Get a cheap Synology 1 bay as these are very low power or if you already have an Nvidia shield you can use that as a a plex server.
I own a Synology ds920+ with 80tb but started off very small on a single bay Nas. You can install the Plex server on the Nas and use the inbuilt downloader to download magnet files and torrents, rip your Blu-ray's or file share to backup your photos.
If you are just playing content at home on your own network then it won't really matter what you get as you will set up your media player to direct play everything. (Plays the files at the bitrate they were produced)
If you plan on playing content away from home on your mobile or laptop then you will need a more powerful CPU to transcode (convert) your content into a format which suits the bandwidth of your phone or laptop internet speeds. (edited)
Author
It is really just a personal project for myself, potentially may want one relative to have access to it. But the main goal is for me personally. I do have a pc in my room more than capable. However it’s huge and power hungry. Thanks for your suggestion I will look into it
I have a 9 year old mac mini with macOS etc running from a usb3 ssd. not great for transcoding but everything I play is direct, so makes no difference.
Author
And with direct play there are no hiccups?
I guess the lowest power would be a Raspberry Pi. Personally I gave up on trying to keep the server small - the smallest part would be the hard drive. Even at 2.5" a Raspberry Pi is just slightly bigger! I had a stupid overkill enterprise server, but it was too noisy, so I just make do with an old i5 laptop and external drives (5TB from a deal from here!). Depending on what your clients are (and how many) you may not need a powerful server.
Author
Yes I heard the Rasberry Pi isn’t good if transcoding is involved. It would only be for me (couple devices at home) and one other family member. So relatively small number of streams
I started out on a Dell Optiplex, did a great job but bought a new PC so just relegated my old machine to being a home server. It's nothing powerful but does the job of running all the *arr apps, Plex, Minecraft server and Nextcloud.
As said the smallest setup will probably be a pi but then depending on how much storage you want you're going to have external drives everywhere.
Author
A lot of people have suggested the optiplex or a Mac mini so this seems to be the option. I do have a gaming pc which is fairly powerful but it’s huge and would rather not run a server off it
would look into an Intel NUC, they're small, efficient and great for your intended usage thanks to Intel quicksync - if I may though, I would instead do what I suggested but get it all in something like a mATX/ITX case, but hey you know your wants better than I do
I would get one of these amazon.co.uk/Wav…8-3 to store your media, this is where the Intel NUC will fail, but you can have this on a shelf somewhere nearby as long as it connects.
You can get used 4tb hard drives on eBay for around £30 each - whilst some may not suggest getting used hard drives, I've had no problems running them for at least 3+ years. example: ebay.co.uk/itm…JYw(edited)
Author
Thanks for the response will look into what you suggested
I have a Synology ds920+ and it works great for Plex. You need to ensure that your stuff will direct play though as it doesn't transcode that well. Typically though, any decent TV and media device direct plays these days. We also watch away from home using a fire stick or chromecast and works fine also.
I think I've worked my way through various Plex servers. Started with an on "Slim" client i bought of eBay for £12 (has a Celeron 2807) I run it with Headless with Linux Mint, and it draws about 6w peak from the wall) Had a Pi4, which wasn't as good or as stable. Ran a ACEPC with a low power Atom 8350 which was worse than the Celeron. (I still use the slim today - it can't do the 4k stuff but it's great for music and 720p content). Currently have a N5105 laptop I snagged on eBay for £60 with a bunch of HDDs plugged in and that works brilliantly and is super low power. I don't transcode anything and my firestick 4k max plays everything on it. I did buy a pi5 but it's 4k playback just wasn't as good as the n5105, but that may just be because Raspian is early and it's not smoothed out yet, so I sold. If i were buying today, I'd buy an N100 pc from Aliexpress or somewhere and plug a big SSD into it and for £200 you could have a superb server. You could buy more powerful pcs but the N100 is amazing performance for the wattage.
Author
Thanks will have a look into it. I’m not really going to be watching things in 4k as such. However in the future I reckon that would be something I would want. I’ll have a look at the n100 pc
I used to have one on a Mac Mini that I got off eBay for about £100. Now just have a Nvidia Shield
Author
Curious about the nvidia shield if you don’t mind me asking. How does it work in comparison to the Mac mini
20 Comments
sorted byI own a Synology ds920+ with 80tb but started off very small on a single bay Nas. You can install the Plex server on the Nas and use the inbuilt downloader to download magnet files and torrents, rip your Blu-ray's or file share to backup your photos.
If you are just playing content at home on your own network then it won't really matter what you get as you will set up your media player to direct play everything. (Plays the files at the bitrate they were produced)
If you plan on playing content away from home on your mobile or laptop then you will need a more powerful CPU to transcode (convert) your content into a format which suits the bandwidth of your phone or laptop internet speeds. (edited)
Personally I gave up on trying to keep the server small - the smallest part would be the hard drive. Even at 2.5" a Raspberry Pi is just slightly bigger!
I had a stupid overkill enterprise server, but it was too noisy, so I just make do with an old i5 laptop and external drives (5TB from a deal from here!).
Depending on what your clients are (and how many) you may not need a powerful server.
As said the smallest setup will probably be a pi but then depending on how much storage you want you're going to have external drives everywhere.
I would get one of these amazon.co.uk/Wav…8-3 to store your media, this is where the Intel NUC will fail, but you can have this on a shelf somewhere nearby as long as it connects.
You can get used 4tb hard drives on eBay for around £30 each - whilst some may not suggest getting used hard drives, I've had no problems running them for at least 3+ years.
example: ebay.co.uk/itm…JYw (edited)
I did buy a pi5 but it's 4k playback just wasn't as good as the n5105, but that may just be because Raspian is early and it's not smoothed out yet, so I sold.
If i were buying today, I'd buy an N100 pc from Aliexpress or somewhere and plug a big SSD into it and for £200 you could have a superb server. You could buy more powerful pcs but the N100 is amazing performance for the wattage.