Hello JDM!
I saw your post on Reddit titled “Plex Server Build Recommendation - $500, 8-Core, 16 Thread, quad-channel, dedicated transcoding monster” from 3 years ago and among the many advice on the internet re: DIY homeservers, your post from that time really fits my requirements.
Basically, I am looking for a server build that can accommodate a lot of storage (8 to 10 SATAIII HDDs between 10-12 TB each), fast enough CPU for transcoding and/or creating optimized versions on Plex, and a mobo with 2 lan ports.
I’m writing to ask if you can recommend any upgrades to the hardware that you listed from that post because it’s been 3 years. For instance, is there another mobo that you can recommend that has more SATAIII ports?
I don’t want to make my message very long but if it will help, here is my current setup:
I have about 8TB of photos and videos. All of these files reside on the HD on my computer which is an iMac 27" 2019 3,6 GHz 8‑Core i9. The HD is attached to my iMac through a Thunderbolt connection so it’s quite fast.
Then I have a Synology DS218play which has 2x 8TB HD. The photos and videos on my iMac syncs to the NAS as a sort of a redundancy/backup. Also, I have other devices like a Mac Mini, and Macbook Air, and an iPad Pro which I use to edit the raw videos so the NAS also serves as a file server so that I have access to the raw video files from any of my devices.
I have no RAID setup. The photos/videos are backed up to the cloud (Livedrive and Amazon), and also archived on an external HD which I refresh twice a year.
Plex Media Server runs on the NAS for videos that are already edited. The videos are in 4K. No problems in streaming.
I have another Plex Media Server that runs on my Mac Mini 2018. I use this Plex Server mainly for creating optimized versions of the my 4K raw video files. The Mac Mini is connected by lan cable to a switch and gets the files to be optimized from the NAS. Whenever I have new raw footage (300+ raw videos), I run the Plex Optimization on these files.
I use an iPad Pro to review and choose the raw video files to work with and for me, having the optimized versions are good enough in terms of quality and also the quickest way to stream and review; quality is not the priority but speed. If I like the raw video footage, I download the raw video file in original version to my iPad Pro.
So now, I want to have all of these in one machine and I think your recommendation from before is a perfect fit and I just want to check if you have any updates to that.
Thank’s a lot in advance!
Regards,
Louie