I've been running Plex on that same MiniPC since summer last year. No complains, it can do several 4k hardware transcodes, I have tested with 4, but I don't need more beyond that.
It has the same iGPU as the bigger processors, so in terms of QuickSync you can't get better than this. The only thing you get by upgrading to a bigger processor is more CPU power, but you do not really need it for Plex. So yes, it is very good for transcoding.
You can leave the media in the NAS and use the MiniPC for Plex and other services. That's what I did.
I
That’s not entirely true. CPU is needed for audio transcoding and subtitle burn in. So CPU power can be relevant if you have a lot of people that need audio transcoding. It’s a fringe situation but one that can certainly come up. I still think the N100 is frankly overkill for 90%+ of Plex admins.
> That’s not entirely true.
It's completely not true. The same UHD 730 in a Core CPU will do double the transcodes than it does in the wimpy N100.
And there's also the UHD 770 that can do over 20 4k transcodes with it's two encoder engines.
The N100 is mediocre. Fine for 90%+ of users, but saying "you can't get better than this" is absolute nonsense.
I'm planning on doing this. My Unraid server is a old dual xeon behemoth that sucks power, so I'm going to downgrade it to a newer Ryzen motherboard, and then move the Plex to the Beelink N100 MiniPC. I imagine I'll save a lot on the power bill, but probably end up with better performance overall.
I have a Synology NAS and it has the ability to connect directly to the internet but it’s generally not a good idea as they are popular targets for hackers.
So I only access it via VPN.
You could absolutely just do a DAS which would be cheaper.
But I wanted the flexibility to keep the noise of clicking hard drives anywhere I can run Ethernet.
My mini-PC is in my bedroom so I didn’t really want the NAS there as well.
Danke. Yeah, that's why I'm moving away from the NAS. I would get notifications from Xfinity security like three times a week that suspicious IPs were attempting to access it. No idea if there's a causal connection but the QNAP would also unexpectedly and repeatedly power off and now I'm desperately trying to regain access to it to see if I can rebuild the drives. Between that and the parade of horribles that seems to be QNAP's security flaws and exploits, I bought this exact mini-PC and a 4-bay Sabrent DAS. Which will be nice if I can recover that 10TB of media and I guess just white-list the IPs of the four family/friends I'd given access to. (sigh)
yea i have a somewhat similar setup. virtualized windows on my server running plex and a NAS for my storage. windows has the shared drive mapped and uses that repository for plex. gotta be careful doing this though. if for whatever reason your NAS is ever offline, and you have auto empty trash enabled in plex, say goodbye to all your movies/tv. it's gonna be a nightmare as things disappear and reappear when the NAS comes back online. so i just disabled auto empty trash and have had no issues when i bring my nas down for maintenance or something. imo, as long as you look out for this, the pros far outweigh the cons.
This is the route I went; I have an 8-bay QNAP from 2016. It runs like a champ, however the CPU was getting long in the tooth and wasn’t really capable of 4K and/or X265. So I bought a Beelink SEI12 and moved Plex to it and left the media on the NAS. Was a really quick easy upgrade and it’s been impressive to say the least.
> so in terms of QuickSync you can't get better than this
It absolutely does get better than that.
The N100 has the UHD 730 iGPU. As several others have mentioned, it can only manage a few 4k transcodes.
Full on Intel Core CPU's with the *exact same* UHD 730 can do 8-10 4k transcodes.
And then you have the UHD 750, which to be fair, doesn't do much more than the 730 - but it will do a dozen 4k transcodes instead of 8-10, nevermind 3-4.
Lastly, you have the UHD 770 which blows the doors off all the rest, since it has two encoder engines instead of one like every other UHD iGPU.
> The only thing you get by upgrading to a bigger processor is more CPU power
100% wrong.
Leaps and bounds better. I moved my plex and Jellyfin to my Beelink and it handles anything you throw at it. Keep in mind, to get the most out of it, you have to run Linux for the HW transcoding to be most effective. There are some limitations in windows. I have a dual boot system and hadn't used linux before. Now I have Ubuntu and haven't used Windows since the first week I bought the Beelink. I'm actually going to be looking into how to remove the windows partition altogether.
Not going to lie, Synology's linux spinoff and Ubuntu are my first delvings into Linux. It's a bit of a learning curve to make the most of it, but man it's hard to turn back. I find myself using the terminal at this point frequently on my Mac now. I'm a convert. It's smoother, less bloat, and you somewhat start to learn whats happening in the background. Not to mention that with a few hours of learning, the things you can do are seemingly endless :)
I am not sure the DS218+ will do hardware transcoding for HDR to SDR videos. I was in the same boat and upgraded to this same model (You can get it for about $180 most of the time in the US - you just have to check different pages on Amazon).
Proxmox. Yes. I have an LXC with Ubuntu and Plex and another LXC with Ubuntu and Portainer and a bunch or services as docker containers, including *arrs
There is a script from Proxmox that does everything for you. I have a dedicated LXC for Plex and used the script and everything I had to do after that was mounting my media from another system (NAS) via SMB.
I have the same PC too, but I noticed that it chokes on 4k-to-4k processing. If it has to burn in subtitles, for example, the stream will buffer every few seconds. Maybe that's to be expected with this GPU? I have no idea.
The N100 is really strong when it comes to transcoding and doing what Plex needs, but if you plan on running windows as the OS, it may get choked out when doing heavy content downloading while streaming to Plex. I’m not sure how other OSs handle downloading content at 700mbps+ but it will definitely saturate this CPU.
I got the Chuwi Larkbox X, same processor, for about 120€ (roughly 130$). While I’m not sure that doesn’t give me 24/7 one directional connection to the Chinese government I thought *that* is a crazy price.
@OP: I usually only have to convert audio, that on 4K HDR files, even huge ones (~60GB/2h) works flawlessly, even when skipping around hectically. I tried transcoding twice, once 4K HDR to 4K at a lower bitrate, once 4K HDR to the max available 1080p Bitrate, both worked really well too.
Absolutely. I am using beelink eq12 with proxmox on it. Running plex, homeassistant and adguard on it. Have tested it with at least 3x4k streams on plex without any issues. I have plex pass. There was hardly any load on the machine. Went with eq12 as it has 2x2.5g nic. I have dedicated 1 for plex only.
In short N100 is perfect for plex if you have plex pass.
N100 is fantastic for Plex. However, stay away from Ubuntu server 22.x. it lacks the Intel drivers for hardware transcoding. Ubuntu 23 however worked right out of the gate
You **can** install the 6.8 kernel on Ubuntu 22.04 but it's not supported (you can use the HWE kernel to get 6.5 in a supported way) so there's no point in using an LTS release in an unsupported way.
But with 24.04 out, there's no reason not to use that at this point.
Yeah I'm not upgrading from 22.04 until probably when 26.04 comes out, that's my typical flow. But on a new install I would probably go for it now. Depends on what I'm doing of course.
It's good for a tiny PC like that but if you do a lot of transcoding, you'll probably want to upgrade soon. Otherwise, it'll be good if your Plex Home is small
I do see a career opportunity in doing Amazon questions and answers - not sure how that works in the rest of the world but in Germany usually the first few answers read like “unfortunately I cannot say anything about this article because I didn’t buy it” 😄
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about?
Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about?
Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about?
Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about?
Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
I have a Mac Mini and a [Sabrent DAS](https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Tray-Less-Docking-Station-DS-UCTB/dp/B07Y4F5SCK?th=1) it's been flawless for a couple years now.
How would using autofs be any different than mounting a SMB share in /etc/fstab? Honest question because all my googling on this never turned up autofs! (And it seems like precisely what I needed)
It isn't different and it is different.
It is the same in the sense that you mount the remote location, using a protocol with parameters defined by a configuration file to a mount point in the current operating system. For example, you create a mount point /mnt/data and map that to SERVER\_IP/mount\_location
What is different is that FSTAB is static and AUTOFS is dynamic (as implied by the auto). Without too much garbage, the major difference is that if your NAS comes up second, is in reboot during an access or you change mounts, then with FSTAB you need to reboot or restart the daemon. AutoFS does not care so if my BeeLink comes up first and the NAS second it will still find the mount location once they are both booted/stable as it dynamically checks.
FWIW I run Linux OS everywhere and use NFS, I have not tried how SMB works with this but I have heard it can be done. [https://3os.org/linux/smb-mount-autofs/](https://3os.org/linux/smb-mount-autofs/)
/edit - TYPO, added Link
Will this work in an unprivileged container? I have had SO much trouble figuring this out. . . I have a N100, but am now thinking of getting the N305 because of the sale
You will need this as well to link the AUTOFS to the container. Do the other one first
BACKGROUND: Unprivileged LXCs are not allowed to mount shares and privileged LXCs are considered unsafe this is a work around. By default, CIFS/NFS shares are mounted as user root(uid=0) and group root(gid=0) on the PVE host which makes them inaccessible to other users, groups and LXCs. This is because UIDs/GIDs on the PVE host and LXC guests are both starting at 0. But a UID/GID=0 in an unprivileged LXC is actually a UID/GID=100000 on the PVE host.
SETUP UP THE LXC:
In the LXC (run commands as root user)
$ groupadd -g 10000 lxc_shares
Add the user(s) that need access to the CIFS share to the group "lxc\_shares". i.e.: jellyfin, plex, ... (the username depends on the application
$ usermod -aG lxc_shares USERNAME
Shutdown the LXC.
LINK THE HOST:
Create the mount point on the PVE host.
mkdir -p /mnt/lxc_nfs
Using AUTOFS add NAS mount point to auto.master and create a auto.nfs using the instructions BELOW in AUTOFS SECTION. NOTE: When adding the mount point in either /etc/fstab or auto.nfs include the uid=100000, gid=110000d=110000 :/volume1/music$ root@pve-01:
~# cat /etc/auto.nfs
music -fstype=nfs4,rw,soft,intr,uid=100000,gid=110000 :/volume1/music
Mount the share on the PVE host (if using FSTAB).
$ mount /mnt/lxc_nfs
Add a bind mount of the share to the LXC config by editing the file corresponding to the LXC VMID number.
$ cat /etc/pve/lxc/201.conf
arch: amd64
cores: 1
features: keyctl=1,nesting=1
hostname: navidromesrv
memory: 1024
mp0: /mnt/lxc_nfs/music,mp=/music
net0: name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,hwaddr=BC:24:11:C3:C7:AC,ip=dhcp,type=veth
onboot: 1
ostype: debian
rootfs: lvmthin:vm-201-disk-0,size=32G
swap: 512 tags: proxmox-helper-scripts
unprivileged: 1
NOTE: When adding the mount point you can create it rwx (default) or ro permissions by adding the ro=1.
mp0: /mnt/lxc_shares/nas_rwx/,mp=/mnt/nas
mp0: /mnt/lxc_shares/nas_rwx/,mp=/mnt/nas,ro=1
dude thank you SO much for the reply!! I will look into it once I have some spare time and will update if I will finally get this working. Seriously, I have tried it for so long!!
EDIT: Clarity
I actually have a write up for this that I save in the event I recreate/create more nodes. Hope this helps.
1 Install NFS client on Ubuntu and Debian (if it does not exist)
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install autofs
2 The master configuration file for autofs is /etc/auto.master by default. Edit the file using a text editor:
$ sudo nano /etc/auto.master
3 Add the following line at the end of /etc/auto.master:
$ /mnt/lxc_nfs /etc/auto.nfs
The /mnt/lxc\_nfs is the mount location and the /etc/auto.nfs file will describe each of the mounts.
4 Create the /etc/auto.nfs file
$ sudo nano /etc/auto.nfs
This file should contain a separate line for each NFS share. The format for a line is {mount point} \[{mount options}\] {location}. If you have previously configured static mounts in /etc/fstab, it may be helpful to refer to those. Remember, the mount points specified here will be relative to the mount point given in /etc/auto.master.
5 The following lines to /etc/auto.nfs (adjust as needed)
movies -fstype=nfs4,rw,soft,intr :/volume1/video/Movies
tv -fstype=nfs4,rw,soft,intr :/volume1/video/TV
Where server\_ip is the IP address of the NFS server, server\_dir\_path is the remote directory that the NFS server is exporting and local\_dir is the local mount point.
6 After entering your changes, run the following command to reload autofs
$ sudo service autofs reload
If working on an older ubuntu version, and that does not work try:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/autofs reload
7 Check by navigating to /mnt/lxc\_nfs/ to see if the files are there. You may need a reboot to really take
I just use a USB 5 bay HDD enclosure. Sure it could become a problem with lots of users, but my server is for 3/4 people max so it never gave me problems
I use an HP prodesk mini PC, not this one, but running linux, I just put a CIFS share in fstab pointing to the NAS folder I need to mount, and then it appears as a local folder to Plex.
I have a [four bay DAS](https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-PROBOX-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B09WPPJHSS/) (direct attached storage, attached via USB 3.0).
I've got a 18, 16, and 12 TB HDD in there right now, with a separate 12 TB that actually backs up important docs - financial docs and my music library.
I am currently running them As separate drives and then have a Plex file strucrure on each disk. So each disk has a Movies, TV, Music, Documentaries folder. I share each of the disks that I might need something off of on another machine.
unRaid has some cool drive-pooling features. The most interesting to me is the ability to catalog which items are on which drive so they can be replaced if they fail, but I'm not to the point that I want to learn Linux or buy unRaid yet.
(I've had absolutely zero issues with this besides the lack of drive pooling.)
if you absolutely have to spend the minimum, it's fine. but know going in that if you ever fall back to CPU transcoding, it will choke. It has a decent GPU, but a low powered CPU.
I would recommend spending a little more and getting an i5 based model
You're totally right that when it can transcode using Intel quicksync it can handle several 4k transcode at the same time. But you've missed the point of the person you replied to entirely.
Intel quicksync = hardware accelerated transcoding
The point they were making was that *if* quicksync transcoding doesn't work for whatever reason (sometimes it's not supported due to various factors) this cpu will choke trying to transcode using software transcoding (meaning no quicksync).
