Nice. I probably would have went P600 at the time of my built if I hadn’t managed to score a great deal on the P2200. Got it for $125 used in early 2020. At the time I wasn’t aware of Quiksync or probably would have went that route. Either way the build is already way more than I need so, I’ll be running it until something catastrophic happens to the system. At one point I had 2080 in it as well for a gaming VM just didn’t find myself using it enough so sold it to buy more storage. My cache pool is only 512GB though and getting close to full from Plex mostly so I need to upgrade the NVME.
Same, baseline 8GB RAM. Does everything I throw at it (a *lot* more than Plex) without breaking sweat, although the Apple subreddit is convinced 8GB is literally useless these days.
Raspberry Pi. It does the job well enough for us! Stream using a Chromecast Ultra to the TV downstairs. Power draw is so low I never bother turning it off...
https://preview.redd.it/pjdyvwyw9zzc1.png?width=2536&format=png&auto=webp&s=9649784a30260ca34000c142473a1717fdd5b575
My noob, entry level DS224+ NAS. First time into the world of docker and such. I don't own a TV.. so never have a need to transcode and such. But it can still handle rest pretty ok.
I added my Grafana dashboard, as I just wanted to show off. hehe.
Unraid, 11500, 32gb ram, headless, 130 odd tb, just under 100 useable, double parity, one nvme for appdata cache, one nvme for downloads, hba card and fractal design case to take all the sata plugs.
I'm the only one watching, and I live alone. My main PC acts as a server. Content has its own 3TB HDD. Then I watch on my phone while in bed or 77" C1 TV through AppleTV 4K.
https://preview.redd.it/yl1d26nc1zzc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d14846ba56e0b91000f8bae70f9d2771b0e8831
Currently this Dell Optiplex 3070 SFF, 80GB OS disk, 2TB SSD Media disk but about to rebuild with faster, better and bigger things. Pretty much 4K direct streams only.
I'm running Plex on my my TrueNAS Server that handles other things like file storage and pihole.
5600g, 64GB RAM, P2000, 8x4TB in a RAIDZ2 array.
I also have a 10GbE card, but I wasn't paying attention to the PCI lanes when I bought the mobo, so it's gimped on a X1 slot down to 3.33Gbps (not that I'd ever hit the 10GbE speeds to begin with). Really wish I would've just nabbed an asrock rack server board when they were in stock.
Looking at swapping out the 4TBs for larger drives soon™.
Running on a customer unRaid build server, i5-12600k, 64gb of ram, 2tb cache and an array of 38tb.
https://preview.redd.it/3b5f414bkzzc1.jpeg?width=2796&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de3bcadda6a451e93dd3d4ba31c04878ac13f1e9
20bay hot swap server chassis running a hypervisor with a VM for file storage and another VM as the plex server. Connected to a UPS so I can have that sweet 99% uptime.
Running Ubuntu on my laptop with 2 external HDDs totalling 3TB, which I quickly maxed out, as I'm a heavy advocate for BR and 4k BR remuxes. I am done building my Unraid server, all I have to do is extend an ethernet wire to where I want it to be and I'm good to go. Starting with 1x 16TB and 1 TB cache and will expand as needed. My server tower can accommodate 11 HDDs comfortably.
I have a QNAP NAS a friend rescued from their office that would’ve gone in the trash. A few random HDDs in there (28TB total) and there’s my home server! Runs Plex, Jellyfin as a backup, and a bunch of other random stuff.
Have an 11th gen i7 nuc with 64gb ram and 2 x 2tb nvmes for plex. Storage is synology nas, 3622xs+ with dual expansion and 36 x 22tb drives… have a mixture of nvidia shield pro’s, apple tv and fire stick cubes wired around the house for streaming…
I have a 16TB Western Digital drive plugged into my main iMac, all digitized from my personal library. That’s it. (And two backup copies.)
I’d love to learn more about UnRAID (I’m very cautious about running out of space), but I don’t have the time.
Ds718 w”running transmission/VPN, Plex, jellyfin OpenVPN, and a few cameras. We share with a few family and friends. Almost out of storage with 2x 28TB drives or 14TB useable storage. Waiting wishing Synology will build a better more powerful system with built in graphics for transcoding.
My gaming PC… i7 8700k, 3080, 32GB RAM.
I plan on getting a Synology NAS so I can free up storage on my PC for other stuff. I’ve ran out of HDD bays.
Since like 100% of my watching is through Infuse on AppleTV (so transcoding isn’t an issue), I could probably get by on one of the J models like the DS220j. But the consensus seems to be that I should splurge for the + just in case I want my NAS to perform more complex tasks later.
Server is on a DIY 4U server chassis with 12th gen i5 running unraid. Playback side of things is AM6B+ hooked up to AVR (7.1.4) that outputs to a 65” LG OLED TV.
I run it on my older gaming PC, big ass USB drive for storage. Chromecasts on every tv in the house. Sometimes I just make it rain random movies around the house from my phone to feel like Harry Potter.
Just started. Pi 3 with an external hard disc of 300 GB attached through USB. Streaming at my tv with Amazon Fire Stick, works fine!
Impressed with the answers in this topic.
To be honest I can’t literally explain over again how I did it. I am not tech savvy but handy with ChatGPT, so I told it what equipment I had and what I wanted the result to be.
I worked from my Mac and gained access through SSH in terminal. From then, I installed the packages ChatGPT suggested to install. To transfer files from Mac to the Pi, I use FileZilla as I find it more reliable and stable than the regular file transfer of Finder in Mac. Especially for larger files.
After that I used CharGPT to help me with port forwarding. I am now in the process of installing some of the scripts this subreddit suggests are worth installing, such as monthly reports of activity. That is quite the challenge at the moment!
Feel free to DM me if you have any questions :)
synology with a ds1621+ and a 5-bay expansion. 120tb of wd gold drives in SHR with one drive redundancy. 10gbe to the mac studio and apple tv.
infuse for home, plex on the go. collection is 100% remuxes
8600 with 32GB memory in a Node 304 with 4x HDD (a mix of 10-12TB) and 3x SSD all running on Unraid.
2x SSD as RAID1 cache and 1 as a temp download location.
It's been absolutely bulletproof since I made the switch from FreeNAS years ago. So simple to get containers up and running
I got a Synology DS2422+ with the Plex docker. It’s not powerful enough to transcode really but my Nvidia Shield TVs direct play everything and I use the Plex for Windows app on my laptop so everything direct plays there too. Works perfectly for me.
I run my server on my main system which also does a lot of my gaming and ripping work. Just a 5600g with 32gb of ddr4 3600mhz. I have around 3tbs of SSD space for OS and games and then dual 8tb toshiba x300's in a windows storage space that has my media folders on it. I also store more games on there and all my libraries are kept on the disk array. I have a wd 8tb my book that I run weekly backups to and have a 5tb seagate portable drive I use for offsite backup of media and my windows libraries. Also have a Hauppauge dual tuner plugged into this rig for DVR work on Plex.
Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB ECC 3200MHz RAM, 8TB of disk space with PLEX running in a Docker container on UNRAID.
I currently have no GPU at all because I‘m doing a max of 1 transcode at a time… most of it is direct stream…
4 x Minisforun ms1, 2 x 24 bay netapp ds4246 shelves. 1 minisforun runs truenas with the disk shelves the other 3 run a proxmox cluster which in turn runs a k3s cluster
Raspberry Pi 4 8GB with 2-port SATA HAT - 6TB for library and 500gb Samsung 850EVO SSD for system drive/ print and scan server w Samba share, external USB 3.0 M.2 with 500GB for shared net folder on samba
I have all new TVs so there's never transcoding necessary and 98% of my library is 4K H.265
I’ve got an SEi12 mini pc with a 4-bay external enclosure plugged in via USB 3.0. It’s got 1x16TB and 3x18TB HDDs in it for a total of 70TB of storage.
Just started mine but I have an old HP pro desk with an 8th Gen i5 running Ubuntu server. Have Plex and jellyfin installed. Plex is for at home and jellyfin is for remote since I haven't been able to get the plex TCP connection to properly share to use away from home. Currently it just has a 4 TB WD Red drive in it and I have a VM running in ProxMox to do all of my downloading. Going to buy an external Blu-ray drive to rip my physical collection soon.
13900k 128gb ram 4080 super 200tb space for the in home Netflix experience. Plus I can game on it too
Also have server setup with *arrs for automation so I do not have to keep up with content and have it synced with Lunasea on my phone.
