Best Plex Server for 6+ Simultaneous HD Streamers? Synology 1520+? Mac Mini M1? QNAP?

[whiskeyriver]

Hi there. First post, so go gentle.

The current equipment:
Currently, I have a Plex Server (PMS) set up on an old 2012 Macbook Pro (2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor). I recently upgraded its memory to 16 GB. Its only job right now is acting as a Plex server. We bought it used for $250 from a friend, and it has been slow as molasses since we got it for even the most basic computing needs. The RAM boost has helped, but running only Plex I will come into the office and find that it is using nearly all 16 GB of RAM with just Plex and 1 transcode. Seems...unusual.

The backstory:
I run a Twitter Movie Chat Group that watches movies together every week. As a form of mutual aid to not only those in this chat (57 people), but also to others I know (friends, family), I have given access to my Plex server to about 70 people. My media is at about 34 TB currently spread across a 14 TB external, a 12 TB external, and multiple 2 TB externals. At any time, there are about 6 people streaming from my Plex. There aren't too many occurrences of transcoding going on, and if it is it's usually just one. However, this computer has been crashing a lot lately, which has caused data loss on the externals and having to "repair" them multiple times by plugging them into an even older windows laptop (the mac says they cannot be repaired when I try with it).

The issue:
I am currently in the process of planning to upgrade the server, but at a loss as to which would be the best to serve my needs. I have run a fundraiser to raise funds from all of the people that use my server to pay for its replacement, and we have raised $1500. That's my total budget. I have someone donating 4 unused, unopened 8 TB Western Digital Red (not pro, not plus) NAS drives. So, if I go the NAS route, I will have to buy another drive to allow for all of my current media to be housed in addition to a little room for extra if needed. So whatever I get will have to either utilize my current externals, or will have to be likely a RAID 0 setup utilizing 5 drives or more. It will also have to allow for 6+ simultaneous HD streams. On-board GPU is probably also a necessity.

What I am considering:
1. Synology ds1520+ (Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core 2.0 GHz processor and 8 GB RAM which is a slower processor than the current Macbook Pro I'm using and less RAM, tiny little integrated GPU from what understand, ability to expand even more with Synology DX517, two M.2 2280 NVMe SSD slots, but no PCIe and no 10GBe port, only 1 GBe)

2. QNAP TS-653D (Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core 2.0 GHz processor and 8 GB RAM which is a slower processor than the current Macbook Pro I'm using and less RAM, 6 bays, no on-board GPU, 2.5 GBe ports, no M.2 2280 NVMe SSD slots, but PCIe for GPU or 10GBe - but not both!)

3. Mac Mini M1 with my current externals or a RAID 0 setup with an enclosure for the new WD drives being donated, but this would require the purchase of another drive AND the 5-bay enclosure (faster better processor than what I currently have, and configurable to the same amount of RAM, but possibly more than what I need and will wind up being more expensive)

What do you all think? Is there a solution I am missing that isn't listed? A different server option I haven't discovered? What do you think will best serve my needs?

 

[Juicy Box]

I am curious what others have to say about this.

Lately, I was thinking of using my M1 as my Plex server to replace a power hungry Mac that is currently being used as my Plex server.

We bought it used for $250 from a friend, and it has been slow as molasses since we got it for even the most basic computing needs.

Are you using a HDD as the boot drive? What OS are you using on it?

I have a Late 2011 17" MBP with the 2nd gen i7 and the Mac flies for basic computer stuff. I have a Late 2012 iMac with the 3rd gen i7, and that thing is a beast.

I made posts in the past about how my Late 2012 iMac doesn't lag that far behind my M1 Mac Mini when using Handbrake for SW encodes. If it is a long encode, the M1 is only 50% faster than the almost decade old iMac.

My Late 2011 MBP is significantly slower than both the iMac and M1 Mac for encoding, but everyday tasks, it performs well since I switched from a HDD to a SSD for the boot drive.

