Build a Budget Plex Media Server for less than $500

This might be a starter server, but it will get the job done!

PCpartpicker list

DEEPCOOL TESSERACT BF Mid Tower Computer Case

AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0 GHz

ASUS M5A78L-M AM3+ Motherboard

ADATA SSD

128 GB SSD

LEPA MX-F1 N350-SB 350W ATX Power Supply

G.SKILL NS Series 8GB DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory

WD Red 4TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive
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Twitter:

[GasPipeJimmy]

I love these kinds of videos, so thanks for posting this.I recently completed my first Plex build and discovered a few additional things.Not everyone will want a giant mid-tower computer sitting around but when you go mini-ITX you will run into some heat and clearance issues.I eventually decided upon a low-power 65W Intel i5-4570S in a 1-u mini-ITX chassis by "Intest Technologies" for about $50 on Amazon.I used a Dynatron K199 low profile heat sink and fan dialed down to "quiet" levels in the BIOS. For my HDD I went with a spare Intel 120GB 320 series that I had laying around and an external USB 3.0 4GB from Seagate which seems to be less expensive than the bare drives are for the same model of drive.My question is: What operating system would you run on your Plex server and why?I ended up staying with Windows 8.1 on my Plex server as Windows 10 is still not loved by me and I had no more Windows 7 licenses to use.

[gregorysmith]

About 5 years ago when I decided I wanted a Plex server instead of booting up a desktop to watch videos, I decided I didn't want to build the system. I went with a Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 with the Xeon processor, 7243 Passmark score. At the time, it was about $400, then I had to add drives, and more memory. Looked today and that's up in the $900 range now.

[pilatus]

Running plex on Ubuntu server with Gnome installed, using 44 GB on SSD. Three 3TB WD Red running RAID5. Instead of building completely from scratch I bought a Dell Optiplex 790 with i5 for $75.

[JustIn-ducs]

I have xeon 2620 8gb ram 3.5tb hdd 128gb ssd and a 750ti for hardware acceleration. The xeon e5-2620 has 7900 pass mask score and i only spend around 200-250 usd. Not a bad combination for a server.

[JoshuaDay]

Really glad I found your videos. I only use plex to allow my xbox one to stream from it, and for my desktop to stream from it that is connected to my projector downstairs in the basement.

I watched this video and alot of your others to see what I would need and ended up going with the ASUS M32AD Desktop (i3-4170 Dual-Core 3.7GHz, 1TB - upgraded to two 4TB HDD's, and 8 gigs of ram). Over all cost was about 350$ and it works perfect when both streams are running. I also use that system upstairs as a school computer, so it can run the two streams and normal school work load at the same time. I would have been lost and probably wasted alot of money if it wasnt for your videos, so thanks alot man.

[Serbo-Greek]

Man, you are getting better and better... Keep the good job!!!

[gselby]

Any chance there's a 2018 version of this video? I'm looking at the Intel NUC7 Gemini Lake Silver J5005 with 8GB DDR4 and a Kingston 240GB SSD running in Linux. You're thoughts?

[robpl]

Okay I built it. Only changed the power supply because the one listed was out of stock. So far so good I had six streams going at once all with live encodes with no hiccups. The cpu fan was screaming so that concerned me so I am wondering if I should add a second fan. Other than that I'm happy.

[billc.riemers]

At first this seemed like extreme over kill. But then I started monitoring what happens when I play videos on my old T510. If I'm transcoding 1080P, the CPU usage just for plex jumps to 300% and stays there. I tried it both with Hunger games encoded in H265, and with the Hobbit encoded in H264 MVC. The Hobbit reached almost 400%. That means all 4 CPU's where at near 100% utilization.

It was simply impossible to transcode more than one movie at this resolution at a time. I guess I never noticed it, because usually if I have more than one thing playing at a time, chances are only one video is 1080P. So if you have multiple TV's or such playing transcoded content, you will want to throw at this as much CPU power as you can have available. Generally a desktop will perform about 50% better than the mobile equivalent chip. So even if you pick the same series for your desktop server as I have in my old laptop, you are probably going to be able to handle twice as many concurrent clients.

