I’m a complete newbie in this whole media server thing and decided to go with plex. I currently have a Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 and tried out some of the plex server functionality. It works really well especially when it comes to transcoding even 4k. I also have an old PC with an i5 4440 @3,1GHz and 8GB RAM currently unused. I saw that the cpu supports quick sync and now I’m thinking about what is the more powerful solution for transcoding (and local direct play).
In my understanding the Intel CPU should be more powerful but I don’t know how to compare these two systems except for buying Plex Pass and installing it to test it out.
What should I use and if it’s the old PC, which operating system would you recommend (Unraid, Linux…)?
The Shield is a decent server but it has a few disadvantages that make an Intel Quick Sync box better.
Shield can’t do the new Sonic Analysis
Shield can’t do tone mapping (which lets you play HDR files on SDR displays)
Shield needs added storage for metadata if you turn on all the features like posters, video thumbnails, etc.
If you do not need to do tone mapping, don’t care about Sonic Analysis, and don’t care about disk space hungry metadata features, the Shield will be OK.
Unfortunately your i5-4440 is old enough that it isn’t awesome. 6th gen is apparently where Quick Sync starts to look good. Check out this good guide.
For an Intel server, Linux is best as all the hardware accelerated features are not available on Windows. I chose Ubuntu Desktop but there are many options.
IMHO, your old Intel box is too old to be meaningfully better than the Shield. There’s no harm in setting up another server with it and checking out the Linux life … you can have more than one Plex server, no problem. I had three for a while, while I was doing hardware/OS experiments. But if you get into Plex you may well want a box with a newer Intel CPU to be your dedicated server.
Here is one cheap and popular option, but it is a slow Celeron processor… it will do great at transcoding/tone mapping thanks to Quick Sync, but media analysis tasks will be slow.
I have found a more expensive device on local ebay (“HP ProDesk 400 G5 - i5-9500T - 8GB RAM - 256GB NVMe SSD”). Something like this would be a really powerful solution in my understanding because of 9th Gen Processor. It’s hard for me to decide if it could also handle small Projects like Home Assistant and a Gameserver (Minecraft…) if I upgrade RAM and SSD? The storage for the video files is a NAS from Synology that I haven’t bought yet but I need one for other data as well. If you have a recommendation what NAS device is the best to use would be very kind. (Should have 4 bays )
If the HP ProDesk has enough power to manage my project, what system should I use to manage all of this? (Plex streaming with transcoding is unlikely to happen during heavy usage of a Gameserver, so is there an option that manages the load of the CPU?)
I’d say that if you are going to drop the money on a NAS and PC, then looking at a higher end NAS may be worth it. Qnap just released the TVS-672X and TVS-872X with i5’s which should be absolute monsters for Plex and while also running a Minecraft server. I use a Qnap TS-453d for my Plex server and have had nothing short of an excellent experience. I prefer Qnap to Synology because you usually get much better hardware for your money. It’s kind of like Mac vs. Windows. Qnap has better performance per dollar, Synology has a more polished eco system. Either way though, a sufficiently powerful enough NAS should be able to handle both those tasks with ease and free you from having to have a full desktop to do what the NAS can.
Hey thank you, but the Qnap devices are really expensive at around 1800€ for the i5-model which is too much for me. Do you have any recommendations that are cheaper? What do you think about the HP ProDesk Model? I think the maximum budget I have are 800-900€ for a the project without harddrives (What HDDs can you recommend?).
Well I guess the first question is how much transcoding do you think you will actually be doing, or will your files typically be direct played? After that think about do you need a desktop or do you already have a computer? I think that if you don’t need a desktop because you either already have one or have a laptop then it makes going all in on your NAS make sense. If you need a computer then we should pivot and go all in on a desktop. I don’t think it makes sense to buy both a NAS and PC unless you have a pretty large budget. Otherwise you will likely make some pretty deep compromises to accomplish that.
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