Cheapest/low power device to run Plex server?

airborne

airborne

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All content will be streamed direct so no need for hardware that has to recode on the fly.
Seems something like a NUC or SFF pc with an SSD, which are easy to find around R1000 these days, would be the best bet, low cost and low power consumption. Alternatively can you run Plex no issues on a Raspberry PI?

Plex is epic, I wish I'd got into it before this, it makes accessing and consuming media such a breeze, it's epic to be able to start watching on the TV and then pick up exactly where I was on the iPad.

Another question while I am about it, do you need a static IP address if you want to stream from your Plex server when off site away from home?
 
HP Microserver, I think mine was R1500 a few years ago.

Small, low power usage, and can take a bunch of hard drives.
 
airborne said:
All content will be streamed direct so no need for hardware that has to recode on the fly.
Seems something like a NUC or SFF pc with an SSD, which are easy to find around R1000 these days, would be the best bet, low cost and low power consumption. Alternatively can you run Plex no issues on a Raspberry PI?

Plex is epic, I wish I'd got into it before this, it makes accessing and consuming media such a breeze, it's epic to be able to start watching on the TV and then pick up exactly where I was on the iPad.

Another question while I am about it, do you need a static IP address if you want to stream from your Plex server when off site away from home?
Click to expand...
You don't need a static address as long as you use something like DynDNS or NO-IP which translates your non-static address into a URL such as myhomeplex.hopto.org, for example.
 
airborne said:
All content will be streamed direct so no need for hardware that has to recode on the fly.
Seems something like a NUC or SFF pc with an SSD, which are easy to find around R1000 these days, would be the best bet, low cost and low power consumption. Alternatively can you run Plex no issues on a Raspberry PI?

Plex is epic, I wish I'd got into it before this, it makes accessing and consuming media such a breeze, it's epic to be able to start watching on the TV and then pick up exactly where I was on the iPad.

Another question while I am about it, do you need a static IP address if you want to stream from your Plex server when off site away from home?
Click to expand...
I just run it on my desktop that I use on a daily basis. Works like a charm.
 
airborne said:
All content will be streamed direct so no need for hardware that has to recode on the fly.
Seems something like a NUC or SFF pc with an SSD, which are easy to find around R1000 these days, would be the best bet, low cost and low power consumption. Alternatively can you run Plex no issues on a Raspberry PI?

Plex is epic, I wish I'd got into it before this, it makes accessing and consuming media such a breeze, it's epic to be able to start watching on the TV and then pick up exactly where I was on the iPad.

Another question while I am about it, do you need a static IP address if you want to stream from your Plex server when off site away from home?
Click to expand...
I use a Celeron NUC to run my Plex server, adguard home and home assistant.
 
TheMightyQuinn said:
I just run it on my desktop that I use on a daily basis. Works like a charm.
Click to expand...
That's what I have been doing but the PC is in a bedroom and it's relatively noisy, it also goes to sleep every so often. Maybe I should let it run all day and live with the noise, it is a 16 core beast though so it may chow more electricity than it's worth in the long run and needlessly add wear(probably not much of a concern but every hour of uptime does add wear).
Speedster said:
I use a Celeron NUC to run my Plex server, adguard home and home assistant.
Click to expand...
Is that an older 2 core Celeron, how much ram does it have and how does it handle the load?
Modern Celeron CPU's are pretty impressive these days.
 
airborne said:
That's what I have been doing but the PC is in a bedroom and it's relatively noisy, it also goes to sleep every so often. Maybe I should let it run all day and live with the noise, it is a 16 core beast though so it may chow more electricity than it's worth in the long run and needlessly add wear(probably not much of a concern but every hour of uptime does add wear).

Is that an older 2 core Celeron, how much ram does it have and how does it handle the load?
Modern Celeron CPU's are pretty impressive these days.
Click to expand...

Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU N3050 @ 1.60GHz with 4GB ram. It handles the load really comfortably, although I don't do any transcoding.
 
backstreetboy said:
If you want to stream your offline stuff you can also look at https://jellyfin.org/ which is a drop in Plex replacement.
Click to expand...
The app on my LG TV is terrible. Cannot start watching until the countdown timer stops,
And then it always shows the subtitles no matter how many times I disable them.

Rather added a profile for daughter on Plex and gave her her own library.
Now everything works OK.
 
I just realised, I did pay the R50 or whatever it was for the Android plex license so I can watch on my tablet.
 
You could also try find decent PlexShare then never worry about hosting your own stuff again, cant even remember when last I turned my home server on.
You can also download from said share to "top up" your own library if you missing content as usually these guys have almost everything.
No yify stuff either, better quality.
 
I was using a dell optiplex 4th gen i3, 8gb, 2tb hdd

Recently moved to 11th gen i3 laptop, 16gb, 256 ssd + 2tb hdd.
Did this mostly for load shedding since now all my media is on the laptop but found that transcoding is also much better on the newer CPU.
I download in 4k only and then need to sometimes transcode to 1080p when playing from my bedroom TV.
 
You don't need a static ip address as far as I know?
just set up port forwarding to 32400.

Also look at oracle cloud, to host a free plex server (4 cores,24GB RAM).
 
Hemps said:
You could also try find decent PlexShare then never worry about hosting your own stuff again, cant even remember when last I turned my home server on.
You can also download from said share to "top up" your own library if you missing content as usually these guys have almost everything.
No yify stuff either, better quality.
Click to expand...
Where do you find those and I’m assuming it’s a grey market paid service?
 
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