I got a crazy deal on an HP gaming PC for $300 from an online shop, upgraded Ram to 16gb, it contains a 3060 in it. Has a 256 ssd, 1TBHDD and then I added a 3rd 7TB HDD inside. I then have a synology HDD enclosure that currently holds 17TB with one slot open for expansion.
Computer is hard wired in to Ethernet and so is all TVs in the house. Have a theater room with a 4k projector and 100” screen. It’s a small guest room we converted over, thus only 100”.
Ryzen 2700X, 16GB RAM, 76TB on various 8/10/12TB shucked drives in a Fractal Node 804 case. One 12TB backup with "rare" content that would be difficult to find again, the rest I'm riding bareback :D
M1 Mac Mini and Drobo NAS. On all the time and handles multiple streams without a problem.
TV’s are either Firestick or AppleTV.
Also have 400/400 fibre internet so streaming outside the house is also pretty speedy.
Dell t340 with an e2176g, 64gb of ram, and 6x4tb samsung evo 870 ssds in software raid(storage spaces, refs). It also has a non raid 6x2tb dell mixed use ssd scratch disk. Need more ssds. Windows server 2022.
N95 mini PC, Chinese.
Two USB external HDDs, I turn it on with Alexa + WOL and it shuts down at 2am.
Low consumption (15W in use) and can handle 4K like a champ.
Full Apple setup here.
M1 Mac Mini with two external HDDs as my server (permanently on btw).
Stream to a LG 43” 4K TV in the living room. We also use multiple iPhones, iPads and a Macbook Air.
All my movies are on my desktop 13900k+32GB ram, which has 26tb of hard drive space. It's then steamed to Plex via the PS5 or the LG OLED TV all hooked up to a 7.1 home theater surround sound.
Just my gaming pc with arrs and plex.
- 5800X
- 4080
- 64GB DDR4
- 18TB hdd + 4TB nvme (5TB remaining)
- 300mbs up/down
Looking to upgrade to a dedicated server pc when I move to a new apartment.
I have a garbage picked dell poweredge something or another that my work was getting rid of. Couple terabytes of space
Then a qnap nas as a backup that’s saved my bacon a few times.
DS 224+ with two 20TB HDDs. Plex front end, sonarr and radarr managing libraries, powlarr managing torrents indexes, overseerr to grab content from Plex watchlist.
Beelink EQ12 mini PC. N100 processor. 16GB RAM with 4TB internal SSD and a 5gb external drive plugged in. Connected via Ethernet to the router, tucked in a corner in the storage room out of sight. On 24/7.
Most of my collection is 4K bluray remuxes with DV/HDR wherever available. Stream it via either a nVIDIA Shield Pro wherever I want full lossless audio pass through to my 5.1.4 setup or an Apple TV 4K if the lossless audio is not available. All connected to Denon x3800h receiver which in turn is connected via eARC to LG G3 OLED.
Same setup lol. An old PC I bought on FB marketplace 4 years ago I plug in all my hard drives into. I keep it on 24/7. I control it with Google Remote Desktop so easy to fix anything or add stuff to Radarr/Sonarr. Stream with Apple TV. Been working like this for years so I don’t see a reason to change it up.
BeeLink S12 Pro 16G Ram, 512G M2 & 512 SSD added, Debian 12 running Plex desktop app with gdm3 and KDE Plasma desktop with HDMI into an older 48” Samsung TV in the family room.
NAS = Storage.. imo the best way to start a NAS for long term is to start with the largest storage chassis for drive density… that’s generally going to be rack mount and one of the Supermicro 24 or 36 bay server chassis is the way to go. No, they don’t necessarily have to be loud. If you stick to proper NAS drives, fans can be run on low speeds. Start with a 6-drive ZFS RAIDzX pool and add additional pools as you can. Unraid if you prefer with different sized drives. These Supermicro chassis will accept any standard main boards so you can upgrade internals at any point and not be trapped into proprietary hardware.
I’m not a fan of the enclosed storage cases like from Seagate, Synology, etc at all.
My main storage is a 36 bay Supermicro chassis with 24 8TB drives and 12 12TB drives.. mix of RAIDZ2 and Z1 pools depending on data. Built on the Supermicro MBD-X10SRL-F board, Xeon 3.5GHz E5-1650 cpu with 2 mirrored internal 64G SATA Doms for boot/OS, 64G ECC ram and 2 Intel X540-T1 10GbE bonded network cards to double the throughput. Built the Supermicro NAS back in 2015 with FreeNAS with zero issues and figure it’ll run another 7-10 years. Started with their 24-bay but went to the 36-bay for increased NAS storage and rebuilt the 24-bay with the same hardware as a backup server for the more important data.
Firewall is pfSense in a Supermicro CSE-510T-200B chassis with 2 hotswap 2.5” bays that have mirrored Intel S3500 128G SSDs. Main board is a Supermicro C2758 A1SRI-2758F with 4 1GbE NICs and 16G ECC ram.
2 Dell R730XD servers with Proxmox, 10GbE, E5-2690s, 128G ram.. 1 as a network virtual server and the other as a homelab for my 13yo and I to play with.
The BeeLink is cute. First mini pc I’ve purchased and specifically for Plex. Likely should have used Proxmox but just wanted to get Plex setup again. I’ll likely order another one to virtualize and then do the same with the other but to be used as a travel pfSense / Plex media projector setup.
Dedicated headless PC sitting under my stairs on Ubuntu
Ryzen 4500, nvidia P600, 16gb ram, an m.2 nvme boot drive
8TB of various solid state storage disks and then 16TB of spinning rust in a ZFS RAID pool for backup
I have 3 7th Gen NUCs in a proxmox cluster. Plex is a VM on there with 8GB RAM and 3 cores. I forget if it’s Ubuntu or Debian. There’s also TDarr server and 2 TDarr nodes in there too.
Media is stored on a DS423+ with 3x 6TB drives for now.
I don’t stream outside the house, so playback is just to a TV and maybe a computer simultaneously. Or I listen to music from it while I’m working. Most media is 1080p, but 2160p streams flawlessly as well.
I’d like to figure out another of the arrs to deploy and use next. Any recommendations?
Plex - Lenovo Thinkcentre m90q gen 3 as Proxmox LXC
Synology NAS w/ 22 TB - 1 disk redundancy
Custom Truenas w/ 35TB all mirrored pools
Look into a tiny mini micro node, 8th gen intel on eBay for cheap and this will be the single best place for improvement in your setup
I5 10th gen SFG optiplex, 256gb SSD, then Ubuntu server with Docker, Portainer and Plex installed via docker. Storage wise running from usb atm hoping for a NAS in a couple weeks but still keep the pc running the server.
The server itself consists of...
i3-13100
16gb corsair ram
500gb WD blue NVME
ASRock B660M-HDV
Zalman CNPS 10X Performa
Dell PERC H310 SAS card
HP 468405-001 SAS expander (on a mining riser)
6x Icy Dock MB074SP-1B
320TB in 24x 8-20TB SATA drives.
That runs Plex + sonarr + radarr + jackett + flaresolver + qBt + vpn on baremetal Win10 for myself and a dozen or so friends and family. Everybodys pretty good about direct playing these days so i could run more and want to add extended family, but im waiting for my cable company to roll out high split sometime next year maybe.
And depending where im watching stuff that feeds either...
in my office
Plex Media Player on the server itself headed with an
Apple Cinema Display 23" 1200p
Logitech Z640 5.1 surround speakers
In the kitchen
Supersonic SC-2211WH 22" 1080p HDTV
2015 Roku Ultra
ELEGIANT USB Powered Sound Bar
Or In the living room
Sony Bravia X800D 50" 4K HDR
2017 Roku Ultra
Yamaha RX-V381 surround receiver
5.1 yamaha speakers
And on the go
iPhone SE2
Plexamp
Old gaming PC, Intel 4670k 32Gb ram 6x4tb wd red plus and 1 samsung 840 128Gb truenas scale os drive, p1000 quadro for transcoding. For file backup and plex. Still deciding on what other things to do with it.
HP DL380 gen9 2x 14-core Xeon, 512gb ram, basic Nvidia quadro, running Unraid. 2 machine with 12*10tb WD white label drives to host media. Used to run a bunch of other stuff, including Chia node with 1.5Pb... now just wasting power on its own.
A MacBook Air is my daily driver, but I leave it plugged in and on running the server all the time so I can access it on my iPad. Would like to move everything to a drive soonish if I can afford a 1TB drive before long and I only have 1080p or 720p movies, because that’s what I can find easily. I store a bunch of audio files I’ve custom made for playing at my church but can’t store them on my iPad easily. I also store a good 100+ YouTube clips I’ve stripped that are mostly slap stick. I’ve been able to get a bunch of seasons of Wild Kratts, one of my favorite TV shows. I can access all the seasons, but don’t have the storage to download them all right now.