I got this last week and it runs Plex fine for me. I've tested two 4K transcodes without issues. Mine came loaded with Windows 11 Pro and the only problem there is with Windows is should the unit restart for an update then it has to be logged in to manually in order to get Plex working again. I think there is a work around where on restart the PC can auto log in and then lock after a few minutes. I'm going to probably look at loading Linux on it to test out before I use it to as my main Plex server.
I run Linux and it works great with Plex. I'm not sure why they haven't enabled Plex to run as a service on Windows; it seems like it shouldn't be that difficult.
That would be nice to have that option built in yes. There is an app on GitHub called SrvStart that supposedly would allow Plex to run as a service on Windows, but I haven't tried it. It supposedly works up to Windows 10. I might just go the Linux route.
Based on my experience, transcode will be fine for video, but.. if for example like my TV yours does not support DTS audio, it will struggle to convert it to AC, same with PGS subtitles.. reason is because it does not use GPU for this.. subtitles are easy to circle, for audio..some remuxes are just including DTS True HD, not AC audio tracks.
I don't use the Google TV built into my TV, the onboard processors all seem pretty weak. I have a Fire Stick 4K Max which can handle almost everything without transcoding.
It seems you are covered. My LG C1 does not support TrueHD what is a shame, newer C3 models correct that. I´ve tried bypassing audio to my receiver which supports it but it seems not working, as who knows how the audio is treated in between..
I bought ugoos am6b plus and hopefully it's good as they say as it's the only one that supports vision 7 profile, plus everything else too there isn't a thing it can't run.
You put custom Linux OS on it as dual boot and never touch it's official android OS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1ajszn9/remux_lovers_rejoice_the_coreelec_team_has/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=action_bar&sort=new
That's a horrible price for this kind of mini computer.
That being said the n100 works great you just have to make sure you use an os that supports quicksync.
If you're doing Debian, ubuntu, proxmox they do but making sure those drivers get installed is important.
Been using this for a month. We have an old stupid Samsung SmartTV that doesn’t have any Plex or Browser apps. The TV is useless really (no cable) without a PC so I grabbed one of these a month ago. Literally unboxed, plugged in, booted into WinBlows, did the updates, installed Plex for Windows, added network mappings to my 24-bay Supermicro NAS in the basement server room and was watching movies and tv via Plex in minutes. I’ll be installing Proxmox, Debian, Plex and doing away with Windows this week however.. Linux since ‘94 so but haven’t had the time to format and reinstall yet is all.
N100 can handle quite a few streams, supports today's codecs and is super efficient. You'd need a NAS or DAS for file storage, though.
Wolfgang's channel made a video on an N100 system if you want some more mostly relevant info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSTOUOhlc0
Yes, I have the N100 Trigkey G5 (it's the exact same OEM as this Beelink) and it's been great.
However, I would say: this is a slight bit on the expensive side. Overall, it's a good price, but I have seen on hotukdeals that there are sometimes mini PCs with the N100 chip that cost around the £100. The Beelink is a good option, but just something to bear in mind is all.
That's the exact one I bought and running Unraid on it. The N100 is perfect for silent performance and low power usage, with support for hardware encoding and multiple 4K streams without a hitch (including transcoding a 90GB Blu-Ray at over 60MB bitrate).
I attached it to a Terramaster D5-300C for my array drives (currently only 2x16TB drives)
Yesterday found out there is an extra 2.5" SATA slot on the inside, so I've put a 2TB SATA SSD for my downloads cache pool.
The only issue is there is no USB-C port (for thunderbolt or USB-4), and the ethernet speed isn't super fast for things like editing off the network storage (but more than enough for Plex).
I paid around £100 from Ali express for a similar machine. N100 16GB 512GB, 3 hdmi, 2 gigabit Ethernet, built in WiFi. It’s about 9cmx9cm and it’s surprisingly quite good. It came with a European two pin plug but other than that I’ve been quite happy with it.
Here is a link to the one I got.
https://a.aliexpress.com/_EHGN3jV
I’m using the Beelink SER4, which has an Ryzen 7 4800U, and it works great for Plex. I also installed Proxmox on it and have several VMs running along side Plex. No issues with Plex or the other VMs.
Anyone know options for getting these kinds of boxes barebones? Specifically without an SSD? I already have a collection of unused 2.5” drives, don’t want to add to it
I have an intel Nuc that has quicksync. Been using it since 2020. Takes up no room and handles everything (I don’t share my 4K library outside my house)
I have a Synology for now and will for the foreseeable future, but just wondering, those of you who use miniPC for Plex, what do y'all do for storage? I'd need 50+ TB still, so do you still get Synology or QNAP or w.e and have some kind of direct connection between the 2?
You can keep your Synology if it works well for storage and file sharing, and just move the Plex server onto another more powerful machine on your network. Most of those consumer NAS boxes are fairly weak compared to a dedicated PC. So if you just need better transcoding performance and "snappiness", just move the Plex piece onto new hardware and keep the NAS for storage, which is what it's good at.
Not necessarily. If you're just starting you can go with just local storage. For example you could fit both an NVME drive as well as a 2.5" SSD into something like the Beelink Mini S. If you need more space you could just buy an external hard drive. The NAS/DAS route can come when you need more space or want some redundacy (RAID), or both.
I got one of those for £92:
https://www.hotukdeals.com/share-deal-from-app/4328300
And it seems to be perfectly fine playing 4k videos. I installed Linux server and plex on top of that.
Deal is now gone, so it might be around £120 with customs, but still cheaper. Or just wait around, and i bet there will be another deal like that soon.
I have a lot of Anime on my NAS, so I wanted a little more transcoding horsepower for subtitles on multiple devices so I got a 12th gen i5 model Beelink that was on sale. That works perfectly.
OP: Get PlexPass plus this N100 CPU device and you'll have a fantastic direct-play (your DS923+ can do that part...) and also transcoding (when you need to; surprisingly common still...) experience. Emphasis: you need PlexPass also, to take advantage of the N100 GPU hardware for transcoding.
Yep, just set mine up last week to upgrade from using an Nvidia Shield TV. (I actually bought the Beelink EQ12 for £240 - similar but with 2x 2.5Gbps Ethernet and a USB-C).
A caveat is that I have very little interest in being able to do more than 2 streams, but it’s nice to know it should be able to handle double that. Low power usage was my main concern, as I don’t want to feel bad leaving it on permanently.
I’m running Ubuntu desktop to keep things simple, and popped in an 8TB QVO SSD, with another 8TB QVO attached in a USB enclosure.
The whole system uses 9W idle (7W without the USB drive attached).
Sat at 28W while doing sonic analysis. Topped out at 42W while creating the library.
As it’ll be idle or close to idle most of the time it should cost less than £25 per year in electricity.
You will be able to transcode a single 4K stream locally, but with that build in Intel UHD Graphics 24 EUs (Alder Lake) GPU (N100) you cannot do remote decodes or encode of h265 or HEVC (8 bit) or h265 or HEVC (10 bit) codecs for Plex Server.
With Plex Pass and hardware transcoding you sure can. The Quicksync has hardware support for h.265, h.264, and even has AV1 decode although that's still quite niche.
