Lets talk about PLEX baby

[mrdanbartlett]

Hi all,

So I'm thinking of ditching Sky Q as it costs a fortune and we rarely watch it enough. With 2 young kids we never watch anything live, so its maybe an hour in the evening of things we've recorded, and the pause button is vital due to be bothered constantly by the kids (one of them doesnt seem to need sleep!).

So....we have a PC in the living room connected to the main TV, I use it for 2 things: 1) plex server for films (for us and the kids) 2) gaming PC for my son, it runs a 1060 GPU and plays xbox game pass stuff plus a bit of steam, lego game etc - its perfect for him as we can control how often he uses it and its not him being away in his room etc. We do bring a secondary TV down so he can play without blocking up the main TV though as the other child likes to watch youtube/films sometimes.

I could just run plex from this PC but would need to be left on 24/7 for recording etc, plus how much does it roughly cost to run a full desktop PC with gaming GPU 24/7? Or should I buy a smaller media server and dedicate that to plex? That would be tempting, but not if it costs hundreads of pounds.

I'd also likely get my little gamer an xbox and somepoint but then the games cost alot more on that *(gamepass aside).

What are people using as a cheap 24/7 plex server? (to buy and run).

I'd liekly hardwire to the internet hub, as we'd then use it off of TV's, (can you run plex at the same time from multiple devices?). I do like plex so happy to go with that as a solution. Very keen its a simple set up though, as it'll stress the wife if it needs constant TLC.

Welcome any advice/comments.

[TonyRPH]

mrdanbartlett said:

<snip>

I could just run plex from this PC but would need to be left on 24/7 for recording etc, plus how much does it roughly cost to run a full desktop PC with gaming GPU 24/7? Or should I buy a smaller media server and dedicate that to plex? That would be tempting, but not if it costs hundreads of pounds.

<snip>

My PC (Intel i7 with GTX1070) consumes around 90W when idle (this includes 2x monitors in standby so you can knock 8 w off that).

There are 3x SSDs and one old 'spinny' disk.

ETA: This will of course be slightly less if you have economy 7 rates, or some other variable deal. This is worst case cost.

Edited by TonyRPH on Saturday 18th February 11:41

[FunkyGibbon]

I use 2 Raspberry Pi.

1 is running open media vault as a NAS connected to 2x SSDs

other is running Plex and accesses the NAS

works perfectly for me. very low power consumption and inexpensive.

you could run just use 1 Pi for Plex and directly attach SSDs

I can connect with multiple devices, and remotely away from home.

[TonyRPH]

FunkyGibbon said:

I use 2 Raspberry Pi.<snip>

The Pi isn't very good at transcoding though is it? So if you need to transcode any content you need more CPU horsepower.

[FunkyGibbon]

TonyRPH said:

The Pi isn't very good at transcoding though is it? So if you need to transcode any content you need more CPU horsepower.

It's a Pi4 with 8GB RAM, content is either 720p 1080p or UHD4K.

Just tried streaming to my phone on 4G and absolutely no issue.

So I guess if devices can natively cope with HD and UHD 4K then no transcoding required.

Edited by FunkyGibbon on Saturday 18th February 17:29

[mrdanbartlett]

Thanks you wonderful people for your replies

Was tempted by a secondhand NAS type device, wonder what they are like for energy useage? Might also be simpler as it wouldn't have a proper Windows OS. Then I can seperate the current PC purely for gaming.

I was also suprised that storage hadn't really come down in price, I bought a 6tb drive for £120 in mid 2020 and they dont seem much cheaper now!

[essayer]

A lot of nas units might struggle with transcoding

An nvidia shield can run Plex Media Server and would cost very little to run, you can link to the TV directly or stick in a cupboard and stream via Chromecast et al

just need to work out storage but some single drive NAS might not be too expensive, and you can always redownload material re-rip from dvd if it fails

[scott_evo17]

I use a Dell R710 with unraid installed, 6 discs, 3 14tb, 3 2tb. I think it sits about 120w. Run it full time, albeit I've got solar panels with a lucrative feed in tariff which helps the bills.

You can also use something like XTEVE or TVheadend to port through a digibox or IPTV and record directly in plex.

Admittedly, I'm looking to downsize the Dell to something desktop size as it's a bit excessive... and noisy, even in the loft!

[mrdanbartlett]

Good info, thank you.

Thinking I'll just keep the Dell desktop for now.