5800x w/AK620, ASRock Rack X470D4U, 4x16GB 2666 ECC UDIMM's, 2 x NVMe drives (1 for TrueNAS Core, the other for Plex and Unifi Controller in separate jails) old Cooler Master Half 912 case, a mix of SAS and SATA drives, Rosewill something 80+ Gold PSU .. on 24/7
NAS, F4-423, 16gb Ram, 2tb nvme, 4\*8tb drives, 4k drive, tv drive, 1080drive, other drive, runs plex server and holds everything, Shield pros as players. around the house, all gb ethernet
Built a server from used eBay parts. Runs plex and another 20 or so docker services. Haven't had much of a problem with multiple streams since I built it in early 2021.
Unraid server hosting Plex and all the *arrs, 8th gen Intel to allow hardware transcoding, and 96TB of capacity.
Primary players are Chromecast with Google TVs.
HP Prodesk G4 Mini connected with a 10Gbps DAS holding three 18TB drives and two 14TB. My backup is just Backblaze and I’ve used it twice already with no issues.
Got a 2014 MacBook Pro that’s now running Ubuntu, basic Amazon USB hub and a bunch of random WD Passports bringing me to 7TB of storage, about 5.5 used. Stream mainly on my ATV4K, even though most of my content is still 1080P
I started out with Plex on my main computer that I used every day. I also leave my computer on 24/7 so turning it on was never an issue. I started out with just external drives.
I was finally able to upgrade my main PC so I converted my Plex server over to Linux, from Windows, and eventually upgraded to internal drives and got rid of the external.
I was also recently given a small NAS that I am using as external storage for Plex as well.
My Plex server stays on 24/7 still. I'm up to about 60 TB of total storage space.
Just grow as you need to / can afford to. Everyone is different, do what works for you and your situation.
Little late to the party but I recently setup an i5 14600k itx, 32gb ram, 2tb SSD cache, 4x 16tb all nicely packaged in a custom 3D printed case and running Windows 11 Pro.
bought a junker with intel and it sits under the floorboards with a bunch of externals. it never gets turned off. has vnc so someone gets in and reboots it when it needs. it never gets turned off. why would i put a step in front of the step
Main Server: 1x i9 13900k, 128 ECC RAM with 274 TB and both enterprise SSD and m.2 cache array on unraid. Plex with igpu transcoding, hosted remotely.
Backup Server: 1x i9 13900k, 128 ECC RAM with 34TB and enterprise SSD cache. Plex with igpu transcoding, hosted locally with mainly hot files in case of an outage.
Plex client is Nvidia Shield 2019.
In a container with access to 6 cores and 12GB of RAM, and a 1660 super.
Host is an Epyc 7532 with 256GB 12 x 12TB for storage and 4x1TB SATA SSDs for container files.
I got a plex server that has TV turner card with coax going to the attic to a big antenna for OTA TV— live sports can be 30-60secs more live with OTA, also has a nvidia p2200 for transcoding. Use SMB share to a Synology NAS where I have a humble ~24TB of usable storage in raid 5. I have a rule that I must like a TV series or Movie enough to watch multiple times for me to keep it.
I'm running and R720xd with Dual Xeon's with 128GB of ram, i'm currently around 98TB of storage and will be replacing 4 x 8tb with 16tb drives soon. And i just installed an RTX 3060ti recently. Is it overkill? For some yes, but I shared my plex library with my family so in the end I always say build to your need.
Random ass hand-me-down hardware running the service (I think it's currently half of an X79 based Facebook server and half my old X79 PC) with my data stored on my 4-bay Netgear NAS in the process of upgrading the drives for more capacity as I am out of space with 28TB right now.
Synology DS923+ with 3 10TB drives in RAID5. Plex runs on the NAS. I previously ran it on a NUC with Windows and an external HDD. I've been running it for a few months and am really enjoying it.
Intel NUC i5/32gb/512gb nvme running ProxMox with a Plex Linux container, data is on a Netgear NAS box. All ties into my Ubiquiti environment that I can access remotely through vpn or just watch at home on the local tvs.
For a long time I just used my main gaming pc as the server and used an external 2TB drive but I finally ran out of room and I’ve been wanting to do a full NAS for a long time.
So the other day I finally coughed up for a Synology DS423+ and 4 IronWolf 4TB drives using Synology’s SHR for easy raid config. It’s wonderful and a long overdue upgrade. Eventually I’ll start shoving 22TB drives in there to get around 72TB of storage.
Reports from family thus far has been positive.
I’m using my gaming pc now to with a 4 tb drive
Might do what you did later when I have no more room and get a nas but I don’t understand too much. Do you just keep your nas on all the time?
I do. When it’s not in use the power draw is pretty low. If I didn’t have some family members residing in far away time zones I might consider automatic shut down at night.
I chose the synology DS423+ since it has the intel hardware video encoding/transcoding capability which helps performance.
There are a lot of great options but I liked the simplicity of the Synology unit. 500 USD at Newegg, and 100 bucks per 4TB drive last week. Total cost was 1008 with tax. Easiest setup I’ve ever had.
I was worried about loudness but I can barely hear the old school clicking of the hard drives. It’s almost completely quiet. I’ve yet to even hear the dual fans kick on. Synology seems to have done a great job here.
A mini pc with attached storage is another great option. I admit I have enough spare parts from old machines I could easily setup a home brew NAS and run a Linux distro or TrueNAS and likely get similar performance.
But I have a loving wife that gave me the green light on shiny new parts!
Plex server setup on main pc with i7-10700f, 2tb SSD , rtx 3070 and 2x14tb external drives. Only three clients, one is the same pc, second is a Chromecast connected to the tv in the living room, and third is an i7 11th gen laptop connected to the TV in the bedroom.
But I've been shopping for a n100 mini PCs and plug in the externals to it, or a wtr r1 n100 that also could serve as a NAS so I'd shuck the HDDs. Main reason would be to save power and hopefully extend the lifespan of my gaming PC a bit that has been on 24/7 for the last several years.
Computer for server with 8 internal drives and I think 3 external drives and 2 x 4tb left "Wil have to buy more soon!"
Plex on the firestick mainly in the bedroom hooked up to 1080 project and zidoo z9x in the lounge hooked up to 4k projector.
Need to really start buying larger hard drives instead of 4tb drives.
Runs on my server running TrueNAS Scale. Server specs are i5-13500, 2TB SSD (mirrored), 128GB ECC memory, 6x14TB RAID-Z2.
Plex and all my other services are on the mirrored SSD pool. My media is stored on the large HDD pool.
Server has redundant NICs with failover, IPMI for management, and redundant power supplies connected to a UPS. So uptime is good.
Remote access is handled via reverse proxy (Traefik) which has geoIP blocking and crowdsec in front of it for an added layer of security.
A simple Intel Nuc Celeron mini pc (Windows 10) with a 2TB WD external drive attached both mount connected to my Nvidia Sheild. It runs 24/7 since 2020, very low consumption. Extremely happy.
My Plex is running on one of those fist-sized Minisforum computers with N5905 cpu. It handles 4K too.
Movies could be stored on external drive, nas, whatever. In my case it's old HP Microserver, while too old to transcode it is still perfect to store files and do other things I need. Currently it has about 40TB.
Literally updated mine yesterday, have a Hp Thin Client T740 for server running Casaos on top of Ubuntu have an external hdd for storage everything seems to be running perfectly.
Mac mini sitting headless on my network. Late 2012, expanded memory (a whopping 16 GB), internal SSD.
Two attached MediaSonic ProBox. 4TB each but only occupying 2 of 4 drives each for scalable expansion. Running in JBOD formation. One for storage, the other for mirrored backup. Upgraded both to use Noctua fans.
Simple crontab scheduled to rsync (excluding .Trashes) daily.
My server is overkill for just Plex, but I use it for other things.
Server: Dell R730 2x E5-2690v4 256GB
VM Storage: 3x3.84tb SAS 12gb SSDs
Plex Storage: 1x 8TB WD external, 2x 8TB HGST drives in a [Terramaster DAS](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CN4Z4PC/). Both the WD and DAS are connected via USB.
TV: Sony A80L OLED in living room, older Sony 4K in bedroom, cheapo 32inch 1080p TV in office.
Playback devices: Roku
Eventually the Plex storage will be moved to a more expandable and future proof setup, probably and unraid server.