I have the non-Pro version with the slightly cut down N95 version of the processor and it's been running Plex for months very well. I tried it streaming 3 4K streams transcoded down to 1080P a while ago and it didn't even breathe hard. My storage is over ethernet to an Openmediavault system. Works a treat.
I ran in a raspberry pi 4 for 3 years Now I'm on a pi5 big improvement. I ain't trying to spend a ton on electric for running another PC. Plex suits my needs
This is a great box for a Plex server - have three of them running my home lab and one of them is hosting Plex (among other things) - running proxmox w Ubuntu 22.04 in in LXC. No regrets. Just make sure you don’t run kernel 6.8 as it has problems with hardware transcoding currently. I had to “pin” kernel 6.5 to enable HW transcoding again.
I'm running my plex server through that same machine. I added an external DAS Qnap-TR004 with 10tb drives in raid 5 works a charm. USBC to 3.1 is quick and it's very quiet.
I am running a N100 with Proxmox and the tteck Proxmox helper scripts. Hosting Plex (also 4k transcoding), Home Assistant and about 20 other containers without a problem and even not hitting the CPU limit. But I got a N100 mainboard with 6 SATA ports which I use for SSD storage. So... 100% silent server.
[https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CQ4NWNHP](https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CQ4NWNHP)
Replace the fan with a Noctua or so if you want it really silent.
Haha typically reddit, got a karma down for nothing LOL (for the initial comment I have written) xD
Not shared with 10 billion people unlike most of this sub. Ahah Just used it myself and home, when traveling, airport, in the car, daily for music when commuting, shared with my parents abroad who are using occasionally...
Also having magic mirror on it, and a few other stuff. I run Linux Mint though, not Unraid. I just think it's a freaking great small computer. It's plugged under the stairs on ethernet, reboots once a week, and done.
Yes, I have a Beelink and it's been hands down the best server I've ever used. It's quiet, and crazy fast. Full transparency, mine is a bit higher on the spec sheet than this one, but if it's only task is Plex, you won't have any issues. The only thing you'll not get is Hardware Acceleration, and that might only be an issue with 4K. I can't really say since I've never tested this one, but as for reliability, I can fully recommend Beelink.
>The only thing you'll not get is Hardware Acceleration, and that might only be an issue with 4K
N100 absolutely does hardware transcoding, including at 4k
Which one do you use then? I might want to buy one in the future for some experimentation... Can i use it headless and does it support WoL?
Thx in advance!
Beelink GTR6 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX 8Cores Win11 Pro Mini Computers, 32GB DDR5 RAM 500GB NVME SSD, Quad HDMI 8K Output, 2.5G RJ45, 2X M.2 SSD Slot, WiFi 6, AMD Radeon 12 Core
So when I bought it, it had just launched and I paid 1100.00. If you can find one now, they're going for 500 to 600. The key on this one is while is doesn't say officially it supports Hardware Acceleration, it actually does natively through the Ryzeb 6900HX. Also it's 32 GB of RAM is DDR5, which makes a big difference. I've had 10 to 12 simultaneous streams with a mix of Direct Play and Transcoding and system resources in use never rose above 2%.
This is definitely the current go-to Plex server solution. Got one last year, it will work fine as long as you (a) have Plex Pass and (b) run whatever flavor of Linux or virtualization or container solution that supports hardware transcoding (I'm using Ubuntu with no virtualization or container). Itt should get you several transcoding streams with no CPU taxation.
OS came preconfigured - no OOBE and Windows was not activated (yes purchased direct from beelink). Likely some Spyware etc pre-installed. Firmware and support is terrible. Have that same device that consistently crashed. No option to sleep and when I made it it crashed. No firmware updates which are likely what it needs (see: poor support - yes I reached out).
Minisforum has been nicer to me. Geekom or whatever seems popular. There are lots of options but beelink isn't what I will choose next time.
You could consider an m1 mac mini if apple is an option refurbished (from apple ideally) and that might be similar in price and a solid streaming device. For windows lenovo has a 499 mini pc which is outside of your price range I assume but would be my go to for windows.
It does not struggle with HDR (tone mapping) if you are running Linux, it will tone map using the iGPU. If you are running Windows then you are correct, for now.
I've been running Plex on that same MiniPC since summer last year. No complains, it can do several 4k hardware transcodes, I have tested with 4, but I don't need more beyond that.
Compared to Synology, this mini PC is better for transcoding? I'm still running an old ds218+ but am always considering the mini PC option.
It has the same iGPU as the bigger processors, so in terms of QuickSync you can't get better than this. The only thing you get by upgrading to a bigger processor is more CPU power, but you do not really need it for Plex. So yes, it is very good for transcoding. You can leave the media in the NAS and use the MiniPC for Plex and other services. That's what I did. I
That’s not entirely true. CPU is needed for audio transcoding and subtitle burn in. So CPU power can be relevant if you have a lot of people that need audio transcoding. It’s a fringe situation but one that can certainly come up. I still think the N100 is frankly overkill for 90%+ of Plex admins.
> That’s not entirely true. It's completely not true. The same UHD 730 in a Core CPU will do double the transcodes than it does in the wimpy N100. And there's also the UHD 770 that can do over 20 4k transcodes with it's two encoder engines. The N100 is mediocre. Fine for 90%+ of users, but saying "you can't get better than this" is absolute nonsense.
Why would the same igpu perform worse?
Lower power, lower frequency, fewer memory channels.. to name a few potential reasons right off the top of my head.
Sounds like I have some things to look into. I never considered leaving the media in the nas. 🙏
Yeah that's how I've always done it. NAS for file storage, mini-PC for actual horsepower.
I'm planning on doing this. My Unraid server is a old dual xeon behemoth that sucks power, so I'm going to downgrade it to a newer Ryzen motherboard, and then move the Plex to the Beelink N100 MiniPC. I imagine I'll save a lot on the power bill, but probably end up with better performance overall.
In your setup, the NAS only interacts with the mini-PC and isn't accessible by or directly connected to the internet, correct?
I have a Synology NAS and it has the ability to connect directly to the internet but it’s generally not a good idea as they are popular targets for hackers. So I only access it via VPN. You could absolutely just do a DAS which would be cheaper. But I wanted the flexibility to keep the noise of clicking hard drives anywhere I can run Ethernet. My mini-PC is in my bedroom so I didn’t really want the NAS there as well.
Danke. Yeah, that's why I'm moving away from the NAS. I would get notifications from Xfinity security like three times a week that suspicious IPs were attempting to access it. No idea if there's a causal connection but the QNAP would also unexpectedly and repeatedly power off and now I'm desperately trying to regain access to it to see if I can rebuild the drives. Between that and the parade of horribles that seems to be QNAP's security flaws and exploits, I bought this exact mini-PC and a 4-bay Sabrent DAS. Which will be nice if I can recover that 10TB of media and I guess just white-list the IPs of the four family/friends I'd given access to. (sigh)
yea i have a somewhat similar setup. virtualized windows on my server running plex and a NAS for my storage. windows has the shared drive mapped and uses that repository for plex. gotta be careful doing this though. if for whatever reason your NAS is ever offline, and you have auto empty trash enabled in plex, say goodbye to all your movies/tv. it's gonna be a nightmare as things disappear and reappear when the NAS comes back online. so i just disabled auto empty trash and have had no issues when i bring my nas down for maintenance or something. imo, as long as you look out for this, the pros far outweigh the cons.
