Plex server (another thread)

[gazum123]

Hello All,

I am currently in a bit of a debate as I don't want to run my main PC 24/7 anymore and would like to host a few bits internally. I am really looking for recommendations on what would be best for a low cost from using some of my current components in a server / plex build as apposed to building new. Ideally less than £400 would be good as I don't want to spend too much on it:

Current PC:

i7 3930K
16GB DDR3 Memory
850W Corsair Gold PSU
Intel Watercooler
128GB SSD
GTX 980


What do you think is best to do use my current build minus the 980 and PSU and buy some new components for my gaming PC or go down the rout of building a plex server new ? Ideally looking to stream 2 max 1080p streams at once with the potential to have a few game servers running e.g. minecraft

 

[gazum123]

A dedicated box for plex will be significantly cheaper than rebuilding a gaming machine.

Building something homebrew and running a hypervisor on it, unRAID or ESXi for example is a good idea as then you can run as many virtuals as you like (depending on what CPU you use).

I was probably going to go the ESXI route as I have most experience with that. In terms of building a box any recommendations around the £400 range ? I know my 3930k has a passmark of 12k which is very good for plex and with the multiple cores would be decent for a VE.

 

[gazum123]

A few suggestions:

If you have a local server, it will logically be on. That goes against your not running a PC 24/7 goal.

Rent a VPS - Hetzner Cloud + PlexGuide with GSuite Business for unlimited back end storage. It’ll set you back a few quid each month, no power/heat/noise, 10Gbit connectivity (10TB upload/month). Hetzner starts from €3/m +tax and can be scaled up as needed, GSuite is $10/m etc. £400 obviously would last you a while, even longer if you factor in the power savings.

Plexguide is basically an automated method of installing the programs that most people use to automate media acquisition, processing and sorting/upload to google drive. eg Sonarr/Radarr, Rclone, Plexdrive, news/torrent+VPN etc. and works well as a Ubuntu based VM.

Alternatively just buy a PSU and low end GPU for your existing box and add as much storage as you can, personally I’d go unraid, but YMMV. Intel’s power gate technology means idle power consumption is minimal, Plex will eat your 128GB alive with a medium sized media library (60TB) even with thumbnails off. You mention the CPU mark, but don’t explain why you’d need to transcode? Choose the proper clients and media, and you will not need to transcode locally - at one stage I ran Plex on a N2820, no issues with two concurrent 1080p streams direct playing from local storage or a NAS.

Hello,

In regards to the local server I am happy to run a box 24/7 but didn't want to run my current gaming PC 24/7 and would prefer to have something dedicated to plex / various other bits internally.

I will check out plexguide I use Sonarr and Radarr currently so will be intresting to see.


PC wise I still want my gaming PC my real question is do you think buying a lower watt PSU cheap case and cheap GPU and then using my current i7 in the box for the vm / plex stuff then buying a new MB / CPU for my gaming PC be better than just going and building a box on it own ? Disk storage isn't a problem I have some 4TB drives knocking about that I will use.

In terms of transcoding I do watch on various devices (Fire Tab, PC, Android TV) so I do prefer to just download one format of movie / show and it all just happen in the background. I was thinking more also with the high CPU core count would be good for running multiple things