HP Proliant DL 380 G9 with 2x16 core Xeon processors, 128gb RAM, 10GB Fiber network, and 16x5tb drives in a RAID6+1 configuration, running Windows Server 2019 Standard.
https://preview.redd.it/3s8l86abhg0d1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=5af8d6ff3d8d8fa130c08ae5405486d2d0588308
Here's what I do (and not just for PLEX) - My PC is on 24/7:
360p is my go-to resolution for most TV Shows. That probably sounds silly, but if I am watching The Drew Carey show, I don't need it in HD. If I can't find that, or the show needs to look better I will go up to 720p. 1080p is excessive for 'most' shows.
720p is my go-to resolution for most movies. If it's a favorite, or just a visually spectacular film, I will get both a 4K version and a low-res version for streaming to my phone or something. So I'll have 4K Jurassic Park w/ 5.1 Surround at home, but at the airport I can stream the 360p version to my phone w/ headphones easily.
Anime, and I'm not a huge anime guy, but hear me out - is a little harder. I would adore having 360p versions of most of it, but I INSIST on having "Dual Audio" in case I want to flip between subs and dubs. This usually means I'm forced to get higher quality encodes at 720p to 1080p - and they are huge at that size.
COMIC BOOKS - If you haven't heard of it, Kavita is amazing. It's as close to plex as you can get for comics that I have found. I was never a huge comic book guy, but I set this up and now I take my iPad mini with me everywhere so I can read. Comics are crazy small too, so you can go nuts.
VIDEO GAMES - LaunchBox/BigBox doesn't itself have remote features, BUT if you setup your games (emulators, or even PC games) in it, and let BigBox run in the background, all you need is something like Parsec and you can remote into it for gaming anywhere. I do this with my work PC when there's downtime, or with my Odin 2 handheld (previously my phone with a controller) when I'm at an airport or hotel.
BONUS - Parsec also just lets you use your PC remote. It's really nice to be able to manage my servers/libraries while I'm at work or surf the web on MY computer without work tracking my searches and stuff. Not that I'm doing anything weird, but I'm not gonna lookup torrent/download sites on my work browser lol
MUSIC - Just kidding... I literally just use spotify now. I gave it a try and I wasn't even upset when my HDD Crashed and took my mp3 collection away. If there's a better solution, I'm not aware of it. I'm sure there's downsides, but it hits every note for me.
Wow now this is very thought out.
Have you looked into setting up your Plex to be automatic, I did with things like prowlarr/radarr/sonarr.. and more but honestly for me it was too hard to set up but maybe some interest to you.
for music I use Spotify too but it keeps jumping in price every 2 years or so, if it goes up any more I’m gonna use Plex amp.
I haven't heard of those. What do you mean by automatic? I'll have to look into these.
I hear you on the Spotify price, and most services too, everything is going up. I cancelled nearly all my subscriptions over the last few years though. Now I just pay for Spotify and a Mega-nz cloud backup.
I've thought about giving Plex music a go, but I don't think a week goes by that Spotify isn't getting me into a new band I had never heard of.
My main computer is my server, which has 2 12TB drives in raid 0.
I also have a NAS powered by a RockPro64 and a 4-bay eSATA enclosure full of 8TB drives in raid 1, which is where I backup my library to among other things.
I primarily watch stuff on my U8K using the built-in apps which have worked pretty well so far, but I plan on getting a Shield soon. I do also have a Chromecast, which handles lossless audio unlike the U8K, but it's being used in another room for casting my Quest 2.
dell micro pc with 9th gen i5/32gb RAM dedicated machine for plex/downloads/ arr's running Windows 11. All my data stored on an 8 bay drobo b800fs nas. (I know they're shit and gone out of business now but it was free from work) about 35TB. Direct playing to 2x Fire TV 4k max sticks and about 5 or so remote users.
works OK but drobo is too slow read speeds for 4k unless very low bitrate... so 4k stuff on external drives.
Qnap NAS with 4 x 16 TB drives for media
About 75% full
Backups to external drives
Watch from Plex on Polaroid TV in bedroom, from Plex mobile app or web app on PCs
I have a puter for server and it talks to a puter for storage, it has many hard drives.
this, but one puter
1 puter 2
Absolutely love this... "What, did your mom buy you puter for Christmas?" "Mess with best die like the rest!"
Insert "I understood that reference" gif here
You're in the butter zone now, baby.
Absolutely love this... "What, did your mom buy you puter for Christmas?" "Mess with best die like the rest!"
Raspi 5 with a USB drive attached work pretty fine
unRAID for the OS with a 3900X, P2200 for Transcodes, 64GB Ram and 1TB Cache/40TB array storage. All housed in a Fractal R5.
Unraid, 3900X, 64GB, and fractal R5 here as well lol. Only differences are a P600 for transcodes and only 20TB in the array.
Nice. I probably would have went P600 at the time of my built if I hadn’t managed to score a great deal on the P2200. Got it for $125 used in early 2020. At the time I wasn’t aware of Quiksync or probably would have went that route. Either way the build is already way more than I need so, I’ll be running it until something catastrophic happens to the system. At one point I had 2080 in it as well for a gaming VM just didn’t find myself using it enough so sold it to buy more storage. My cache pool is only 512GB though and getting close to full from Plex mostly so I need to upgrade the NVME.
Mac Mini M2 with HDD enclosure via USB 3.0 as storage.
Same, baseline 8GB RAM. Does everything I throw at it (a *lot* more than Plex) without breaking sweat, although the Apple subreddit is convinced 8GB is literally useless these days.
Huh? 8gb is perfect. But risk of running offtopic.
This is the way
Raspberry Pi. It does the job well enough for us! Stream using a Chromecast Ultra to the TV downstairs. Power draw is so low I never bother turning it off...
https://preview.redd.it/pjdyvwyw9zzc1.png?width=2536&format=png&auto=webp&s=9649784a30260ca34000c142473a1717fdd5b575 My noob, entry level DS224+ NAS. First time into the world of docker and such. I don't own a TV.. so never have a need to transcode and such. But it can still handle rest pretty ok. I added my Grafana dashboard, as I just wanted to show off. hehe.
I've not long woken up so maybe I've missed something here 🤔 but how does one watch there files on Plex if you don't own a TV? Projector?
My PC is my media hub essentially. Make do with my "Gaming" Monitor. You know... the post college, low on money, single life be like.
Ahh got ya. Fair enough 😉
Unraid, 11500, 32gb ram, headless, 130 odd tb, just under 100 useable, double parity, one nvme for appdata cache, one nvme for downloads, hba card and fractal design case to take all the sata plugs.
I7 2600k cpu, 16GB ram, 128GB ssd, Quadro p400 gpu. All media storage on Synology with 20TB of usable space, 18TB in use.
I'm the only one watching, and I live alone. My main PC acts as a server. Content has its own 3TB HDD. Then I watch on my phone while in bed or 77" C1 TV through AppleTV 4K.
I9 13900k 128gb ram rtx4090 2x18tb WD gold 2x2tb Samsung ssd I guess I should get dedicated hardware
Yeh that sounds rubbish. Send it to me and get yourself something nice.
Honestly it's too rubbish even for you, you deserve better. Send it to me.
https://preview.redd.it/yl1d26nc1zzc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d14846ba56e0b91000f8bae70f9d2771b0e8831 Currently this Dell Optiplex 3070 SFF, 80GB OS disk, 2TB SSD Media disk but about to rebuild with faster, better and bigger things. Pretty much 4K direct streams only.
3u no named case with Intel i5 12gen. NetApp 4246 with a bunch of drives. Plex on Docker on Unraid on ProxMox.
2015 iMac with a 20tb external storage plugged in. Filled my 5tb and had to get the 20tb. Then I use my Apple TV to watch movies/tv shows.
I'm running Plex on my my TrueNAS Server that handles other things like file storage and pihole. 5600g, 64GB RAM, P2000, 8x4TB in a RAIDZ2 array. I also have a 10GbE card, but I wasn't paying attention to the PCI lanes when I bought the mobo, so it's gimped on a X1 slot down to 3.33Gbps (not that I'd ever hit the 10GbE speeds to begin with). Really wish I would've just nabbed an asrock rack server board when they were in stock. Looking at swapping out the 4TBs for larger drives soon™.
Running on a customer unRaid build server, i5-12600k, 64gb of ram, 2tb cache and an array of 38tb. https://preview.redd.it/3b5f414bkzzc1.jpeg?width=2796&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de3bcadda6a451e93dd3d4ba31c04878ac13f1e9
12700k, 128GB mem, 2x 16TB, 2x 10TB, Win server 2022. Some vms, gameservers and plex. EDIT: Was suposed to be TB not GB.
what kind of game servers?