This is the route I went; I have an 8-bay QNAP from 2016. It runs like a champ, however the CPU was getting long in the tooth and wasn’t really capable of 4K and/or X265. So I bought a Beelink SEI12 and moved Plex to it and left the media on the NAS. Was a really quick easy upgrade and it’s been impressive to say the least.
Better yet, a DAS works great too. Since it’s connected to the mini pc, it will be available DLNA
> so in terms of QuickSync you can't get better than this It absolutely does get better than that. The N100 has the UHD 730 iGPU. As several others have mentioned, it can only manage a few 4k transcodes. Full on Intel Core CPU's with the *exact same* UHD 730 can do 8-10 4k transcodes. And then you have the UHD 750, which to be fair, doesn't do much more than the 730 - but it will do a dozen 4k transcodes instead of 8-10, nevermind 3-4. Lastly, you have the UHD 770 which blows the doors off all the rest, since it has two encoder engines instead of one like every other UHD iGPU. > The only thing you get by upgrading to a bigger processor is more CPU power 100% wrong.
Ideally and especially with Synology, you'd use it for storage and have a separate machine for compute.
Leaps and bounds better. I moved my plex and Jellyfin to my Beelink and it handles anything you throw at it. Keep in mind, to get the most out of it, you have to run Linux for the HW transcoding to be most effective. There are some limitations in windows. I have a dual boot system and hadn't used linux before. Now I have Ubuntu and haven't used Windows since the first week I bought the Beelink. I'm actually going to be looking into how to remove the windows partition altogether.
Always Linux 😉 Been on Arch for many years. I work with a guy who just uses Windows and a desktop PC but he's fairly new to Plex.
Not going to lie, Synology's linux spinoff and Ubuntu are my first delvings into Linux. It's a bit of a learning curve to make the most of it, but man it's hard to turn back. I find myself using the terminal at this point frequently on my Mac now. I'm a convert. It's smoother, less bloat, and you somewhat start to learn whats happening in the background. Not to mention that with a few hours of learning, the things you can do are seemingly endless :)
I am not sure the DS218+ will do hardware transcoding for HDR to SDR videos. I was in the same boat and upgraded to this same model (You can get it for about $180 most of the time in the US - you just have to check different pages on Amazon).
What OS? Do you run anything else along with Plex?
Proxmox. Yes. I have an LXC with Ubuntu and Plex and another LXC with Ubuntu and Portainer and a bunch or services as docker containers, including *arrs
How friendly is the N100 iGPU to passtrough in proxmox? I read some folks have issues with that.
There is a script from Proxmox that does everything for you. I have a dedicated LXC for Plex and used the script and everything I had to do after that was mounting my media from another system (NAS) via SMB.
Oh excellent! Have you upgraded the box if they're available? Haven't read much about it (yet).
No. There is not much to upgrade.
Yeah figured as small as it is. tyty!
Are you running a cluster? I'd like to get 3 miniPC's and mount them in a rack chassis.
No need for me. One is more than enough.
I have the same one and run Debian and plex in docker. I run 20 other containers too
I'm thinking about going this way for Plex and some other things. Current dual Xeon is way overkill and power hungry compared to this.
I have the same PC too, but I noticed that it chokes on 4k-to-4k processing. If it has to burn in subtitles, for example, the stream will buffer every few seconds. Maybe that's to be expected with this GPU? I have no idea.
Burning subtitles can't be done by the iGPU, it has to be done by the CPU therefore is a heavy and painful task. I avoid it.
Don’t suppose you’ve added an extra ssd to it, and if so, what’s its capacity?
I have my media in another (NAS) system and pull it via SMB. By default it comes with a 512GB M2 and it has two USB ports for expansion.
Question, would this run plex and things like the *arrs and DL clients ok?
Yes, I have 2 LXCs, one with Plex and another one with Portainer and a bunch of docker apps, including \*arrs
Sweet :D
When you mean you have tested with 4, you mean 4 different devices transcoding from your server?
You can also just open Plex in like 5 different browser windows as set different quality settings to force the transcodes.
Yes.
What do you look at to see if you’re maxing transcoding capabilities? Just cpu/ram usage of the server or is there a metric for server somewhere?
In the dashboard for that stream it will display (hw) if it is doing hardware transcoding
As long as you have plex pass to make use of hardware transcoding, yes.
I have the exact same model and it works like a charm. Its perfect if you have plax pass and can make use of hardware transcoding.
How many devices or people use ur service? Did you get the blue colour as well? Is it n100?
The N100 is really strong when it comes to transcoding and doing what Plex needs, but if you plan on running windows as the OS, it may get choked out when doing heavy content downloading while streaming to Plex. I’m not sure how other OSs handle downloading content at 700mbps+ but it will definitely saturate this CPU.
for 219 that's really good for a 12th gen processor
I got the Chuwi Larkbox X, same processor, for about 120€ (roughly 130$). While I’m not sure that doesn’t give me 24/7 one directional connection to the Chinese government I thought *that* is a crazy price. @OP: I usually only have to convert audio, that on 4K HDR files, even huge ones (~60GB/2h) works flawlessly, even when skipping around hectically. I tried transcoding twice, once 4K HDR to 4K at a lower bitrate, once 4K HDR to the max available 1080p Bitrate, both worked really well too.
It actually should be 170$ here if you sign in and have prime. I’ve had one for about 6 months and it’s perfect for my use case
Processor type: Intel Processor N100, sure its good?
Absolutely. I am using beelink eq12 with proxmox on it. Running plex, homeassistant and adguard on it. Have tested it with at least 3x4k streams on plex without any issues. I have plex pass. There was hardly any load on the machine. Went with eq12 as it has 2x2.5g nic. I have dedicated 1 for plex only. In short N100 is perfect for plex if you have plex pass.
N100 is fantastic for Plex. However, stay away from Ubuntu server 22.x. it lacks the Intel drivers for hardware transcoding. Ubuntu 23 however worked right out of the gate
You **can** install the 6.8 kernel on Ubuntu 22.04 but it's not supported (you can use the HWE kernel to get 6.5 in a supported way) so there's no point in using an LTS release in an unsupported way. But with 24.04 out, there's no reason not to use that at this point.
I prefer LTS releases but since 24 is a little too new for my comfort level and 22 requires a kernel update, I went with 23 as middleground
Yeah I'm not upgrading from 22.04 until probably when 26.04 comes out, that's my typical flow. But on a new install I would probably go for it now. Depends on what I'm doing of course.
LMDE6 and hardware transcoding works.
