Life after N54L?

[D3K]

Have had an N54L for a couple of years now, diligently serving plex to my TV and to a couple of family member's laptops.

One family member got a firestick and it doesn't transcode, so a lot of my media is very jittery for them.
This combined with a desire to transcode h.265 media has me leaning towards an upgrade of sorts.

Ideally I'd like to keep the same form factor if at all possible, and obviously the same low power usage. Money isn't inifite but willing to spend more than the paltry cost of the N54L when I got it (<£100 after rebate).

Any suggestions for a more powerful and flexible server?

 

[GDL]

Gen8 is a worthy upgrade. The IBM T140 (I think that's it) is also good.
Something larger is the HP ML10V9.

 

[D3K]

I'd heard the opposite for gen8. I'm sure it cant transcode h.265.

I'll look into the others, cheers!

 

[GDL]

I'd heard the opposite for gen8. I'm sure it cant transcode h.265.

I'll look into the others, cheers!

You might be right on the Gen8.
I swapped the CPU in mine almost instantly so never put the stock one under any kinda load, just a windows 2012r2 install. An half decent I3 that fits is around £30 on sites.

 

[D3K]

Now that's interesting. I assumed the upgrade potential was limited. Will research again

 

[shine]

I got the Dell T20 with Xeon, a very nice upgrade and doubles as my ESXi host while the N54 is used as the primary server for DHCP, DNS etc.

 

[D3K]

Checked HUKD for the T20, found one dirt cheap due to cashback promo. Ordered, TYVM

 

[D3K]

T20 arrived today. Seems great so far. It's midi so bigger than the micro server but gotta move on

 

[neodude]

Should've built your own UnRaid box.

 

[ultim]

I'd heard the opposite for gen8. I'm sure it cant transcode h.265.

I'll look into the others, cheers!

i had no problems transcoding 1080p 10gb+ files using Plex. Assuming single user access at a time.

I did upgrade the CPU and now it can transcoding multiple streams no problem.