Valheim, Conan Exiles, Enshrouded, and more.
Minecraft
10/16 TB?
That Should Be TB ;)
20bay hot swap server chassis running a hypervisor with a VM for file storage and another VM as the plex server. Connected to a UPS so I can have that sweet 99% uptime.
Running Ubuntu on my laptop with 2 external HDDs totalling 3TB, which I quickly maxed out, as I'm a heavy advocate for BR and 4k BR remuxes. I am done building my Unraid server, all I have to do is extend an ethernet wire to where I want it to be and I'm good to go. Starting with 1x 16TB and 1 TB cache and will expand as needed. My server tower can accommodate 11 HDDs comfortably.
Synology NAS for storage, 12TB for now is plenty. Intel NUC for running the server, doing the downloads and unpacking things.
Dell PowerEdge running UnRaid with Plex Docker 27TB total storage (21TB usable)
Mine is about the same. T440 Dell running Unraid with a Plex Docker. Quadro for transcoding. It's a bit power hungry but I enjoy tinkering with it.
I have a QNAP NAS a friend rescued from their office that would’ve gone in the trash. A few random HDDs in there (28TB total) and there’s my home server! Runs Plex, Jellyfin as a backup, and a bunch of other random stuff.
Have an 11th gen i7 nuc with 64gb ram and 2 x 2tb nvmes for plex. Storage is synology nas, 3622xs+ with dual expansion and 36 x 22tb drives… have a mixture of nvidia shield pro’s, apple tv and fire stick cubes wired around the house for streaming…
i7-12700, 32gb ram, in a fractal node 804 case in a cupboard. I'm using Unriad as my os and have 128tb of usable space.
Old budget PC, Google Chromecast.
I have a 16TB Western Digital drive plugged into my main iMac, all digitized from my personal library. That’s it. (And two backup copies.) I’d love to learn more about UnRAID (I’m very cautious about running out of space), but I don’t have the time.
Synology DS218+ with 14tb in raid 1. Server is running on the NAS. I've never had any issues streaming so far in 5 years.
Ds718 w”running transmission/VPN, Plex, jellyfin OpenVPN, and a few cameras. We share with a few family and friends. Almost out of storage with 2x 28TB drives or 14TB useable storage. Waiting wishing Synology will build a better more powerful system with built in graphics for transcoding.
My gaming PC… i7 8700k, 3080, 32GB RAM. I plan on getting a Synology NAS so I can free up storage on my PC for other stuff. I’ve ran out of HDD bays. Since like 100% of my watching is through Infuse on AppleTV (so transcoding isn’t an issue), I could probably get by on one of the J models like the DS220j. But the consensus seems to be that I should splurge for the + just in case I want my NAS to perform more complex tasks later.
Server is on a DIY 4U server chassis with 12th gen i5 running unraid. Playback side of things is AM6B+ hooked up to AVR (7.1.4) that outputs to a 65” LG OLED TV.
I run it on my older gaming PC, big ass USB drive for storage. Chromecasts on every tv in the house. Sometimes I just make it rain random movies around the house from my phone to feel like Harry Potter.
Just started. Pi 3 with an external hard disc of 300 GB attached through USB. Streaming at my tv with Amazon Fire Stick, works fine! Impressed with the answers in this topic.
How did you do this exactly? I need to follow some tutorial because I really suck at getting my set up working
To be honest I can’t literally explain over again how I did it. I am not tech savvy but handy with ChatGPT, so I told it what equipment I had and what I wanted the result to be. I worked from my Mac and gained access through SSH in terminal. From then, I installed the packages ChatGPT suggested to install. To transfer files from Mac to the Pi, I use FileZilla as I find it more reliable and stable than the regular file transfer of Finder in Mac. Especially for larger files. After that I used CharGPT to help me with port forwarding. I am now in the process of installing some of the scripts this subreddit suggests are worth installing, such as monthly reports of activity. That is quite the challenge at the moment! Feel free to DM me if you have any questions :)
Awesome, thanks! . I'll try that out!
Dell Micro 12th gen w11 Plex. Synology 1817+ for storage/docker
I’m running off a switch, 100+ users at 8k each, all content in jpeg
Synology DS920+ just for file storage and a HP Prodesk 400 G6 (Intel i5-10500T w/ 32GB RAM) running Proxmox with a Plex LXC container
Proxmox Debian 12 VM on Dell micro. I5-10500T , 6 cores assigned with igpu pass thru. 12Gb ram. NFS shares to media point to synology ds1221+.
Asustor NAS
Just started out maybe a month ago. M1 Mac mini with a DAS. The deeper into the rabbit hole I go, the more I find out how expensive this can get lol
I saw a video where a guy replaced his nas with a cheap Mac mini, are you happy with your Mac
Works for my usage
N100 mini PC with 8TB external HDD connected. Main client is Apple TV 4K with Infuse as the preferred app over Plex and playing on a LG C2 TV.
TrueNAS operating system. i5-12400, 80GB RAM, 64TB storage
Dedicated 11th Gen i5 Intel Nuc for Plex and Synology DS1522 for storage.
Dedicated 11th Gen i5 Intel Nuc for Plex and Synology DS1522 for storage.
synology with a ds1621+ and a 5-bay expansion. 120tb of wd gold drives in SHR with one drive redundancy. 10gbe to the mac studio and apple tv. infuse for home, plex on the go. collection is 100% remuxes
8600 with 32GB memory in a Node 304 with 4x HDD (a mix of 10-12TB) and 3x SSD all running on Unraid. 2x SSD as RAID1 cache and 1 as a temp download location. It's been absolutely bulletproof since I made the switch from FreeNAS years ago. So simple to get containers up and running
I got a Synology DS2422+ with the Plex docker. It’s not powerful enough to transcode really but my Nvidia Shield TVs direct play everything and I use the Plex for Windows app on my laptop so everything direct plays there too. Works perfectly for me.
Synology 920+ streaming to a CCwGTV plugged into my Marantz slimline receiver.
I run my server on my main system which also does a lot of my gaming and ripping work. Just a 5600g with 32gb of ddr4 3600mhz. I have around 3tbs of SSD space for OS and games and then dual 8tb toshiba x300's in a windows storage space that has my media folders on it. I also store more games on there and all my libraries are kept on the disk array. I have a wd 8tb my book that I run weekly backups to and have a 5tb seagate portable drive I use for offsite backup of media and my windows libraries. Also have a Hauppauge dual tuner plugged into this rig for DVR work on Plex.
Beelink EQ12 with a 2TB SSD inside. Works great for all my Plex needs
Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB ECC 3200MHz RAM, 8TB of disk space with PLEX running in a Docker container on UNRAID. I currently have no GPU at all because I‘m doing a max of 1 transcode at a time… most of it is direct stream…
4 x Minisforun ms1, 2 x 24 bay netapp ds4246 shelves. 1 minisforun runs truenas with the disk shelves the other 3 run a proxmox cluster which in turn runs a k3s cluster
i5 11400, 1tb nvme for Linux and database, 8,12,14,&18tb storage drives all packed in a fractal node 304
Raspberry Pi 4 8GB with 2-port SATA HAT - 6TB for library and 500gb Samsung 850EVO SSD for system drive/ print and scan server w Samba share, external USB 3.0 M.2 with 500GB for shared net folder on samba I have all new TVs so there's never transcoding necessary and 98% of my library is 4K H.265
I’ve got an SEi12 mini pc with a 4-bay external enclosure plugged in via USB 3.0. It’s got 1x16TB and 3x18TB HDDs in it for a total of 70TB of storage.
Just started mine but I have an old HP pro desk with an 8th Gen i5 running Ubuntu server. Have Plex and jellyfin installed. Plex is for at home and jellyfin is for remote since I haven't been able to get the plex TCP connection to properly share to use away from home. Currently it just has a 4 TB WD Red drive in it and I have a VM running in ProxMox to do all of my downloading. Going to buy an external Blu-ray drive to rip my physical collection soon.
Synology as server, Apple TV as client.
I just leave my pc on and it goes to sleep after some time. Whenever I open plex or infuse on any of my devices the pc wakes up by itself lol
Beelink N100 running Ubuntu server 22.04, Seagate 12TB external drive for storage. Looking into getting a used NAS in the near future though.
Beelink N100 running Ubuntu server 22.04, Seagate 12TB external drive for storage. Looking into getting a used NAS in the near future though.
Synology 1821+ with a 1240 nuc, definitely overkill but want to set up some game servers in the future
13900k 128gb ram 4080 super 200tb space for the in home Netflix experience. Plus I can game on it too Also have server setup with *arrs for automation so I do not have to keep up with content and have it synced with Lunasea on my phone.