If you are using an HDD on your MBP as a boot drive and using anything above High Sierra, APFS is horrible on HDDs, and this has only gotten worse with each new OS.

There aren't too many occurrences of transcoding going on, and if it is it's usually just one.

I am currently using a much older Mac Pro 1,1 for my Plex server, running it headless with a few HDDs in the internal bays in a SW RAID0, and it does very well on multiple streams until something is transcoding.

I can tell right away when something is transcoding by the fans, as it is the only time I ever hear them.

Transcoding playback is usually fine, but sometimes when the person that is transcoding rewinds or scrubs the video, the player (and maybe also the server) freaks outs, leading to errors. Only the player seems to be affected, and closing it out then opening it again corrects the problem.

At any time, there are about 6 people streaming from my Plex.

Do you ever have crashing issues with multiple direct streams?

If so, I am surprised. My Plex server doesn't use much processing power when doing direct streams.

Maybe it has more to do with the external drive speeds and/or the bus used for them. Maybe they are getting saturated when there are multiple people streaming.

Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core 2.0 GHz processor and 8 GB RAM which is a slower processor than the current Macbook Pro

If you think you might have multiple transcodes, I would think that using a lower performing processor would be an issue.

Is there a solution I am missing that isn't listed?

For your situation, I wonder if it would be worth waiting for the next generation of Macs with the rumored M1X/M2. The rumored Mac Mini with the M1X might have more high performance cores making transcoding less of an issue.

You could try to find a cheap base model M1 Mac Mini, like an open-box one at Best Buy. Do a temp setup as a Plex server, and have six people test the performance of it.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hi there. First post, so go gentle.

What do you all think? Is there a solution I am missing that isn't listed? A different server option I haven't discovered? What do you think will best serve my needs?

Option 1:
A dedicate file server running UNRAID + an Mac Mini M1 for Plex.
The dedicate server will help you hook up 12 HDDs, with an SSD as cache.
As the server in the below Youtube video doesn't have modern H265 encoding capability, you need the M1 for Plex.

Option 2: If you can get a better tower case and have modern intel CPU with HEVC encoding capability (a core i3 8100 is enough), install Plex directly to the UNRAID. You don't need the mini M1 as Plex server anymore.

Setting up Plex Media Server on your Unraid Server (2020)

We've all tried to catalogue our downloaded media content manually on our machines. As our media content library grows, it becomes a headache to use and manage. Downloaded media content names are borderline illegible, you forget what you have and haven't watched and when you want to watch...

blog.harveydelaney.com

 

[PeteBurgh]

1. Synology ds1520+ (Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core 2.0 GHz processor and 8 GB RAM which is a slower processor than the current Macbook Pro I'm using and less RAM, tiny little integrated GPU from what understand, ability to expand even more with Synology DX517, two M.2 2280 NVMe SSD slots, but no PCIe and no 10GBe port, only 1 GBe)

I own this NAS, and I have a similar sized Plex library (~30TB) so I can share a few bits from my experience.

• very happy with the NAS. It suits my needs perfectly, and like all Synology products, it's very easy to set up. It's a good option for those who aren't as confident managing more complex set-ups - it's as close as you can get to NAS-as-appliance.
• I recommend against using the SSD slots. They make no difference for Plex streaming, but introduce extra cost and another point of failure. (If you were using the NAS for something else - sharing files in an office say - that would be a different matter).
• The conventional wisdom (at least in the Synology subreddit) is to avoid the expansion units, again because it introduces another point of failure. If you use Synology's SHR's for the RAID array, you have plenty of expandability within the NAS, simply by swapping in larger drives as you go.
• The base 8GB of RAM should be enough - I'm not sure what's going on with your current set up that's gobbling up so much. I haven't bothered upgrading mine, but it's cheap and easy to do so if you need it in future.
• I don't see the lack of 10GBe ethernet being an issue here - unless your internet connection really is extremely fast, I would assume that would be a bottleneck first.

