I’m joining the Plex Party. Better late than never. $130 on ebay, but that’s a sign of the times.
I picked up a cheap NVME M.2 drive. Planning on keeping Windows, moving it to the NVME drive as my boot drive, then replacing the HDD with a large capacity drive for media. End goal: home plex server, media storage and torrent box capable of a couple simultaneous transcodes while also torrenting.
For people who have successfully moved the Windows installation to an NVME SSD, what’s the best way of accomplishing that on this box? Are you cloning with a tool, or reinstalling and using a Windows key?
Thanks for the link. I saw some people mention Windows and figured a good portion of the people here must be using it and not want to trouble with Linux. Especially if they’re like me and just need a couple transcodes. Guess not.
First off, I’d like to say thank you for putting so much detail and effort into this whole thing. You’re an invaluable resource and we really appreciate what you do.
Anyway, I’d love to have a more proper setup (god, I’d love a proper NAS), but I am currently prioritizing “simple, consolidated, low-effort, low-cost, small footprint”. I’m hopeful that the celeron can walk and chew gum at the same time (I’m not planning on really hammering it). And I’d honestly prefer to not bother with Ubuntu (I am very Windows experienced, Linux-dumb, and time limited) but maybe it’s not more difficult to install and manage than moving the Windows license.
Is this thing capable of utilizing 10th gen processors or is 9th gen the highest it will go? I know it doesn’t really make a difference but I happen to have a 10th gen i3 sitting around.
i just reinstalled windows. though on mine i had to disable the key on the motherboard so i could upgrade to 10 pro. my next box i will do linux but for now i wanted to use something i know. even with the guides i dont want to deal with something going wrong and not sure how to fix it.
I’m currently on the stock Celeron and having tons of CPU spikes when running anything more than Plex (which should be obvious, I know). I’m going to be upgrading the CPU, and was wondering what the best route for me would be. I use an rclone mount, so local storage isn’t really a need for me right now, which is why I’m trying to make the 290 my do-it-all server.
I only have a few people streaming at a time, so the Celeron is great for that. But I currently use NZBs, Sonarr/Radarr, Deluge, for my media and it’s taking its toll on my experience, so much so that I’m scheduling downloads to try to work around when we’d stream Plex.
I want to get something that’s borderline overkill, so I was looking at the i7-9700 or an i5-9600 (or something else that can handle running as a QS box and download center). I know this HP290 won’t be the perfect box for me forever, so I want to get something that would serve as a great base on a future build. Any thoughts on the best route to take here?
How is the mellanox card working out for you in the hp 290? I’m tempted to upgrade to mellanox since my intel 1gb nics are giving me trouble and seems to go down constantly. I had to tape the pins for the intel card also to have it work with the second stick ram. Is mellanox stable and working well in the hp290? Any heat issues?
Just got a 290, and this is exactly what I was afraid of. Are you running windows or Linux?
Did you upgrade the hard drives or the ram?
Do you have Plex pass and HW transcoding turned on? @JDM_WAAAT, was this use case accounted for, or was the recommendation based solely for a dedicated transcoding box?
I have added a 6TB WD RED and a Mushkin 1TB NVMe SSD. HW transcoding is working much better than I expected. This box is perfect for my use case!
I’m using Unraid only because I have a spare license. After the initial disk scans were done by radarr/lidarr/sonarr, however, things calmed down significantly. I did order an i7 as a filler but I plan to move it into a future server. I do believe JDM mentioned in the OTiS thread that anything more than Plex is going to need more cores, and I knew this coming in based on what everyone said in Discord. I think upgrading to an i3 or i5 8th/9th gen is going to be plenty of power - but it may be different for others.
Just joined the HP 290 club. I upgraded it with Western Digital SN730 256gb NVMe drive, 8gb of DDR4 memory, and put in HDMI dummy plug. I loaded up Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop and Plex with the hardware transcoding active. Working great!
I also tried adding a Nvidia Quadro P400 low profile video card that I had laying around. I was getting artifacts and freezes in Ubuntu. Either the card is faulty or the power supply is not powerful enough.
My NAS is currently serving my videos in Proxmox with a TrueNAS VM using NFS.
The recommendation is for a dedicated HW transcoding box, as stated in the post. The CPU isn’t fast, so it’s really only useful in processes where QS can be leveraged. Linux is the recommended OS.
File management operations should take place on the NAS.
I really do not recommend making the HP 290 as your primary server, as it has no room for HDD expansion. Build an extremely cheap NAS Killer 4.0 and use that for all of your storage and file management needs. It’s plenty overkill.