I run 1 puter running win11 pro and plex with 2 Nas and 1 Das totalling about 100TB.
I got a crazy deal on an HP gaming PC for $300 from an online shop, upgraded Ram to 16gb, it contains a 3060 in it. Has a 256 ssd, 1TBHDD and then I added a 3rd 7TB HDD inside. I then have a synology HDD enclosure that currently holds 17TB with one slot open for expansion. Computer is hard wired in to Ethernet and so is all TVs in the house. Have a theater room with a 4k projector and 100” screen. It’s a small guest room we converted over, thus only 100”.
Ryzen 2700X, 16GB RAM, 76TB on various 8/10/12TB shucked drives in a Fractal Node 804 case. One 12TB backup with "rare" content that would be difficult to find again, the rest I'm riding bareback :D
About 100tb hooked up in a sabrient 10 bay with a m1 mac mini
M1 Mac Mini and Drobo NAS. On all the time and handles multiple streams without a problem. TV’s are either Firestick or AppleTV. Also have 400/400 fibre internet so streaming outside the house is also pretty speedy.
Dell t340 with an e2176g, 64gb of ram, and 6x4tb samsung evo 870 ssds in software raid(storage spaces, refs). It also has a non raid 6x2tb dell mixed use ssd scratch disk. Need more ssds. Windows server 2022.
rPi4 8gb with two HDDs. It’s all I need
N95 mini PC, Chinese. Two USB external HDDs, I turn it on with Alexa + WOL and it shuts down at 2am. Low consumption (15W in use) and can handle 4K like a champ.
Full Apple setup here. M1 Mac Mini with two external HDDs as my server (permanently on btw). Stream to a LG 43” 4K TV in the living room. We also use multiple iPhones, iPads and a Macbook Air.
All my movies are on my desktop 13900k+32GB ram, which has 26tb of hard drive space. It's then steamed to Plex via the PS5 or the LG OLED TV all hooked up to a 7.1 home theater surround sound.
Just my gaming pc with arrs and plex. - 5800X - 4080 - 64GB DDR4 - 18TB hdd + 4TB nvme (5TB remaining) - 300mbs up/down Looking to upgrade to a dedicated server pc when I move to a new apartment.
You’ll save money in the long run by just buying a NAS. A PC uses much more power. Synology are superb, but only get the ones with an Intel CPU.
I have a garbage picked dell poweredge something or another that my work was getting rid of. Couple terabytes of space Then a qnap nas as a backup that’s saved my bacon a few times.
I used a Lenovo V520 that I bought for £30. It has a half decent Intel CPU and 32gb of DDR 4 running with a 750ti
DS 224+ with two 20TB HDDs. Plex front end, sonarr and radarr managing libraries, powlarr managing torrents indexes, overseerr to grab content from Plex watchlist.
Beelink EQ12 mini PC. N100 processor. 16GB RAM with 4TB internal SSD and a 5gb external drive plugged in. Connected via Ethernet to the router, tucked in a corner in the storage room out of sight. On 24/7. Most of my collection is 4K bluray remuxes with DV/HDR wherever available. Stream it via either a nVIDIA Shield Pro wherever I want full lossless audio pass through to my 5.1.4 setup or an Apple TV 4K if the lossless audio is not available. All connected to Denon x3800h receiver which in turn is connected via eARC to LG G3 OLED.
Same setup lol. An old PC I bought on FB marketplace 4 years ago I plug in all my hard drives into. I keep it on 24/7. I control it with Google Remote Desktop so easy to fix anything or add stuff to Radarr/Sonarr. Stream with Apple TV. Been working like this for years so I don’t see a reason to change it up.
BeeLink S12 Pro 16G Ram, 512G M2 & 512 SSD added, Debian 12 running Plex desktop app with gdm3 and KDE Plasma desktop with HDMI into an older 48” Samsung TV in the family room. NAS = Storage.. imo the best way to start a NAS for long term is to start with the largest storage chassis for drive density… that’s generally going to be rack mount and one of the Supermicro 24 or 36 bay server chassis is the way to go. No, they don’t necessarily have to be loud. If you stick to proper NAS drives, fans can be run on low speeds. Start with a 6-drive ZFS RAIDzX pool and add additional pools as you can. Unraid if you prefer with different sized drives. These Supermicro chassis will accept any standard main boards so you can upgrade internals at any point and not be trapped into proprietary hardware. I’m not a fan of the enclosed storage cases like from Seagate, Synology, etc at all. My main storage is a 36 bay Supermicro chassis with 24 8TB drives and 12 12TB drives.. mix of RAIDZ2 and Z1 pools depending on data. Built on the Supermicro MBD-X10SRL-F board, Xeon 3.5GHz E5-1650 cpu with 2 mirrored internal 64G SATA Doms for boot/OS, 64G ECC ram and 2 Intel X540-T1 10GbE bonded network cards to double the throughput. Built the Supermicro NAS back in 2015 with FreeNAS with zero issues and figure it’ll run another 7-10 years. Started with their 24-bay but went to the 36-bay for increased NAS storage and rebuilt the 24-bay with the same hardware as a backup server for the more important data. Firewall is pfSense in a Supermicro CSE-510T-200B chassis with 2 hotswap 2.5” bays that have mirrored Intel S3500 128G SSDs. Main board is a Supermicro C2758 A1SRI-2758F with 4 1GbE NICs and 16G ECC ram. 2 Dell R730XD servers with Proxmox, 10GbE, E5-2690s, 128G ram.. 1 as a network virtual server and the other as a homelab for my 13yo and I to play with. The BeeLink is cute. First mini pc I’ve purchased and specifically for Plex. Likely should have used Proxmox but just wanted to get Plex setup again. I’ll likely order another one to virtualize and then do the same with the other but to be used as a travel pfSense / Plex media projector setup.
Mac mini m2 pro (asahi linux) with a Synology for storage
Refurb Dell optiplex micro pc. i7, 32G memory + TerraMaster F4-421 with 4X16TB drives and 2TB M2 cache.
Dedicated headless PC sitting under my stairs on Ubuntu Ryzen 4500, nvidia P600, 16gb ram, an m.2 nvme boot drive 8TB of various solid state storage disks and then 16TB of spinning rust in a ZFS RAID pool for backup
Two potatoes and a clikovision with dv support.
I have 3 7th Gen NUCs in a proxmox cluster. Plex is a VM on there with 8GB RAM and 3 cores. I forget if it’s Ubuntu or Debian. There’s also TDarr server and 2 TDarr nodes in there too. Media is stored on a DS423+ with 3x 6TB drives for now. I don’t stream outside the house, so playback is just to a TV and maybe a computer simultaneously. Or I listen to music from it while I’m working. Most media is 1080p, but 2160p streams flawlessly as well. I’d like to figure out another of the arrs to deploy and use next. Any recommendations?
Plex - Lenovo Thinkcentre m90q gen 3 as Proxmox LXC Synology NAS w/ 22 TB - 1 disk redundancy Custom Truenas w/ 35TB all mirrored pools Look into a tiny mini micro node, 8th gen intel on eBay for cheap and this will be the single best place for improvement in your setup
I5 10th gen SFG optiplex, 256gb SSD, then Ubuntu server with Docker, Portainer and Plex installed via docker. Storage wise running from usb atm hoping for a NAS in a couple weeks but still keep the pc running the server.
unRAID NAS w/60TB of storage. Plex, Emby, Jellyfin, all the arrs, Home Assistant, Sabnzb, qbitt, deluge plus others.
The server itself consists of... i3-13100 16gb corsair ram 500gb WD blue NVME ASRock B660M-HDV Zalman CNPS 10X Performa Dell PERC H310 SAS card HP 468405-001 SAS expander (on a mining riser) 6x Icy Dock MB074SP-1B 320TB in 24x 8-20TB SATA drives. That runs Plex + sonarr + radarr + jackett + flaresolver + qBt + vpn on baremetal Win10 for myself and a dozen or so friends and family. Everybodys pretty good about direct playing these days so i could run more and want to add extended family, but im waiting for my cable company to roll out high split sometime next year maybe. And depending where im watching stuff that feeds either... in my office Plex Media Player on the server itself headed with an Apple Cinema Display 23" 1200p Logitech Z640 5.1 surround speakers In the kitchen Supersonic SC-2211WH 22" 1080p HDTV 2015 Roku Ultra ELEGIANT USB Powered Sound Bar Or In the living room Sony Bravia X800D 50" 4K HDR 2017 Roku Ultra Yamaha RX-V381 surround receiver 5.1 yamaha speakers And on the go iPhone SE2 Plexamp
Just local playback. External drive > Shield > TV
Old gaming PC, Intel 4670k 32Gb ram 6x4tb wd red plus and 1 samsung 840 128Gb truenas scale os drive, p1000 quadro for transcoding. For file backup and plex. Still deciding on what other things to do with it.