[TechySpeaking]

Been hoping to build a PMS for a while now, but didn't really know a good jumping off point (only my second build, first was a lot of recommendations from a friend). I took your list and modified it a bit, but thanks so much for providing a starting point!

[ncvettef]

FYI - I installed Windows 10 and it seems to be running fine but I just found out that this motherboard's 'support DVD' doesn't work with Windows 10. Will I be OK without using the motherboard 'support DVD' or should I get a different motherboard? Any suggestions?

[XzaviarBoston]

What operating system did you install?

[caballerosuave]

I'm building a gaming PC in a Corsair 800D case, Core i7-5820K, 32GB RAM, Asus Strix R9 Fury, & Samsung 950 pro M.2 as my primary drive, to name a the core components. I had plans to use four to six 6TB drives in a raid configuration to function as the storage for Plex media. What are your thoughts?

Since the case is so large, why would I build a separate system or buy some other nas?

[speeddemononVM]

Good video. You made a lot of good choices on the parts. Although there are a few things I feel I should mention:

The first is that you generally want to buy a power supply from a reputable manufacturer as cheep "off-brand" power supplies can die permanently and often have the tendency to take all the rest of your hardware out with them. I personally perfer Seasonic but I understand that this is a budget build and they tend to be a bit on the expensive side, so you would probably want to get something from Corsair (like a lower-end MX series).

Secondly, I would be warry of using those molex to SATA power adapters as over time they have the tendency to melt, short out, and catch fire.

Thirdly the SSD that you choose is a great drive for the money (I think it is a great choice). But one thing that you might want to consider is that if you plan to use Linux on a system like this (which I believe you mentioned was an option towards the end of the video) and is that some of these SSDs don't TRIM properaly out-of-the-the-box and require that you manually schedule when TRIMs should happen in cron. In order to prevent the drive from "wearing unevenly" and causing a premature failure. Last I checked (and maybe this isn't an issue anymore) this issue effected all SSDs EXCEPT ones made by Samsung, OCZ, and Intel. Again this is a minor issue and shouldn't prevent someone from choosing this drive since it's really not that hard to fix and you get so much for your money. .

[baileyquinn]

What modifications would you make if you did this same project today?

[homegrownheroz]

I liked your videos, thanks for taking the time for explaining a lot of Plex stuff. I recently setup my own Plex server on my desktop PC. It obviously works and functions great and I have been casting to my Chromecast as my main concern is power consumption. I'd rather not have a PC on all the time, even if it is a purposely built PC for a server. What are your thoughts on the NAS hard drives that support Plex. Ideally I think something like that is what I would like, as I mentioned before, I'd rather have a NAS drive running 24/7 than a whole PC.

[whocares]

First, if you are storing media its recommended that you go with a server case or a nas. You want to have a RAID set up. I use raid 6 with a 8 bay nas(going to upgrade to 2x 12 bay nas. I'm currently writing my home for 10gagabit network so I'm going to go with a 12u rack, poweredge and a nas. FYI you can get a cheap poweredge with at least 8 hot swap bays for a few hundred. 10TB hdds are a few hundred a pop so not to bad. Word of caution: once you create a server make sure you have all the drivers you want first. Once you configure the raid you can not change it or expand the raid. You will need to create a 2nd raid. You could do one for tv and one for movies. That's what I did. I wanted multiple points of redundancy in my server

[msahakim]

what do you think a server workhorse spec for commercial application apple itune or netflix is like? How many cpus and ssd's, hard disk drives do they have?

[cyberneticube]

That power supply, hmm I get it, it's cheap, it's got a fuse, but man, this is going to run 24-7. If it breaks down and sends a surge through your system, you're gonna have a bad time. I know, I know, even some cheap manufacturers safeguards the exiting power, but then again some don't, some of the expensive ones even don't.

[Jmoneylife]

How much RAM would you suggest to have for backing up your Blu-rays to watch on Plex don't want to be waiting for hours