I’ve gone off the idea of having plex on a nas as a server going to leave it on the mac.
But I’m still interested in buying a two bay nas which is the best one just to Store synology or Qnap.
I have run it on both Synology and QNAP Nas’s and in general I favour the QNAP. On the plex side the NAS’s are both pretty similar, easy setup and update, but if you are looking to do anything else the QNAP is a little bit nicer to deal with and if you move into using containers then the QNAP wins hands down with the built in apps.
I would recommend useing a NAS for Plex in general and either solution will do the job, just find the one that fits your budget the best.
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Thank you for the advice it’s really helpful I just want a plug and play device apart from adding movies and series to the hardrives etc ,
Qnap better than the synology then?,
Well, since NASs are a big investment, it’s unlikely you will get an even unbiased recommendation. I would expect most people here would have experience with only one of the two, so you are just going to get “Synology” from people like me that own one.
I think that since there hasn’t been any “gah, I have a Synology, and it SUCKS” post (and a similar QNAP one), they are both equally good.
Synology has been described as the “Mac” of NASs. Plug it in, and it “just works”. QNAP I hear is described as the “Linux” of NASs. It allows for more customization and personalization, but it also requires more experience with computers (and Linux?) in general. I’m dipping my toe into Linux more and more, but I am still glad for the Synology’s simplicity.
Synology’s CPU is not the greatest, even if you get the Intel line of CPU’s (avoid the ones with a mobile-based CPU). But thanks to Synologyability to use hardware for transcoding, that’s unlikely to be an issue. I’d expect if you need raw power in a CPU, the QNAP will still probably win in each category.
I’m still unsure wether to get a powerful one to stick plex server on or leave the server on my Mac mini pro which is the latest model btw so got the latest processor in it.
I only want one for plex tbh nothing else that’s all we use the WDmycloud for.
Never played around with Linux just Mac osx and windows,
I’m thinking Qnap 464 or synology + version which one I don’t know the 933 733 433 or 223.
Which one will be best for 4K transcoding?. Or if I leave the server on the Mac which one just for storage.
Are you confident you will be doing 4K transcoding on your server? If you can avoid doing so, then the CPU won’t much matter I think.
I have no 4K videos, so I do not know how well the Synologys perform in transcoding that, even with hardware. I know the Synology falls flat in real-time transcoding when it comes to a particular setup (subtitle burn-in, since it has to fall back to software encoding to do that), so I shudder to think how badly the Syno will perform if it has to software-transcode 4K for ANY reason.
Perhaps someone with experience with 4K can say when it has to be transcoded, and if it ever has to fall back to software transcode due to subtitle burn-in.
Personally, after a short time with Plex, I neded up building my own Plex server. For about the same price as a Syno, I built a super-strong stand-alone Linux computer, loaded Plex onto it, and now point my media drives back towards my Syno NAS. This chonker of a server is way overkill for any Plex situation, but I plan to expand it with more services later (Bit Warden, Frigate+, etc). I could easily have installed a NAS-like OS (Unraid) on the computer and had it be a NAS as well, but since I already had a Syno I didn’t bother.
I’m sorry I am not giving you a straight answer. I just don’t want to give bad advice, and I do not know for sure one way or another. I don’t think there will be a good straight answer to find with so many variables.
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