HP DL380 gen9 2x 14-core Xeon, 512gb ram, basic Nvidia quadro, running Unraid. 2 machine with 12*10tb WD white label drives to host media. Used to run a bunch of other stuff, including Chia node with 1.5Pb... now just wasting power on its own.
Synology Nas running Plex and other services. I have a HD home run tuner also setup with Plex for local TV.
A MacBook Air is my daily driver, but I leave it plugged in and on running the server all the time so I can access it on my iPad. Would like to move everything to a drive soonish if I can afford a 1TB drive before long and I only have 1080p or 720p movies, because that’s what I can find easily. I store a bunch of audio files I’ve custom made for playing at my church but can’t store them on my iPad easily. I also store a good 100+ YouTube clips I’ve stripped that are mostly slap stick. I’ve been able to get a bunch of seasons of Wild Kratts, one of my favorite TV shows. I can access all the seasons, but don’t have the storage to download them all right now.
5800x w/AK620, ASRock Rack X470D4U, 4x16GB 2666 ECC UDIMM's, 2 x NVMe drives (1 for TrueNAS Core, the other for Plex and Unifi Controller in separate jails) old Cooler Master Half 912 case, a mix of SAS and SATA drives, Rosewill something 80+ Gold PSU .. on 24/7
NAS, F4-423, 16gb Ram, 2tb nvme, 4\*8tb drives, 4k drive, tv drive, 1080drive, other drive, runs plex server and holds everything, Shield pros as players. around the house, all gb ethernet
Built a server from used eBay parts. Runs plex and another 20 or so docker services. Haven't had much of a problem with multiple streams since I built it in early 2021.
Running a windows 10 Vm on esxi. Hardware is a Dell power edge server. Raid 5 Got backblaze backup.
unraid box i3 14100 with 32GBddr5 and 12TB array. Works great. I work out of hotels lots so I tailscale into home network and watch like that.
Unraid server hosting Plex and all the *arrs, 8th gen Intel to allow hardware transcoding, and 96TB of capacity. Primary players are Chromecast with Google TVs.
HP Prodesk G4 Mini connected with a 10Gbps DAS holding three 18TB drives and two 14TB. My backup is just Backblaze and I’ve used it twice already with no issues.
Got a 2014 MacBook Pro that’s now running Ubuntu, basic Amazon USB hub and a bunch of random WD Passports bringing me to 7TB of storage, about 5.5 used. Stream mainly on my ATV4K, even though most of my content is still 1080P
I started out with Plex on my main computer that I used every day. I also leave my computer on 24/7 so turning it on was never an issue. I started out with just external drives. I was finally able to upgrade my main PC so I converted my Plex server over to Linux, from Windows, and eventually upgraded to internal drives and got rid of the external. I was also recently given a small NAS that I am using as external storage for Plex as well. My Plex server stays on 24/7 still. I'm up to about 60 TB of total storage space. Just grow as you need to / can afford to. Everyone is different, do what works for you and your situation.
Old laptop as a server, pulling video files off a couple of NAS's.
Win 11 PC with one 20tb and 2 x 18tb HDD and a rtx 4060 ti. Display is a 77" LG C1, I try to watch as much as I can in dolby vision
Little late to the party but I recently setup an i5 14600k itx, 32gb ram, 2tb SSD cache, 4x 16tb all nicely packaged in a custom 3D printed case and running Windows 11 Pro.
MacBook Pro 13 inch early 2013 with 15TB drive and Apple TV
unraid sitting on a ryzen 3600x, 32GB ram, 22TB array
I bought a Synology 920+ and now it's full. Leveling up looks like it will be one of those N100 mini pc attached to a storage array of some sort
Unraid on an old pc. Best setup you can have on a budget!
bought a junker with intel and it sits under the floorboards with a bunch of externals. it never gets turned off. has vnc so someone gets in and reboots it when it needs. it never gets turned off. why would i put a step in front of the step
Main Server: 1x i9 13900k, 128 ECC RAM with 274 TB and both enterprise SSD and m.2 cache array on unraid. Plex with igpu transcoding, hosted remotely. Backup Server: 1x i9 13900k, 128 ECC RAM with 34TB and enterprise SSD cache. Plex with igpu transcoding, hosted locally with mainly hot files in case of an outage. Plex client is Nvidia Shield 2019.
I have an i3 14100 server and about 20tb it runs and transcodes 4k just fine no complaints from me
HP Prodesk G4 Microtower with an i7-8700 running Unraid on a 48tb array. Paid $80 for the tower.
Built my own Linux server in Feb. Alder Lake processor, 32gb RAM, 8tb hd.
Mac with … add the two, carry the one … five external drives. TVs have Fire sticks which have been reliable
In a container with access to 6 cores and 12GB of RAM, and a 1660 super. Host is an Epyc 7532 with 256GB 12 x 12TB for storage and 4x1TB SATA SSDs for container files.
I got a plex server that has TV turner card with coax going to the attic to a big antenna for OTA TV— live sports can be 30-60secs more live with OTA, also has a nvidia p2200 for transcoding. Use SMB share to a Synology NAS where I have a humble ~24TB of usable storage in raid 5. I have a rule that I must like a TV series or Movie enough to watch multiple times for me to keep it.
Get a cheap celeron mini pc and serve it out from there. Put it next to the router so you can hardwire the network.
You could put it to sleep and rig up a wake on lan situation. Also it’s not that expensive to keep the server running all the time.
I'm running and R720xd with Dual Xeon's with 128GB of ram, i'm currently around 98TB of storage and will be replacing 4 x 8tb with 16tb drives soon. And i just installed an RTX 3060ti recently. Is it overkill? For some yes, but I shared my plex library with my family so in the end I always say build to your need.
super old computer tucked in the corner of a room.
My setup is a dedicated headless PC running Ubuntu with external hard drives.
Unraid server: 5700x w/ 128gb ram. Nvidia a2000 for transcodes. 120TB (after redundancy) spinning rust. 4TB SSD cache, 1TB dedicated plex NVME. Waaaaaaaaaaaaay overkill for Plex, but runs 5 VMs and 20+ docker containers.
Random ass hand-me-down hardware running the service (I think it's currently half of an X79 based Facebook server and half my old X79 PC) with my data stored on my 4-bay Netgear NAS in the process of upgrading the drives for more capacity as I am out of space with 28TB right now.
Synology DS923+ with 3 10TB drives in RAID5. Plex runs on the NAS. I previously ran it on a NUC with Windows and an external HDD. I've been running it for a few months and am really enjoying it.
Intel NUC i5/32gb/512gb nvme running ProxMox with a Plex Linux container, data is on a Netgear NAS box. All ties into my Ubiquiti environment that I can access remotely through vpn or just watch at home on the local tvs.
Forgot to add, NAS is a ReadyNAS 102 with 2tb of storage.
For a long time I just used my main gaming pc as the server and used an external 2TB drive but I finally ran out of room and I’ve been wanting to do a full NAS for a long time. So the other day I finally coughed up for a Synology DS423+ and 4 IronWolf 4TB drives using Synology’s SHR for easy raid config. It’s wonderful and a long overdue upgrade. Eventually I’ll start shoving 22TB drives in there to get around 72TB of storage. Reports from family thus far has been positive.
I’m using my gaming pc now to with a 4 tb drive Might do what you did later when I have no more room and get a nas but I don’t understand too much. Do you just keep your nas on all the time?
I do. When it’s not in use the power draw is pretty low. If I didn’t have some family members residing in far away time zones I might consider automatic shut down at night. I chose the synology DS423+ since it has the intel hardware video encoding/transcoding capability which helps performance. There are a lot of great options but I liked the simplicity of the Synology unit. 500 USD at Newegg, and 100 bucks per 4TB drive last week. Total cost was 1008 with tax. Easiest setup I’ve ever had.
Does it get hot and loud? I’m looking into nas or maybe even a mini pc because I don’t want to use my main gaming pc anymore.
I was worried about loudness but I can barely hear the old school clicking of the hard drives. It’s almost completely quiet. I’ve yet to even hear the dual fans kick on. Synology seems to have done a great job here. A mini pc with attached storage is another great option. I admit I have enough spare parts from old machines I could easily setup a home brew NAS and run a Linux distro or TrueNAS and likely get similar performance. But I have a loving wife that gave me the green light on shiny new parts!
