which NAS as a Plex server?

General Discussions
1

Although I’m sure this has been asked many a time however I can’t see an answer or at least a recent one.
I’ve got an old synology DS214SE struggling with Plex. Takes ages to load and won’t always load library’s etc. I love synology because it’s easy to use and I’m not great with IT. I only need it as backup and Plex. A 2 bay and I have about 1tb media. A budget of around £500ish.
Someone recommended a WD. I’ve looked a QNAPs although I’ve read mixed reviews and not sure its as simple to use…thoughts welcomed please :smile:

2

with that budget you can go for an actual standalone machine with a proper CPU as your server. you can keep the Synology as Storage and connect the two.
you could go for a NUC or some other tiny machine.

3

@tom80H said:
with that budget you can go for an actual standalone machine with a proper CPU as your server. you can keep the Synology as Storage and connect the two.
you could go for a NUC or some other tiny machine.
For a fraction of your budget you can buy a used ex-corporate PC like this one for £100 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-PRODESK-400-G1-SFF-PC-I3-3-4GHZ-CPU-4GB-RAM-500GB-HDD-WINDOWS-10-PRO/253544580343?hash=item3b086f44f7:g:FCwAAOSwLXtamXbJ

I bought a similar model recently for £75. These systems are amazingly well built & fantastic value for money. They can be upgraded to 16GB RAM & an i7-4790 CPU. I added an SSD to mine & it flies.

I originally intended to run Linux on it as a dedicated PMS system but then discovered that it’s really easy to Hackintosh these systems so now run MacOS High Sierra on it with PMS running in a Linux VM.

4

Thanks guys really great idea, and one I hadn’t even contemplated. So keep my synology just for back up and use a NUC to run my Plex from. Would I have to manually back up the NUC (no idea what this is as of yet!) or would I be able to just set it up to back up.
Also with the NUC any tips on what to avoid or definitely look into?
Thanks again.

5

Also Nigel I like the idea but I’m pretty basic with computers and the idea of having to get stuff added to it makes it les appealing, although something I’ll look into for sure. Thanks