what are you doing with Plex- that would drive your RAM requirements. If you are serving SD video to single user with little use of transcoding vs attempting to serve 10 users concurrently 4k content transcoding from H265 into variety of resolutions/formats…
in general, I believe in “buy once, cry once” attitude- 32 GB RAM is <$100 in US , you buy it once and then move on. if you later want to use machine for something else, you already maxed out the memory.
same for SSD, read a decent review article (i.e. Anandtech did one SSD storage this year), identify price points you care about, check most reputable models/brands. buy once, and move on…
32GB of RAM is wasted on a dedicated Plex server, regardless of how many simultaneous streams you’re serving. Plex itself can get by on as little as 2GB, the 8GB minimum recommendation allows RAM for the OS. Even if you do decide to use a RAM disk for the transcode buffer, 16GB is still plenty.
Today you want Plex, tomorrow you decide to run something else with it. The beaty of general computing architecture is that you can, can change hardware roles and uses. With cost of RAM to max out being fairly cheap, why not do it?
i.e. I personally run Plex on Nvidia Shield TV which I believes has 3 GB RAM and dedicated hardware for transcoding. Works great for that and along few android devices supported for many years after release. .
Thanks. Makes more sense now. I’m trying to keep costs down if I can, for now. I figure I’ll put 8 GB in and then in the future swap out the 4 for 8 if I decide to use this machine in other applications.
I do find myself taking last year’s devices and adapting them to new purposes. I like that the builds here seem efficient for their purpose but still open ended enough to be adaptable.
It won’t work if you opt for the 2230 m.2 drive you linked earlier. For a drive that small, check out the “Partial Coverage” section of the m.2 post for some smaller heatsinks. Or to be honest, you may not even need a heatsink at all. The flash memory chips operate better when they’re a little warmer, it’s just the controller that likes to be cooler. If you do opt to go for a heatsink, you won’t use Gelid. The heatsinks should come with adhesive thermal pads which you should use.
Okay thank you. I’m going with a regular 2280 drive.
In the 128-256 GB range, there’s a lot of used $15-20 ones from WD or Samsung which seem to date back as far as 2015 (but some sellers claim “97-99% life remaining”)… and then newer drives in that capacity seem to be Chinese offbrands. Not sure which would be better.
how big is your plex library? how would you plex server access it? i.e. a rip of BD movies I own ends up around 20-30GB. 128 GB is what - 3 movies worth of storage? Expanse show season 3 is 90 GB ripped of the BD set… Are you sure 128-256 would be enough?
@zzyzx - read something like this Best SSDs: May 2021 (anandtech.com) to get an idea of brands, pricings in $ per GB and key gotcha’s (drive types, storage types, technologies used).
then, pick your budget - remember cheap junk is still junk and you may regret it badly later on.
then get whatever capacity/type you want
random Amazon links or random drives is much harder way to do it.
Thanks for the link! That gave me a better idea on price.
I’m just worried about purchasing beyond the capability of this particular desktop. For instance the “mainstream” (above entry level and below premium) drives on that list say:
SSD performance that more or less saturates a PCIe 3 x4 interface is now pretty standard. This market segment has the most lively competition and a wide range of options. These drives all use TLC NAND and most use 8-channel controllers
But I thought this computer can’t do an x4 interface?
the link to BakerMS motherboard spec is in this thread- use that as a guide. I have connected Samsung 960 EVO 1TB and separate 850 EVO with zero issues since i had them laying around from earlier build. I also used Crucial MX500 series (couple of 1TB for each node) with no problems.
Patriot 8 GB RAM $30, adding to the stock 4 GB to make 12 GB total
Crucial P2 500GB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 CT500P2SSD8 $44
ADWITS HDMI dummy plug $5
no heat sink yet?
My plan is a dedicated Plex machine running Ubuntu Server and Linuxserver.io’s Plex docker image. This is how I currently run Plex. This way it will auto update on reboots, or whenever I take down and restart the docker container. *
Media will reside on my existing server (Lenovo mini desktop running Ubuntu Server… after this project I’m going to build a nicer NAS, thanks for the guides!). I’ll just connect both machines by ethernet to my router.
Should I pull the HDD and DVD or just leave 'em?
* …although it occurs to me that the Plex desktop app running on Ubuntu Desktop might check for updates and update itself without the need for reboots?
There’s issues running docker with autofs, as in it doesn’t work at all. Just ask @TacoQuest.
I highly recommend running a bare metal ubuntu + plex install instead.
@UndSim many thanks for trying to help me troubleshoot my problem. I just wanted to post an update. After spending (wasting?) much time trying to troubleshoot this, it became clear that my problem was the SATA2 connector on the motherboard itself. Stuff plugged into the SATA0 and SATA1 works fine. But currently nothing plugged into SATA2 works. I’m supposed to be sending this in for repair soon (it’s still under warranty).
I didn’t want to accept that a hardware defect was the problem, so I kept trying various things, thinking this might solve it. Part of me still wonders if there is some secret setting hidden away in the BIOS to enable this port (seeing it shipped with just two drives (HDD and ODD). But in my case SATA2 was clearing working at some point, but then just out of the blue stopped. Stuff happens, I guess…
Very good to know you were able to track this down. Yes, generally when you are seeing consistent trend (or working in A but not working in B at all => highly likely B is the issue). Hopefully you can get that repaired.
I am using these as proxmox hosts and would be curious about your repair experience (if you go for it) should I ever have to face the same…
I’m sure the repair itself will go fine. BUT getting that point was very time consuming.
It could be a combination of short-staff in Covid times–orr just HP under-hiring in it’s call centers. I had several calls/contacts which were just going in circles (disconnect after attempted transfer, zero call-back, even though a number was taken).
And by default, these calls go to like a first level/tier tech support, that has to put you on hold after you answer each question, for them to consult with their “resources” / i.e. the real/ level 2 tech support.
And by default, the first level techs are trained to walk you through “troubleshooting” steps, like reinstalling Windows! Seriously?
I guess for a large percentage of the population who calls in to get tech support, this approach is adequate. But for the 1% who maybe are already super knowledgeable and have already done all the basic troubleshooting themselves, it’s an extremely frustrating process.
I’m not mad at any of the people I dealt with–they were just doing their jobs within the context of the way the system is set up. But I could think of a million other unpleasant things I would rather do, than to have to deal with this “tech support” process.
Good luck to you with your 3 units if you ever need to go through this process!
I’m going to use this as a home assistant box and plan to use the frigate addon. Has anyone tried the m.2 a+key coral accelerator in this box (to replace the wifi card) and can confirm it works?