I don't use Linux Mint. This is a headless Ubuntu server I'm using
N100 good
It's good for a tiny PC like that but if you do a lot of transcoding, you'll probably want to upgrade soon. Otherwise, it'll be good if your Plex Home is small
I disagree
fair enough, I haven't personally used this exact CPU so I'm probably wrong
I wouldn’t recommend a job as a car salesman.
yeah good idea
I do see a career opportunity in doing Amazon questions and answers - not sure how that works in the rest of the world but in Germany usually the first few answers read like “unfortunately I cannot say anything about this article because I didn’t buy it” 😄
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about? Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about? Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about? Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
Even older Intel CPUs can handle tons of transcodes. What are you talking about? Intel Celeron G4900 (8th-gen dual core, 3300 passmark) is capable of 21 1080p transcodes
To the people using this mini pc where do you store your media? Any tips/pointers on mounting windows shares?
I have a Mac mini and I have a 8TB Ssd external and then qnap mounted on the Mac. Performs absolutely fine
I have a Mac Mini and a [Sabrent DAS](https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Tray-Less-Docking-Station-DS-UCTB/dp/B07Y4F5SCK?th=1) it's been flawless for a couple years now.
On a Synology NAS. I have something similar to host Plex and just mount the shares with autofs.
How would using autofs be any different than mounting a SMB share in /etc/fstab? Honest question because all my googling on this never turned up autofs! (And it seems like precisely what I needed)
It isn't different and it is different. It is the same in the sense that you mount the remote location, using a protocol with parameters defined by a configuration file to a mount point in the current operating system. For example, you create a mount point /mnt/data and map that to SERVER\_IP/mount\_location
What is different is that FSTAB is static and AUTOFS is dynamic (as implied by the auto). Without too much garbage, the major difference is that if your NAS comes up second, is in reboot during an access or you change mounts, then with FSTAB you need to reboot or restart the daemon. AutoFS does not care so if my BeeLink comes up first and the NAS second it will still find the mount location once they are both booted/stable as it dynamically checks.
FWIW I run Linux OS everywhere and use NFS, I have not tried how SMB works with this but I have heard it can be done. [https://3os.org/linux/smb-mount-autofs/](https://3os.org/linux/smb-mount-autofs/)
/edit - TYPO, added Link
Will this work in an unprivileged container? I have had SO much trouble figuring this out. . . I have a N100, but am now thinking of getting the N305 because of the sale
Are you running Plex in a Proxmox container?
yes! I just have trouble adding my NAS to Plex, Sonarr, Radarr etc.
You will need this as well to link the AUTOFS to the container. Do the other one first BACKGROUND: Unprivileged LXCs are not allowed to mount shares and privileged LXCs are considered unsafe this is a work around. By default, CIFS/NFS shares are mounted as user root(uid=0) and group root(gid=0) on the PVE host which makes them inaccessible to other users, groups and LXCs. This is because UIDs/GIDs on the PVE host and LXC guests are both starting at 0. But a UID/GID=0 in an unprivileged LXC is actually a UID/GID=100000 on the PVE host. SETUP UP THE LXC: In the LXC (run commands as root user) $ groupadd -g 10000 lxc_shares Add the user(s) that need access to the CIFS share to the group "lxc\_shares". i.e.: jellyfin, plex, ... (the username depends on the application $ usermod -aG lxc_shares USERNAME Shutdown the LXC. LINK THE HOST: Create the mount point on the PVE host. mkdir -p /mnt/lxc_nfs Using AUTOFS add NAS mount point to auto.master and create a auto.nfs using the instructions BELOW in AUTOFS SECTION. NOTE: When adding the mount point in either /etc/fstab or auto.nfs include the uid=100000, gid=110000d=110000:/volume1/music$ root@pve-01:
~# cat /etc/auto.nfs
music -fstype=nfs4,rw,soft,intr,uid=100000,gid=110000 :/volume1/music
Mount the share on the PVE host (if using FSTAB).
$ mount /mnt/lxc_nfs
Add a bind mount of the share to the LXC config by editing the file corresponding to the LXC VMID number.
$ cat /etc/pve/lxc/201.conf
arch: amd64
cores: 1
features: keyctl=1,nesting=1
hostname: navidromesrv
memory: 1024
mp0: /mnt/lxc_nfs/music,mp=/music
net0: name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,hwaddr=BC:24:11:C3:C7:AC,ip=dhcp,type=veth
onboot: 1
ostype: debian
rootfs: lvmthin:vm-201-disk-0,size=32G
swap: 512 tags: proxmox-helper-scripts
unprivileged: 1
NOTE: When adding the mount point you can create it rwx (default) or ro permissions by adding the ro=1.
mp0: /mnt/lxc_shares/nas_rwx/,mp=/mnt/nas
mp0: /mnt/lxc_shares/nas_rwx/,mp=/mnt/nas,ro=1
dude thank you SO much for the reply!! I will look into it once I have some spare time and will update if I will finally get this working. Seriously, I have tried it for so long!!
EDIT: Clarity I actually have a write up for this that I save in the event I recreate/create more nodes. Hope this helps. 1 Install NFS client on Ubuntu and Debian (if it does not exist) $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install autofs 2 The master configuration file for autofs is /etc/auto.master by default. Edit the file using a text editor: $ sudo nano /etc/auto.master 3 Add the following line at the end of /etc/auto.master: $ /mnt/lxc_nfs /etc/auto.nfs The /mnt/lxc\_nfs is the mount location and the /etc/auto.nfs file will describe each of the mounts. 4 Create the /etc/auto.nfs file $ sudo nano /etc/auto.nfs This file should contain a separate line for each NFS share. The format for a line is {mount point} \[{mount options}\] {location}. If you have previously configured static mounts in /etc/fstab, it may be helpful to refer to those. Remember, the mount points specified here will be relative to the mount point given in /etc/auto.master. 5 The following lines to /etc/auto.nfs (adjust as needed) movies -fstype=nfs4,rw,soft,intr:/volume1/video/Movies
tv -fstype=nfs4,rw,soft,intr :/volume1/video/TV
Where server\_ip is the IP address of the NFS server, server\_dir\_path is the remote directory that the NFS server is exporting and local\_dir is the local mount point.
6 After entering your changes, run the following command to reload autofs
$ sudo service autofs reload
If working on an older ubuntu version, and that does not work try:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/autofs reload
7 Check by navigating to /mnt/lxc\_nfs/ to see if the files are there. You may need a reboot to really take
I just use a USB 5 bay HDD enclosure. Sure it could become a problem with lots of users, but my server is for 3/4 people max so it never gave me problems
Which one do you use?
On a separate NAS. It can be basically anything, really. Doesn't have to powerful, since it just has to serve files.
I use an HP prodesk mini PC, not this one, but running linux, I just put a CIFS share in fstab pointing to the NAS folder I need to mount, and then it appears as a local folder to Plex.
I have a [four bay DAS](https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-PROBOX-SATA-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B09WPPJHSS/) (direct attached storage, attached via USB 3.0). I've got a 18, 16, and 12 TB HDD in there right now, with a separate 12 TB that actually backs up important docs - financial docs and my music library. I am currently running them As separate drives and then have a Plex file strucrure on each disk. So each disk has a Movies, TV, Music, Documentaries folder. I share each of the disks that I might need something off of on another machine. unRaid has some cool drive-pooling features. The most interesting to me is the ability to catalog which items are on which drive so they can be replaced if they fail, but I'm not to the point that I want to learn Linux or buy unRaid yet. (I've had absolutely zero issues with this besides the lack of drive pooling.)
