64-bit. No idea what kind of power consumption but for a 5 year old laptop it serves my needs. I have been downloading a lot lately from Kodi and been looking into adding a couple 5 TB external drives for 110 bucks a piece on amazon. Poor mans setup lol
my Plex clients are a Roku 3 in the bedroom an XBOX 360 in the den and my HTC One M8. My Kodi client is MXQ pro in the living room.
I got a couple of Seagate Expansion 8TB USB3.0 externals (the 5TB’s bigger brother) for $180 a piece on Newegg (pre-order special). It uses Seagate Archive HDDs which utilize Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). Despite negative Newegg reviews, I found it does quite well when used for the purpose it was designed for - archival data. Quite a good fit for Plex video libraries. I use it on one of my test Plex servers (old i3-530 Mini-ITX HTPC).

@rowin-1996@live.nl said:
yeah and in my country (the netherlands) there are several websites they sold them for 200 euros. Because zpaolo started talking about NUC’s and there power consumption, I’m still in doubt. To be honest, a NUC can do what I want, but it’s so tiny. I think the storage will be an external hdd, but yeah i dont know about that. But a big advantage for me is the power consumption.
The Microserver Gen8’s a good choice. I’d pick one up if I could get one for that price.

I got a couple of Seagate Expansion 8TB USB3.0 externals (the 5TB’s bigger brother) for $180 a piece on Newegg (pre-order special). It uses Seagate Archive HDDs which utilize Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). Despite negative Newegg reviews, I found it does quite well when used for the purpose it was designed for - archival data. Quite a good fit for Plex video libraries. I use it on one of my test Plex servers (old i3-530 Mini-ITX HTPC).

yeah lots of mixed reviews on Amazon as well thanks for the heads up for that price for that much media storage is hard to beat. defiantly gonna pull the trigger now thanks again.

I will order the HP Microserver this evening! So hyped, finally a 24/7 solution for all the things I want. What OS do you prefer people ?

Win10
Xpenology
FreeNas

I consider this three operating systems. I think windows 10 is the easiest way. You have to update Xpenology by yourself, not automatic :frowning:

@rowin-1996@live.nl said:
I will order the HP Microserver this evening! So hyped, finally a 24/7 solution for all the things I want. What OS do you prefer people ?

Win10
Xpenology
FreeNas

I consider this three operating systems. I think windows 10 is the easiest way. You have to update Xpenology by yourself, not automatic :frowning:

As with most things “computer” there is no best because what is best for me may not be best for others.

I almost always recommend that people, when there is no clear advantage to one choice over another, go with what they know best and/or what they are most comfortable with.

I do have to qualify that as in your choices you list “Xpenology” which I have never heard of. It could have clear advantages I am unaware of. Since this caused my curiosity bump to swell I will be looking it up. But the “manual update” requirement you mentioned is a fairly big negative.

I’m by no means an experienced Linux user but OpenMediaVault (based on Debian) was extremely easy to set up and it’s extremely easy to maintain (I just lost my 120 days uptime sadly). That said, go with what you’re most comfortable with.

I have a Dell Chromebox (a cheaper version of a NUC if you can live with the caveats) running Ubuntu, and it does fine for my (admittedly light) use-case. 99% of what I do is direct-stream (audio transcode only), but it handles 1080p file syncs above real-time, so it’d be good for 1-2 1080p streams in full-transcode but not much more, i think.

@sremick said:
Having plenty of headroom is critical, as start-up power draw is significantly higher than running draw. Especially if you have lots of hard drives, which can require 25W each on initial spin-up.

For sizing power supplies, sure. Not so much when you’re trying to estimate electricity costs for running the build 24/7.

I’m slightly more conservative than you and use ~2.5A per drive on the 12V rail when sizing PSUs.