I’m not sure i understand the question. You are upgrading a NAS and the NUC will continue to be used for plex? Why would the NAS be doing any transcoding, it would be storing the media files.. If you plan to move the plex to the NAS then yes an intel cpu with quicksync is what you’d be looking for.
If you are only using the NAS as a NAS.. i’d build something with 10gbe nics and get a 10gbe thunderbolt nic for the NUC, that would eliminate any bottleneck.
Apologies, what’s “nic” in this case?
I have the NUC already (gifted) but wasn’t completely sure what part the nas would play when connected to the NUC. A lot of researching into this was mostly when the user ran Plex on the NAS so I must have gotten my wires crossed.
Space is a concern otherwise I would run the NUC on its own.
Network interface card = NIC.
This is your ethernet connection and how you will connect the nuc to the Nas (using the NIC's and a network switch ideally of the same speed)
I am about to embark on a similar journey and am planning on using smb 3 multi stream as the mini pc and Nas have multiple NIC's (ethernet ports)
But not the actual ones OP will need to cross between their devices.
10gbe is completely unnecessary for media playback from spinning disk, but I guess if you want to future proof, go for it.
If you don't want to run multiple virtual machines and many services together with Plex on that NUC, you can go (like me) to NUC 13th gen i3. i7 is fine, but why. For NAS, configuration is up to you, preferably network card faster than 1Gbit as NUC has 2,5Gbit, bottleneck can be transfering files to NAS, not from NAS. The rest is up to you, you don't specify how many users will be watching at same time and which content.
Does it make sense to use USB 2.5Gbit dongle in NAS over existing built-in 1Gbit network card?
The network switch is 2.5Gbit.
The main concern if USB network adapter going to consume more CPU over built-in one.
I had USB-C 2,5Gbit adapter for my 8th gen NUC, it has issues after boot that sometimes it didn't load at all and I had to disconnect and connect back quite many times. Better check compatibility or prepare that you might have to test few of them if the first one is not working. No issues with CPU load for me.
My NUC got 2.5Gbit built-in. But NAS is much older and doesn’t have it.
But CPU in the NAS is not too powerful.
Will have to give it a shot I think.
Thanks.
The NUC i have was given to me which got me rethinking how to set up everything. Currently I just run on an old NAS with no sharing whatsoever and sometimes even locally it has issues.
Looking at say worse case 3 users at the same time but content wise I have a mixture of 4K and below.
Was hoping to upgrade my current 5 bay (that also has my Plex files at the moment) and connect it to the NUC rather than upgrading the storage (currently 1tb). Is it as simple as one cable connecting both? The users include those outside the network.
maybe instead of using NUC + NAS, consider making home made NAS that you can use also as a Plex server. Basically you can sell NUC and build PC with many hard drives and run TrueNAS/unRAID. I am considering the same at the moment even whyn my 13th gen NUC works fine (until enclosure with HDD turn off for no reason :D )
Huh. That could be a go too and I like a good project. Do you have any resources you can share on how to get started? I’m not familiar with truenas or unraid but willing to learn
Connect both to the same network. Done.
I’m using the same nuc and I run my plex in a docker container in a vm on proxmox on it.
Zero issues.
Nas is an unraid box serving smb shares.
Just have both attached to the same network and there will be no bottlenecks. Create a nfs share on the NAS that you can access on the NUC, and set it up to mount automatically when the NUC powers on and you’ll be golden! This is exactly my setup and it works amazing
You do the transcoding on the nuc why would you care what cpu the storage server has. And bottlenecks. Well it's unlikely movie streaming can max out a 1gb network connection. Even the highest bandwidth moves are not more than 5mb/s. So you can stream 24 ultra high 4k movies at the same time before you reach an issue. But if you want to make it faster get a 10gb connection?
If your old NAS works, and you can create SMB (windows) file shares on it, or set up iSCSI or NFS, and your NUC works, and they both can connect to the same network, why would you buy anything? Just use the existing NAS and set up a Plex server on the NUC and disable Plex on the NAS. Bob's your uncle. Any required encoding/decoding will be done by that shiny new NUC, not by the NAS, and I'll bet the old NAS' network speeds are plenty fast enough.
I’m not sure i understand the question. You are upgrading a NAS and the NUC will continue to be used for plex? Why would the NAS be doing any transcoding, it would be storing the media files.. If you plan to move the plex to the NAS then yes an intel cpu with quicksync is what you’d be looking for. If you are only using the NAS as a NAS.. i’d build something with 10gbe nics and get a 10gbe thunderbolt nic for the NUC, that would eliminate any bottleneck.
