Home Server, NAS and Plex

[WYP]

For a long time I have wanted to have a dedicated storage device where I could keep my media and other files backed up and outside of my main PC.

I would also like to give PLEX a try, so I would really like some advice on how to go about doing this.

The plan is that I will use my MSI themed Dragon H440 and move my gaming PC to a new case (since it doesn't use many MSI parts). This case has plenty of space for storage drives and hopefully will remain fairly quiet.

Ideally I would like to have a RAID 5 configuration with 3 or 4 drives, so I think I will be trying FreeNAS with this build, but some hardware advice by some PLEX users would be appreciated. CPU RAM etc.

I hope that a Haswell or Skylake Pentium or i3 will be enough for this, as I want to keep the cost and power consumption down and I would like a motherboard that I could undervolt.

Do the H170 or h97 platforms support voltage control or will I have to go for a Z series motherboard?


I would really like to know what you guys use for external storage and how you find using your particular solution, as right now I am not 100% sure what I want to try.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[MadMarc]

I have Plex running on a rig I initially built as an HTPC but it's now only used as a media server. There's a i3 2100, 8GB of RAM and two 2TB HDD running off the onboard raid controller in there and it's overkill for what it's being used for. It's running Windows 10 and Plex media server, as I currently don't have the time to set up a proper server os, and it does it's job, so I don't really have to.
I mainly use it for streaming movies and tv shows to our Samsung tv and to store all of my family's music and photos.
Looking back, I'd now rather get a NAS from Synology or QNAP because of the lower power consumption and smaller size, backups would also be easier to set up and manage.

 

[MrKambo]

I was using a i3 3225 for my media server, handled 3 1080p's streams fine, any more and then you had transcoding issues, i was using a z77 board and never felt the need to undervolt, 8GB RAM and then a RAID card with 6 WD Red drives in RAID 6

It never missed a beat in the year it was running, was using Windows Server R2 on it and tbh if i was to build another one id use the similar specs.

 

[chudley]

I was using Freenas years ago and have recently bought an out of the box personal cloud for size, power and asthetic reasons but only single drive. 4tb for £130 so not bad but not raid configured (kept a second back up drive full of all important media just in case)

I do want to move to a better QNAP version but that will be a few months away

 

[WYP]

I have Plex running on a rig I initially built as an HTPC but it's now only used as a media server. There's a i3 2100, 8GB of RAM and two 2TB HDD running off the onboard raid controller in there and it's overkill for what it's being used for. It's running Windows 10 and Plex media server, as I currently don't have the time to set up a proper server os, and it does it's job, so I don't really have to.
I mainly use it for streaming movies and tv shows to our Samsung tv and to store all of my family's music and photos.
Looking back, I'd now rather get a NAS from Synology or QNAP because of the lower power consumption and smaller size, backups would also be easier to set up and manage.

Thanks for the response mate and letting me know what hardware you used.

I was using a i3 3225 for my media server, handled 3 1080p's streams fine, any more and then you had transcoding issues, i was using a z77 board and never felt the need to undervolt, 8GB RAM and then a RAID card with 6 WD Red drives in RAID 6

It never missed a beat in the year it was running, was using Windows Server R2 on it and tbh if i was to build another one id use the similar specs.

How much would a RIAD Card set you back? I know TTL uses a similar config.Do you know if using Windows 7 over Windows Server would have major performance disadvantages?

I have been considering FreeNAS due to how it works well with RAID without a RAID card and does it all reliably in software with a ZFS RAID config. How are RAIDcards to use, easy or hard?

I was using Freenas years ago and have recently bought an out of the box personal cloud for size, power and asthetic reasons but only single drive. 4tb for £130 so not bad but not raid configured (kept a second back up drive full of all important media just in case)

I do want to move to a better QNAP version but that will be a few months away

Cheers mate. Can you let me know what your opinions of FreeNAS are/ why you don't use it now?

 

[Excalabur50]

I just use a Synology DS415+ as it has it's own media center built in so it streams to my PC, and TV via DLNA so there's no messing around

 

[jimma47]

an i3 should be fine. i5 or i7 if you have one spare would be better. Dedicated NAS devices are good but can be costly once you get into the high end ones. I run plex on my gaming PC and when the missus is streaming to the blu ray player in the lounge I don't notice any performance issues. Most games aren't cpu bottlenecked anyways.
I was looking earlier today to see whether a NAS would be a better option (mainly for size - I'd like to take the 3.5" drives out of my rig) and on the Plex forums there's a list of compatible devices. Can show you what to expect from different devices and their corresponding chips.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201373803-NAS-Compatibility-List

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...5-Ac4oOLPRtCkgUxU0jdj3tmMPc/htmlview?sle=true

I'll be doing a similar conversion when I retire this rig but at the moment with Skylake performance per dollar comparability there's no real reason to.

Edit - @Excalibur any issues with playback or compatibility? I run Plex on my PS3, Sammy Bluray Player, Phone, tablet and PC. It's a paid subscription so good to know the pros and cons of the alternatives out there.

 

[Excalabur50]

an i3 should be fine. i5 or i7 if you have one spare would be better. Dedicated NAS devices are good but can be costly once you get into the high end ones. I run plex on my gaming PC and when the missus is streaming to the blu ray player in the lounge I don't notice any performance issues. Most games aren't cpu bottlenecked anyways.
I was looking earlier today to see whether a NAS would be a better option (mainly for size - I'd like to take the 3.5" drives out of my rig) and on the Plex forums there's a list of compatible devices. Can show you what to expect from different devices and their corresponding chips.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201373803-NAS-Compatibility-List

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...5-Ac4oOLPRtCkgUxU0jdj3tmMPc/htmlview?sle=true

I'll be doing a similar conversion when I retire this rig but at the moment with Skylake performance per dollar comparability there's no real reason to.

Edit - @Excalibur any issues with playback or compatibility? I run Plex on my PS3, Sammy Bluray Player, Phone, tablet and PC. It's a paid subscription so good to know the pros and cons of the alternatives out there.

None that I've had so far everything works fine

 

[Kilbane]

Plex does not need anything fancy. My server runs on a Q9500 with 4Gb RAM. Happily runs along with other FTP software and CCTV recording. I can stream both local and over the internet simultaneously with no issues or pauses.
Only advice I would give when it comes to plex, make sure you name all files and folders correctly to ensure the correct artwork etc shown for the media.