Off the shelf NAS or build my own?

[HACO]

You need to be able to transcode for two reasons

1) You want to conserve bandwith
2) If your playback device can't play the media in question

I've got lots of stuff in 4K HDR which won't playback on everything I have and also is far too big a file to want to stream to something like an iPhone while on the train

Fair enough. This is a fair case for using transcoding. However you will find out that even after transcoding you won't be able to stream to your phone while on a train.

 

[Deleted User 298457]

I've been looking at Dell Optiplex desktops with earlier gen processors on EBAY but can't really seem to find anything with more than one drive bay.

I use two of these. You can get disk drive bay converters for your 2.5" SSD/OS drive and then there is 1 bay for a 2.5" big drive.

 

[spudbynight]

I use two of these. You can get disk drive bay converters for your 2.5" SSD/OS drive and then there is 1 bay for a 2.5" big drive.

I really need 3.5" bays

Fair enough. This is a fair case for using transcoding. However you will find out that even after transcoding you won't be able to stream to your phone while on a train.

Yeah, "on the train" is a bad example

I do however spend quite a bit of time away from home in a fixed location where I can stream from my home server.

 

[Deleted member 76686]

You need to be able to transcode for two reasons

1) You want to conserve bandwith
2) If your playback device can't play the media in question

I've got lots of stuff in 4K HDR which won't playback on everything I have and also is far too big a file to want to stream to something like an iPhone while on the train

Which is easily dealt with if I was in such a situation by having 2 versions of the same file, both a high bitrate and lower bitrate versions. In the end you have to go towards more powerful processors to get 4K to transcoding which probably negates one of the reasons a lot of people buy the Synology/QNAP types devices, in essence keeping the power requirement down.

 

[Deleted User 298457]

I really need 3.5" bays

I meant 3.5" - but there is only one.

 

[Armageus]

I really need 3.5" bays

Still stand by the HP Elitedesk 800 G2 Tower is still one of the most cost effective options - it will take 2x 3.5" drives, as well as a 2.5" ssd, and has a 5.25" drive bay that you could fit another 3.5" drive in (and a slim optical bay, you could fit another 2.5" drive in)

Even the 800 G2 SFF will take 2x 3.5, 1x2.5 and has a slim optical drive that could be repurposed.

Drop a Quadro P400 in (~£65 and can be had in low profile to fit the SFF), and under Linux it should still be able to cope with multiple streams, including at least one HDR tone mapping transcode:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/oziamc/plex_4k_transcoding_with_hdr_tone_mapping_question/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC

 

[spudbynight]

I'm kind of coming round to the HP Elitedesk......

...I'm thinking of installing unraid on this so I might have a chat with those guys as well to see if there are any issues to be aware of. I had considered a GPU to cover the transcoding, want to see if unraid will use that.