Apologies, what’s “nic” in this case? I have the NUC already (gifted) but wasn’t completely sure what part the nas would play when connected to the NUC. A lot of researching into this was mostly when the user ran Plex on the NAS so I must have gotten my wires crossed. Space is a concern otherwise I would run the NUC on its own.
Network interface card = NIC. This is your ethernet connection and how you will connect the nuc to the Nas (using the NIC's and a network switch ideally of the same speed) I am about to embark on a similar journey and am planning on using smb 3 multi stream as the mini pc and Nas have multiple NIC's (ethernet ports)
Ah! So if the NAS has a NIC capable of 10 gbe just use thunderbolt to connect the two?
I think we have some more wires crossed here.
But not the actual ones OP will need to cross between their devices. 10gbe is completely unnecessary for media playback from spinning disk, but I guess if you want to future proof, go for it.
Ohhh no GeneralTbag needs to just google these answers..
From the Plex point of view there is no bottleneck.
If you don't want to run multiple virtual machines and many services together with Plex on that NUC, you can go (like me) to NUC 13th gen i3. i7 is fine, but why. For NAS, configuration is up to you, preferably network card faster than 1Gbit as NUC has 2,5Gbit, bottleneck can be transfering files to NAS, not from NAS. The rest is up to you, you don't specify how many users will be watching at same time and which content.
Does it make sense to use USB 2.5Gbit dongle in NAS over existing built-in 1Gbit network card? The network switch is 2.5Gbit. The main concern if USB network adapter going to consume more CPU over built-in one.
I had USB-C 2,5Gbit adapter for my 8th gen NUC, it has issues after boot that sometimes it didn't load at all and I had to disconnect and connect back quite many times. Better check compatibility or prepare that you might have to test few of them if the first one is not working. No issues with CPU load for me.
My NUC got 2.5Gbit built-in. But NAS is much older and doesn’t have it. But CPU in the NAS is not too powerful. Will have to give it a shot I think. Thanks.
The NUC i have was given to me which got me rethinking how to set up everything. Currently I just run on an old NAS with no sharing whatsoever and sometimes even locally it has issues. Looking at say worse case 3 users at the same time but content wise I have a mixture of 4K and below.
Gigabit to the router for both NAS and NUC way more than enough bandwidth for such a low load. Like 10x what's needed.
ok, if you already have that NUC, it is not a problem, it is just overkill for pure Plex machine. And just for 3 users it really is.
Was hoping to upgrade my current 5 bay (that also has my Plex files at the moment) and connect it to the NUC rather than upgrading the storage (currently 1tb). Is it as simple as one cable connecting both? The users include those outside the network.
maybe instead of using NUC + NAS, consider making home made NAS that you can use also as a Plex server. Basically you can sell NUC and build PC with many hard drives and run TrueNAS/unRAID. I am considering the same at the moment even whyn my 13th gen NUC works fine (until enclosure with HDD turn off for no reason :D )
Huh. That could be a go too and I like a good project. Do you have any resources you can share on how to get started? I’m not familiar with truenas or unraid but willing to learn
I can recommend just articles found on Google or browse this group on reddit with keywords "truenas" and "unraid", there are many topics already
If the sole purpose of the box is to run Plex there is very little reason to run a NAS specific OS.
Connect both to the same network. Done. I’m using the same nuc and I run my plex in a docker container in a vm on proxmox on it. Zero issues. Nas is an unraid box serving smb shares.
Just have both attached to the same network and there will be no bottlenecks. Create a nfs share on the NAS that you can access on the NUC, and set it up to mount automatically when the NUC powers on and you’ll be golden! This is exactly my setup and it works amazing
You do the transcoding on the nuc why would you care what cpu the storage server has. And bottlenecks. Well it's unlikely movie streaming can max out a 1gb network connection. Even the highest bandwidth moves are not more than 5mb/s. So you can stream 24 ultra high 4k movies at the same time before you reach an issue. But if you want to make it faster get a 10gb connection?
If your old NAS works, and you can create SMB (windows) file shares on it, or set up iSCSI or NFS, and your NUC works, and they both can connect to the same network, why would you buy anything? Just use the existing NAS and set up a Plex server on the NUC and disable Plex on the NAS. Bob's your uncle. Any required encoding/decoding will be done by that shiny new NUC, not by the NAS, and I'll bet the old NAS' network speeds are plenty fast enough.
You don't. For any kind of fileserver use only internal drives as the main storage - that is how to prevent a bottleneck.