Upgrade debate for Plex Media Server


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I have had to put the PC hosting my Plex server out to pasture. The Core 2 Quad Q9400 within it served me well. I am now shuffling around existing hardware for new purposes, one to fill the Plex role. I am undecided on the better choice between two.

 

First choice is an AMD FX 4350 powered box with 20GB RAM, a quad core, or at least a quad core in AMD's sense at the time.
The second choice is an Intel i3 4130 desktop with 8GB RAM. While only a dual core with hyper threading, it does have Intel QSV which I can take advantage of.

My content is almost all 1080p, with streaming internally in my home to a handful of Roku devices, and occasionally a XBox One.

There is occasionally a remote stream or two as well, which are throttled down to 720p due to connection limitations.

Which ever box I go with, will be running Windows 10 Pro.

 

I am leaning toward the FX 4350, and its 4 physical cores. It also has an nvidia Geforce GT 610 which can handle some transcoding load, though not as well as the Intel QSV option.

Media is stored on my NAS and is yanked over gigiabit LAN.

 

New hardware purchasing is not an option.

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if you have both why not just set them both up for plex and see which one performs better..  You stated this is existing hardware, so install plex on both and see which one performs better for your needs/wants.  What do you run as your nas?  Can it not just run plex?

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7 minutes ago, BudMan said:

if you have both why not just set them both up for plex and see which one performs better..  You stated this is existing hardware, so install plex on both and see which one performs better for your needs/wants.  What do you run as your nas?  Can it not just run plex?

What is this common sense nonsense you speak for testing each one? That makes entirely too much sense! It is doable though, the i5 2400 is currently filling the role of the "family" PC the kids use, but they could survive without it for a few days. Which ever of the two boxes doesn't get the Plex role, will end up being the new family box.

As for the NAS, its an old DLink DNS-323, with a pair of 2TB disks in jbod mode, so Plex isn't an option to run on it.

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I looked up some specs..

 

1 GB (1024 MB) File Transfer Test

D-Link DNS-323 SATA RAID Gigabit NAS: 63.0 Seconds @ 16.25 MBps

 

OMG - that is not anywhere close to gig... I sure and the F would not serve up anything off that thing.. You going to be way better off just putting your Disks in whatever PC you choose for your Plex box..

 

You should be seeing like 100+MBps off a gig network connection..

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Here I just did a copy and write to my nas... This to from a synology SHR array with 3x4TB disks.. Now I am running SMB3 multichannel.. (not officially supported by synology - but simple enough to enable with edit of the smb.conf - running DSM 6.2update2) Both my NAS and PC (windows 10) have 2 gig nics..

 

smb3mc.thumb.png.e8a91af65c4fff9ea47fe360c0591eee.png

 

But even when I turn that off I see 110MBps read write without any issues.

 

gigsmbfilecopy.thumb.png.59e17e5e3b193beb59bbef61a5ae5122.png

 

Love to see a robocopy file copy to and from your nas share.. Yeah that is 223MBps read and 188MBps write.. 16 would be like watching paint dry... A really slow drying paint, that you painted the grass with ;)

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