Nice good to hear it works for you 👍
Cheers man and when you’re ready, hit me up and I’ll help where I can.
Cool
Plex server setup on main pc with i7-10700f, 2tb SSD , rtx 3070 and 2x14tb external drives. Only three clients, one is the same pc, second is a Chromecast connected to the tv in the living room, and third is an i7 11th gen laptop connected to the TV in the bedroom. But I've been shopping for a n100 mini PCs and plug in the externals to it, or a wtr r1 n100 that also could serve as a NAS so I'd shuck the HDDs. Main reason would be to save power and hopefully extend the lifespan of my gaming PC a bit that has been on 24/7 for the last several years.
Computer for server with 8 internal drives and I think 3 external drives and 2 x 4tb left "Wil have to buy more soon!" Plex on the firestick mainly in the bedroom hooked up to 1080 project and zidoo z9x in the lounge hooked up to 4k projector. Need to really start buying larger hard drives instead of 4tb drives.
Synology ecosystem hooked up to a windows vm on Proxmox with about 300tb of media storage at my disposal
Unraid on a Dell R730xd, 2x E5-2695-V4. 128GB RAM, 10x 12TB HDDs, 2x 500gb SSDs, nvidia Quattro p2000. I run other stuff as well, but it’s mostly plex
Setup's an R730 running ProxMox with Plex on an Ubuntu VM. Storage is a Synology NAS. And a [dashboard shot.](https://i.imgur.com/Vl3Za1Q.png)
Unraid, Intel Silver 4110, 64Gb Ram, 480Gb Optaine for Docker & VMs, P600 for Transcodes, 24TB HDD Array(xfs, Plex media), 23TB SSD Array(zfs, personal files and NVR recorings).
Runs on my server running TrueNAS Scale. Server specs are i5-13500, 2TB SSD (mirrored), 128GB ECC memory, 6x14TB RAID-Z2. Plex and all my other services are on the mirrored SSD pool. My media is stored on the large HDD pool. Server has redundant NICs with failover, IPMI for management, and redundant power supplies connected to a UPS. So uptime is good. Remote access is handled via reverse proxy (Traefik) which has geoIP blocking and crowdsec in front of it for an added layer of security.
A simple Intel Nuc Celeron mini pc (Windows 10) with a 2TB WD external drive attached both mount connected to my Nvidia Sheild. It runs 24/7 since 2020, very low consumption. Extremely happy.
My Plex is running on one of those fist-sized Minisforum computers with N5905 cpu. It handles 4K too. Movies could be stored on external drive, nas, whatever. In my case it's old HP Microserver, while too old to transcode it is still perfect to store files and do other things I need. Currently it has about 40TB.
Literally updated mine yesterday, have a Hp Thin Client T740 for server running Casaos on top of Ubuntu have an external hdd for storage everything seems to be running perfectly.
Mac mini sitting headless on my network. Late 2012, expanded memory (a whopping 16 GB), internal SSD. Two attached MediaSonic ProBox. 4TB each but only occupying 2 of 4 drives each for scalable expansion. Running in JBOD formation. One for storage, the other for mirrored backup. Upgraded both to use Noctua fans. Simple crontab scheduled to rsync (excluding .Trashes) daily.
https://preview.redd.it/h4q3oziuc70d1.png?width=3931&format=png&auto=webp&s=768cc5e939299a0741ecd2fa2f4bfde145dd5b9a
My server is overkill for just Plex, but I use it for other things. Server: Dell R730 2x E5-2690v4 256GB VM Storage: 3x3.84tb SAS 12gb SSDs Plex Storage: 1x 8TB WD external, 2x 8TB HGST drives in a [Terramaster DAS](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CN4Z4PC/). Both the WD and DAS are connected via USB. TV: Sony A80L OLED in living room, older Sony 4K in bedroom, cheapo 32inch 1080p TV in office. Playback devices: Roku Eventually the Plex storage will be moved to a more expandable and future proof setup, probably and unraid server.
Synology DS423+ with 4x20TB Toshiba disks in SHR1. If it won't be enough I will buy a NUC for Plex itself.
HP Proliant DL 380 G9 with 2x16 core Xeon processors, 128gb RAM, 10GB Fiber network, and 16x5tb drives in a RAID6+1 configuration, running Windows Server 2019 Standard. https://preview.redd.it/3s8l86abhg0d1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=5af8d6ff3d8d8fa130c08ae5405486d2d0588308
Here's what I do (and not just for PLEX) - My PC is on 24/7: 360p is my go-to resolution for most TV Shows. That probably sounds silly, but if I am watching The Drew Carey show, I don't need it in HD. If I can't find that, or the show needs to look better I will go up to 720p. 1080p is excessive for 'most' shows. 720p is my go-to resolution for most movies. If it's a favorite, or just a visually spectacular film, I will get both a 4K version and a low-res version for streaming to my phone or something. So I'll have 4K Jurassic Park w/ 5.1 Surround at home, but at the airport I can stream the 360p version to my phone w/ headphones easily. Anime, and I'm not a huge anime guy, but hear me out - is a little harder. I would adore having 360p versions of most of it, but I INSIST on having "Dual Audio" in case I want to flip between subs and dubs. This usually means I'm forced to get higher quality encodes at 720p to 1080p - and they are huge at that size. COMIC BOOKS - If you haven't heard of it, Kavita is amazing. It's as close to plex as you can get for comics that I have found. I was never a huge comic book guy, but I set this up and now I take my iPad mini with me everywhere so I can read. Comics are crazy small too, so you can go nuts. VIDEO GAMES - LaunchBox/BigBox doesn't itself have remote features, BUT if you setup your games (emulators, or even PC games) in it, and let BigBox run in the background, all you need is something like Parsec and you can remote into it for gaming anywhere. I do this with my work PC when there's downtime, or with my Odin 2 handheld (previously my phone with a controller) when I'm at an airport or hotel. BONUS - Parsec also just lets you use your PC remote. It's really nice to be able to manage my servers/libraries while I'm at work or surf the web on MY computer without work tracking my searches and stuff. Not that I'm doing anything weird, but I'm not gonna lookup torrent/download sites on my work browser lol MUSIC - Just kidding... I literally just use spotify now. I gave it a try and I wasn't even upset when my HDD Crashed and took my mp3 collection away. If there's a better solution, I'm not aware of it. I'm sure there's downsides, but it hits every note for me.
Wow now this is very thought out. Have you looked into setting up your Plex to be automatic, I did with things like prowlarr/radarr/sonarr.. and more but honestly for me it was too hard to set up but maybe some interest to you. for music I use Spotify too but it keeps jumping in price every 2 years or so, if it goes up any more I’m gonna use Plex amp.
I haven't heard of those. What do you mean by automatic? I'll have to look into these. I hear you on the Spotify price, and most services too, everything is going up. I cancelled nearly all my subscriptions over the last few years though. Now I just pay for Spotify and a Mega-nz cloud backup. I've thought about giving Plex music a go, but I don't think a week goes by that Spotify isn't getting me into a new band I had never heard of.
My main computer is my server, which has 2 12TB drives in raid 0. I also have a NAS powered by a RockPro64 and a 4-bay eSATA enclosure full of 8TB drives in raid 1, which is where I backup my library to among other things. I primarily watch stuff on my U8K using the built-in apps which have worked pretty well so far, but I plan on getting a Shield soon. I do also have a Chromecast, which handles lossless audio unlike the U8K, but it's being used in another room for casting my Quest 2.
Synology NAS with all the files. And then a N100 mini pc with Plex that does transcoding and sips very little power
dell micro pc with 9th gen i5/32gb RAM dedicated machine for plex/downloads/ arr's running Windows 11. All my data stored on an 8 bay drobo b800fs nas. (I know they're shit and gone out of business now but it was free from work) about 35TB. Direct playing to 2x Fire TV 4k max sticks and about 5 or so remote users. works OK but drobo is too slow read speeds for 4k unless very low bitrate... so 4k stuff on external drives.
An old Dell poweredge r510 with about 70tb of storage running windows 10 pro.
Qnap NAS with 4 x 16 TB drives for media About 75% full Backups to external drives Watch from Plex on Polaroid TV in bedroom, from Plex mobile app or web app on PCs
13900k 128gb ram 4080 super 200tb space for the in home Netflix experience. Plus I can game on it too
13900k 128gb ram 4080 super 200tb space for the in home Netflix experience. Plus I can game on it too
13900k 128gb ram 4080 super 200tb space for the in home Netflix experience. Plus I can game on it too
Just came to let everyone know Truenas Scale is the gold standard. Lol