NAS Compares Best Plex NAS Drive of 2019

Top 3 NAS for Plex of the Year

If you are looking to upgrade your multimedia setup in 2019, chances are that you have already heard of the great multimedia application, Plex Media Server (PMS), that allows you to access all your movies and boxsets anywhere in the world, on almost any device! Plex is supported by everything from Smart TVs and Consoles, through to iOS and Android Phones – this incredibly accessible and intuitive media application provides all your owned media to you, as well as dressing it with titles, descriptions, background studio information, cast lists and recommendations for other shows! It is the perfect multimedia tool for those that want the colourful and information user interface similar to Netflix and Amazon Instant, but want to enjoy their own media, rather than stream/rent media from an online source! If you are looking to build your perfect Plex Media Server, it is highly recommended that you use a Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive. Each NAS drive arrives with a dedicated operating system and user-interface. This UI is accessible via a web browser like Chrome or Firefox, as well as multiple mobile apps and PC clients. Each brand has a very different software build quality/priority and it is recommended you choose a brand that is best suited to your environment for ease of access (e.g Synology is very similar to Mac OSX and QNAP NAS is very similar to Android). Additionally, you will most likely be using the NAS drive for more than Plex, in an effort to make the most of your purchase, as different NAS brands provide differing levels of support for backups, DLNA media, Surveillance, VMs and more.

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[Rusty]

2000+ pounds for a plex server? Nahhh

 

[fredbert]

Assuming you need two streaming services to get your particular mix of film, tv, and music and they are £10 each then that's 8 years and 4 months of subscriptions. Which is why Capt. Tight-Wad here doesn't pay for subscriptions

But then I don't really get why people have/need 10's of TB for home collections. All you need to do is wait to get old and SD content look pretty good from across the room.

I'd also add that 'best' is massively subjective and depends on how it's being used. There are mandatory and optional features to run Plex and run it well. Then there's the user audience types: hardware power (CPU and RAM) and storage. But best is rather difficult to say.

 

[Rusty]

All you need to do is wait to get old and SD content look pretty good from across the room

Brilliant!

 

[Telos]

Need Advice on Data Storage from an Expert?

If only...

Hey ... I can dream, huh?

 

[jeyare]

waste disk space with movies, OMG
This article can continue with new story, how to backup (3-2-1) the movies to different NAS, even better in HA cluster
but, it’s up to each independent decision - how to use their NASes

 

[one-eyed-king]

I would always prefer to keep things on the NAS and use an Intel NUC (i5/i7, 8th/10th gen) to run load heavy applications - if you don't mind an additional energy drain of ~20W per hour and the additional fan noise (which can be avoided with aftermarked passiv cooling cases).

 

[Rusty]

Well I can say that both od my 918 and 718 are great plex boxes. Multiple local and remote users, no problem. It will be even better when the main load from 918 is migrated to RS models.

 

[jeyare]

I would always prefer to keep things on the NAS and use an Intel NUC (i5/i7, 8th/10th gen) to run load heavy applications - if you don't mind an additional energy drain of ~20W per hour and the additional fan noise (which can be avoided with aftermarked passiv cooling cases).

this is really interesting topic, what I missed from 2010
fan noise is expected, when you need more power
there is still question, why they don't use power from better Intel CPUs.
Some answer is based on:
- you need more expensive MoBo architecture, e.g. from 8th Intel Core CPUs generation is required Intel Chipset 3xx series (need count with additional heat carrying)
- then you need to compress all the components into Mini-ITX board (170x170mm) as max form factor for desktop NASes (rack mount is out of this obstacle) ... each such compression need solve additional heat
- and support Thermal Design Power from 90W just for CPU (and heat carrying by independent cooler just for CPU)
- then you need take out PSU from the NAS (need more space for more power and heat carrying)
not easy, but achievable

 

[one-eyed-king]

From the perspective of the used components, NUCs are closer to a well performing laptop than a workstation. I realy love that they don't force (shitty) pre-buildin ram/nvme/ssd on you and you have to decide what components you want to use. The passmark values are quite solid and depending on the cpu between 4-6x the value of a DS918+. The buildin GPU is more sophisticated and adds x265 decoding/encoding to the table.

Rumors say a Workstation-NUC is planned with a Xeon-CPU. But hey, If i want to have something bigger that draws more energy, I would probably build it myself or buy a Dell PowerEdge T40.

 

[jeyare]

welcome in my custom build world specially ML experiences
when each components are precise selected to final great orchestration based on target

but I have still worry about heat carrying from the NUC, no doubt this is better solution than Laptop, for a middle performed operation. to be clear, h.265/HEVC trans-coding is not so heavy load, but nearby, when HDR10 and Atmos are enabled
Then question is - what is the primary target of the NUC?

 

[Telos]

I'm considering a NUC for all in radarr/sonarr/qbittorrent/plex... with video/music offloaded to a 213j for storage. Does this seem reasonable?

 

[one-eyed-king]

If you are generaly satisfied with the 213j as storage -> <in_mandalorian>This is the way!</in_mandalorian>

 

[Rusty]

@one-eyed-king has spoken!