G+_Tyler Shaw Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 After seeing the Synology Nas review. I'm trying to future proof for 4k media serving. I am looking at building a server after noticing that Synology doesn't have enough horsepower for media transcoding. Two questions. Do you know how much processing power is needed to accomplish transcoding 4k content with Plex? Also, would it be better to have the nas as a separate device from the server doing the transcoding. I was looking at building a server with 2 E5 2620 xenon's with 32gb of ram in a 2U enclosure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Golden Retriever Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Would be a great question for one of twit.tv - TWiT | Netcasts you love from people you trust | TWiT.TV video editors Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Anyone in the know would never recommend a NAS, DAS or SAN when performance matters. The same drives in an external enclosure of any sort will ALWAYS be slower because they're in the external enclosure. Keep everything local whenever possible. It's a first rule from home labs up to the enterprise space: http://www.smbitjournal.com/2013/06/when-to-consider-a-san/ I don't know where you're looking to source the server from, but xbyte.com - Dell Refurbished Servers & Used Servers - Including Dell PowerEdge Servers, Parts & Storage is the preferred vendor in IT circles. They even have factory warranties on most servers, and have started offering network gear now as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Tyler Shaw Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 Thank you. My current media server is getting old. For the past 8 years the amd 8150 running mythtv and Plex has done a good job. It a little slow when it comes to transcoding on the fly higher quality encodes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joonas Tuomi (Jotu) Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Doing on-the-fly 4k transcoding on the CPU is just asking for trouble. You are going to need an external GPU. Good news, your old server could be just fine, if you can fit a graphics card in there. Background transcoding is achievable on a NAS, but then that is most of what that does, and Plex clearly is not going to support 4k in a while. Answering your question is quite a challenge, because there is so much we do not yet know about the UHD world. Has anyone ever mentioned Kodi to you? https://kodi.tv/ They offer some minimum for encoding 10-bit H.265 and VP9 video, which are likely winners in the post FHD-era: AMD Radeon R9 300 Series (R9 380) or newer, Intel HD 510 (Skylake) or newer, Nvidia GeForce 900 series (GM20x) or newer. Because encoding is only half of the battle, for 4k do not look below Nvidia GeForce 10-series or similar performance. docs.google.com - Plex NAS Compatibility Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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