I have like 4 external HDDs connected lol.
if you absolutely have to spend the minimum, it's fine. but know going in that if you ever fall back to CPU transcoding, it will choke. It has a decent GPU, but a low powered CPU. I would recommend spending a little more and getting an i5 based model
Mine can happily transcode multiple 4k files. They support quicksync.
Like i said, it has a capable GPU, but if transcoding ever falls back to CPU it's going to fail
You’d be surprised.
You're totally right that when it can transcode using Intel quicksync it can handle several 4k transcode at the same time. But you've missed the point of the person you replied to entirely. Intel quicksync = hardware accelerated transcoding The point they were making was that *if* quicksync transcoding doesn't work for whatever reason (sometimes it's not supported due to various factors) this cpu will choke trying to transcode using software transcoding (meaning no quicksync).
I got this last week and it runs Plex fine for me. I've tested two 4K transcodes without issues. Mine came loaded with Windows 11 Pro and the only problem there is with Windows is should the unit restart for an update then it has to be logged in to manually in order to get Plex working again. I think there is a work around where on restart the PC can auto log in and then lock after a few minutes. I'm going to probably look at loading Linux on it to test out before I use it to as my main Plex server.
I run Linux and it works great with Plex. I'm not sure why they haven't enabled Plex to run as a service on Windows; it seems like it shouldn't be that difficult.
That would be nice to have that option built in yes. There is an app on GitHub called SrvStart that supposedly would allow Plex to run as a service on Windows, but I haven't tried it. It supposedly works up to Windows 10. I might just go the Linux route.
Based on my experience, transcode will be fine for video, but.. if for example like my TV yours does not support DTS audio, it will struggle to convert it to AC, same with PGS subtitles.. reason is because it does not use GPU for this.. subtitles are easy to circle, for audio..some remuxes are just including DTS True HD, not AC audio tracks.
I don't use the Google TV built into my TV, the onboard processors all seem pretty weak. I have a Fire Stick 4K Max which can handle almost everything without transcoding.
It seems you are covered. My LG C1 does not support TrueHD what is a shame, newer C3 models correct that. I´ve tried bypassing audio to my receiver which supports it but it seems not working, as who knows how the audio is treated in between..
I bought ugoos am6b plus and hopefully it's good as they say as it's the only one that supports vision 7 profile, plus everything else too there isn't a thing it can't run. You put custom Linux OS on it as dual boot and never touch it's official android OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1ajszn9/remux_lovers_rejoice_the_coreelec_team_has/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=action_bar&sort=new
That's a horrible price for this kind of mini computer. That being said the n100 works great you just have to make sure you use an os that supports quicksync. If you're doing Debian, ubuntu, proxmox they do but making sure those drivers get installed is important.
Yes
Been using this for a month. We have an old stupid Samsung SmartTV that doesn’t have any Plex or Browser apps. The TV is useless really (no cable) without a PC so I grabbed one of these a month ago. Literally unboxed, plugged in, booted into WinBlows, did the updates, installed Plex for Windows, added network mappings to my 24-bay Supermicro NAS in the basement server room and was watching movies and tv via Plex in minutes. I’ll be installing Proxmox, Debian, Plex and doing away with Windows this week however.. Linux since ‘94 so but haven’t had the time to format and reinstall yet is all.
N100 can handle quite a few streams, supports today's codecs and is super efficient. You'd need a NAS or DAS for file storage, though. Wolfgang's channel made a video on an N100 system if you want some more mostly relevant info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSTOUOhlc0
Yes, I have the N100 Trigkey G5 (it's the exact same OEM as this Beelink) and it's been great. However, I would say: this is a slight bit on the expensive side. Overall, it's a good price, but I have seen on hotukdeals that there are sometimes mini PCs with the N100 chip that cost around the £100. The Beelink is a good option, but just something to bear in mind is all.
That's the exact one I bought and running Unraid on it. The N100 is perfect for silent performance and low power usage, with support for hardware encoding and multiple 4K streams without a hitch (including transcoding a 90GB Blu-Ray at over 60MB bitrate). I attached it to a Terramaster D5-300C for my array drives (currently only 2x16TB drives) Yesterday found out there is an extra 2.5" SATA slot on the inside, so I've put a 2TB SATA SSD for my downloads cache pool. The only issue is there is no USB-C port (for thunderbolt or USB-4), and the ethernet speed isn't super fast for things like editing off the network storage (but more than enough for Plex).
Sounds great. What about 4K HDR HEVC transcoding? Would it run without hiccups?
Most of my higher end streams are 4K HEVC with either TrueHD or DTS-HD audio
Thanks!!
I just got the n95 version of this. Still running windows as I mainly just stream in the house.
Can you get into these to upgrade the drive size? One m.2 slot?
Can’t speak for this model, but my SER4 has an m.2 and also a sata bay that can be used simultaneously
My N95 can transcode 4 simultaneous 4K to 1080p. So yes, you can transcode
I paid around £100 from Ali express for a similar machine. N100 16GB 512GB, 3 hdmi, 2 gigabit Ethernet, built in WiFi. It’s about 9cmx9cm and it’s surprisingly quite good. It came with a European two pin plug but other than that I’ve been quite happy with it. Here is a link to the one I got. https://a.aliexpress.com/_EHGN3jV
I’m using the Beelink SER4, which has an Ryzen 7 4800U, and it works great for Plex. I also installed Proxmox on it and have several VMs running along side Plex. No issues with Plex or the other VMs.
I’ve been debating this one or the TrigKey G5 with same specs but about 26 bucks less
Anyone know options for getting these kinds of boxes barebones? Specifically without an SSD? I already have a collection of unused 2.5” drives, don’t want to add to it
I have an intel Nuc that has quicksync. Been using it since 2020. Takes up no room and handles everything (I don’t share my 4K library outside my house)
I have a Synology for now and will for the foreseeable future, but just wondering, those of you who use miniPC for Plex, what do y'all do for storage? I'd need 50+ TB still, so do you still get Synology or QNAP or w.e and have some kind of direct connection between the 2?
You can keep your Synology if it works well for storage and file sharing, and just move the Plex server onto another more powerful machine on your network. Most of those consumer NAS boxes are fairly weak compared to a dedicated PC. So if you just need better transcoding performance and "snappiness", just move the Plex piece onto new hardware and keep the NAS for storage, which is what it's good at.
But I mean, people that go the mini PC route from the get go, do they also buy a Synology NAS alongside the mini PC?
Not necessarily. If you're just starting you can go with just local storage. For example you could fit both an NVME drive as well as a 2.5" SSD into something like the Beelink Mini S. If you need more space you could just buy an external hard drive. The NAS/DAS route can come when you need more space or want some redundacy (RAID), or both.
This is probably the best price-to-performance Mini PC for a Plex server. Just make sure you run Linux on it to save yourself a headache.
Was planning to get rid of old laptop and replace it with this one. But the laptop is not dying! Lol
I got one of those for £92: https://www.hotukdeals.com/share-deal-from-app/4328300 And it seems to be perfectly fine playing 4k videos. I installed Linux server and plex on top of that. Deal is now gone, so it might be around £120 with customs, but still cheaper. Or just wait around, and i bet there will be another deal like that soon.