So to my mind, it seems like a good, flexible solution. One thing I like about my Synology is that although I currently PMS on it, at some future point I could always make it a file server only, and run the Plex server itself on something a bit faster (like an Nvidia Shield).

As ever, with Plex the name of the game is to minimise transcoding. I find checking the logs very useful for this, looking for opportunities to either remux/replace any media that is oddly formatted and requiring lots of clients to transcode it, or to identify clients who are transcoding when they seemingly shouldn't be, and encouraging them to tweak their settings.

 

[Superman730]

My 2 cents (with questions imbedded):
You have a very decent budget and bunch of hard drives already. I wouldn't go with the DS1520+ because (as PeteBurgh mentioned) the expansion drives cannot be reliably counted on and depending on your set up, if one comes loose or goes offline it can corrupt everything in your base NAS as well. Go with a Synology that has a lot of disks in the main unit like the ds1821 or similar. Are you comfortable shucking the externals that you have? While they might not be NAS quality, just use them until they die and replace them with better in the future. Storage is always getting bigger and cheaper. Using SHR (if you even want redundancy) and the drives you mentioned you can create a decently sized array with that. Since you are serving a decent amount of people, I would say add the Mac Mini (or a cheaper equivalent should you wish, but I like the Mini) as the server and keep the Plex library/database files on it with the quick SSD. You can get a config that has 10GBE as well and a lot of the Synologys have an add on card to make them 10GBE as well. Is your LAN capable of utilizing that? What is your internet speed?

If you go to https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator it will help you maximize the space that you have available with the different size hard drives you have.

 

[PeteBurgh]

I wouldn't go with the DS1520+ because (as PeteBurgh mentioned) the expansion drives cannot be reliably counted on and depending on your set up, if one comes loose or goes offline it can corrupt everything in your base NAS as well. Go with a Synology that has a lot of disks in the main unit like the ds1821 or similar.

Agreed, this is fair enough - getting a NAS with more drive bays make sense.

Of course, it partly depends on how OP foresees his/her library expanding over time - I currently have 32TB in mine, with a mix of 16TB and 6TB drives. By replacing the 6TBs over time, I can go all the way up to 64TB without getting a bigger NAS. That's plenty of headroom for me (data hoarding in the 4K video era can get silly...).

One other thing to mention in passing - do make room in your budget for a UPS, particularly if you're in an area with unreliable power. It shouldn't need to be an expensive model, but could save you thousands.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

One thing about using Mac Mini M1 as Plex:

I don't know whether the new MacOS have improved their support for hardware acceleration encoding (= transcoding in Plex) yet.
If not, then using the Mac Mini M1 as Plex server can only rely on CPU power for transcoding, not GPU power. As described in this below article:

Using Hardware-Accelerated Streaming

Tip!: Hardware-accelerated streaming is a premium feature and requires an active Plex Pass subscription. To play your video smoothly and...

support.plex.tv

. macOS is only capable of hardware-accelerated encoding of 1 video at a time. This is a platform limitation from Apple.
. macOS hardware-accelerated encoding is only available at 480p or higher. Lower resolutions will use normal software encoding.

 

[Superman730]

Agreed, this is fair enough - getting a NAS with more drive bays make sense.

Of course, it partly depends on how OP foresees his/her library expanding over time - I currently have 32TB in mine, with a mix of 16TB and 6TB drives. By replacing the 6TBs over time, I can go all the way up to 64TB without getting a bigger NAS. That's plenty of headroom for me (data hoarding in the 4K video era can get silly...).

One other thing to mention in passing - do make room in your budget for a UPS, particularly if you're in an area with unreliable power. It shouldn't need to be an expensive model, but could save you thousands.

Agreed on this. Get one that can talk to the Synology and then the NAS can cleanly shutdown when the UPS gets down to a specified battery level.