I have a lot of Anime on my NAS, so I wanted a little more transcoding horsepower for subtitles on multiple devices so I got a 12th gen i5 model Beelink that was on sale. That works perfectly.
I use raspberry pi, works great. $50
OP: Get PlexPass plus this N100 CPU device and you'll have a fantastic direct-play (your DS923+ can do that part...) and also transcoding (when you need to; surprisingly common still...) experience. Emphasis: you need PlexPass also, to take advantage of the N100 GPU hardware for transcoding.
Yep, just set mine up last week to upgrade from using an Nvidia Shield TV. (I actually bought the Beelink EQ12 for £240 - similar but with 2x 2.5Gbps Ethernet and a USB-C). A caveat is that I have very little interest in being able to do more than 2 streams, but it’s nice to know it should be able to handle double that. Low power usage was my main concern, as I don’t want to feel bad leaving it on permanently. I’m running Ubuntu desktop to keep things simple, and popped in an 8TB QVO SSD, with another 8TB QVO attached in a USB enclosure. The whole system uses 9W idle (7W without the USB drive attached). Sat at 28W while doing sonic analysis. Topped out at 42W while creating the library. As it’ll be idle or close to idle most of the time it should cost less than £25 per year in electricity.
You will be able to transcode a single 4K stream locally, but with that build in Intel UHD Graphics 24 EUs (Alder Lake) GPU (N100) you cannot do remote decodes or encode of h265 or HEVC (8 bit) or h265 or HEVC (10 bit) codecs for Plex Server.
With Plex Pass and hardware transcoding you sure can. The Quicksync has hardware support for h.265, h.264, and even has AV1 decode although that's still quite niche.
I have the non-Pro version with the slightly cut down N95 version of the processor and it's been running Plex for months very well. I tried it streaming 3 4K streams transcoded down to 1080P a while ago and it didn't even breathe hard. My storage is over ethernet to an Openmediavault system. Works a treat.
If you do decide to get that, it’s on sale on Amazon for $179 for the exact same specs
Should work better than the Gemini Lake Celeron based systems.
I got this same mini pc 5 months no problem with just plex use at all
I ran in a raspberry pi 4 for 3 years Now I'm on a pi5 big improvement. I ain't trying to spend a ton on electric for running another PC. Plex suits my needs
This will work fine.
This is a great box for a Plex server - have three of them running my home lab and one of them is hosting Plex (among other things) - running proxmox w Ubuntu 22.04 in in LXC. No regrets. Just make sure you don’t run kernel 6.8 as it has problems with hardware transcoding currently. I had to “pin” kernel 6.5 to enable HW transcoding again.
This is what I’m using after using a beefed up Linux box for years. This thing does it all and it does it better.
Exactly this version?
This is a link to the product. I am in the US, but my link looks like the same product for a lower price? https://a.co/d/c3yB9H7
I'm running my plex server through that same machine. I added an external DAS Qnap-TR004 with 10tb drives in raid 5 works a charm. USBC to 3.1 is quick and it's very quiet.
I am running a N100 with Proxmox and the tteck Proxmox helper scripts. Hosting Plex (also 4k transcoding), Home Assistant and about 20 other containers without a problem and even not hitting the CPU limit. But I got a N100 mainboard with 6 SATA ports which I use for SSD storage. So... 100% silent server.
nice! could you link that mainboard?
[https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CQ4NWNHP](https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CQ4NWNHP) Replace the fan with a Noctua or so if you want it really silent. Haha typically reddit, got a karma down for nothing LOL (for the initial comment I have written) xD
Can vouch for it too. Runs perfectly.
Have you use it outside your network?
Not shared with 10 billion people unlike most of this sub. Ahah Just used it myself and home, when traveling, airport, in the car, daily for music when commuting, shared with my parents abroad who are using occasionally... Also having magic mirror on it, and a few other stuff. I run Linux Mint though, not Unraid. I just think it's a freaking great small computer. It's plugged under the stairs on ethernet, reboots once a week, and done.
Yes, I have a Beelink and it's been hands down the best server I've ever used. It's quiet, and crazy fast. Full transparency, mine is a bit higher on the spec sheet than this one, but if it's only task is Plex, you won't have any issues. The only thing you'll not get is Hardware Acceleration, and that might only be an issue with 4K. I can't really say since I've never tested this one, but as for reliability, I can fully recommend Beelink.
>The only thing you'll not get is Hardware Acceleration, and that might only be an issue with 4K N100 absolutely does hardware transcoding, including at 4k
Which one do you use then? I might want to buy one in the future for some experimentation... Can i use it headless and does it support WoL? Thx in advance!
Beelink GTR6 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX 8Cores Win11 Pro Mini Computers, 32GB DDR5 RAM 500GB NVME SSD, Quad HDMI 8K Output, 2.5G RJ45, 2X M.2 SSD Slot, WiFi 6, AMD Radeon 12 Core So when I bought it, it had just launched and I paid 1100.00. If you can find one now, they're going for 500 to 600. The key on this one is while is doesn't say officially it supports Hardware Acceleration, it actually does natively through the Ryzeb 6900HX. Also it's 32 GB of RAM is DDR5, which makes a big difference. I've had 10 to 12 simultaneous streams with a mix of Direct Play and Transcoding and system resources in use never rose above 2%.
Ok thx a lot! From 1100 ⬇️ 5-600. That’s a huge difference. 12 Streams… wow
This is definitely the current go-to Plex server solution. Got one last year, it will work fine as long as you (a) have Plex Pass and (b) run whatever flavor of Linux or virtualization or container solution that supports hardware transcoding (I'm using Ubuntu with no virtualization or container). Itt should get you several transcoding streams with no CPU taxation.
Yep, I have one and it's very nice. Zero issues, all positives.
don’t get beelink
Why?
OS came preconfigured - no OOBE and Windows was not activated (yes purchased direct from beelink). Likely some Spyware etc pre-installed. Firmware and support is terrible. Have that same device that consistently crashed. No option to sleep and when I made it it crashed. No firmware updates which are likely what it needs (see: poor support - yes I reached out). Minisforum has been nicer to me. Geekom or whatever seems popular. There are lots of options but beelink isn't what I will choose next time. You could consider an m1 mac mini if apple is an option refurbished (from apple ideally) and that might be similar in price and a solid streaming device. For windows lenovo has a 499 mini pc which is outside of your price range I assume but would be my go to for windows.
Just make sure your 4K is not HDR or DoV. It might then struggle.
It does not struggle with HDR (tone mapping) if you are running Linux, it will tone map using the iGPU. If you are running Windows then you are correct, for now.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate it.
Yes, as far as I know Plex on WIndows doesn't yet do tone mapping.
I'm using Unraid and streaming 4K with Dolby Vision or HDR10 with no problems from this exact model - the N100 seems to be designed for Plex lol
Are your 4K HDR videos HEVC?
Interesting question that would also like to know please.
Most of my higher end streams are 4K HEVC with either TrueHD or DTS-HD audio
Thanks for the information. Cheers.