2022 Plex/Unraid Server build. QUICK SYNC BEAST!

Did you delete a unraid how to install video? I'm looking for a unraid how to install in docker video but i cant find it, i vaguely remember it being yours but its gone now or am i going nuts lol?

When he is referencing the Plex metadata that you want to keep separate, would that be everything encompassed in the appdata folder for Plex? or is there more out there I'm missing?

Happy to find a current-ish update on the ultimate Plex build. I am heading down the same rabbit hole and ended up lost. As for SSD, I have a dedicated 2TB Samsung 990EvoPlus which is waaaay overkill for my Qnap TVS-473e, but I knew I was going to upgrade sooner than later. Now my 4 16TB Irnwolf Pros can store all their goodness on their own.

@Mr Bits, how about a ultimate MIRCO Plex server build, that is what I am after. 6 bay Micro ATX, i9, DDR5, 2.5/ 5GB & 2 M.2 slots. What do you suggest?

As for issues, the only issues I have is the lame i3 processor and lack of HW transcoding. But for metadata, posters and scrolling through 1300 movies, 600 audiobooks and ton of music, no issue what so ever. zero lag

Nothing drives me nuts more than all these videos that are more about how to cheap out than do this is as well as it can be done... I dont have a budget for the most part, this computer is technically used more than my gaming machine, so I dont mind dumping some money on it, so this video was useful

Wow, this video is quite the change-up from the old "pull your old computer out of the closet and make a home server" type of video. This (on paper) is gonna be a beefy machine.

I just purchased A I7-13700K with A Z690 Motherboard with 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and A PCI-e Gen 4 1TB SSD to Upgrade my old Zeon server for Plex and it Smashes it, I have 6 x 8TB drives in RAID 5 and use the NVMe drive for Plex Meta data and use A 20GB RAM Drive to transcode in to and it runs like A dream, Thank you for All of your Awesome video's

Running a 12900k 24/7 for plex and unraid doesn’t sound fun for the power bill

I'm over here with a pc I bought off Facebook with a alderlake cpu, 12gigs of ram, no gpu, and basically bare bones for $150... running my unraid with no cache drive... and have zero issue streaming 4k video.

But my business pc has a 13700 processor with 64gb of ddr5.. all kinds of power for writing invoices 😅

wow i need this. im running my plex server on a mini PC with a celeron intel J4105 CPU (1.5ghz) and 12 GB of ram and everything is on an external HD connected through USB 3.0. got some buffering sometimes lol

How did I miss this post/video? Okay so I now need (no longer want) to start building my 2 unRaid servers. I may have mentioned before, one will strictly be for Plex and my 2nd will be to replace my bulky desktop Synology data server (this 2nd build will also host my personal cloud for cell phone backups). The data server will be the OG 12-bay hotswap Rosewell case. My Synology also has 12 bays and am only using 6-4TB drives. I will eventually carry these over after the build is up and running w/out issues. The Plex server I would like it to be 24-bay hotswap chassis. This is by far the best video I have seen on building a Plex server and I want to run down the rabbit hole. Can you help me further and what do you think of the new i9-13900 / i9-13900E / i9-13900TE / i9-13900T? I'm thinking of the i9-13900 for the Plex server and the i9-13900T for the data server, your thoughts or would a Xeon be the better option for one of the build or both?

I found out that NZBGET does not unpack well on Unraid. Had to switch to SABNZB and have no problems. It SABNZB downloads 10MB faster than my NZBGET was with same settings. Unfortunately it is downloading faster than it is unpacking still.

No graphics card??????

I have 14 tb of files stored on my multiple m.2 nvme....So I am not sure what you mean when you say do I use a separate Plex SSD? I only have m.2 drives in my system. I have 4 external Seagate 4 TB (530) drives in raid 0 in an OWC express 4m2 enclosure. My NUC 11 is my server currently. Running out of space also. Have not used spinning drives since 2017.

With the electricity prices in Europe I dont even want to think about the monthly cost running this would be. Do a video on a energy efficient build.

ECC memory all the way, your copying huge Videos and playing them back. Errors over time can destroy your content.

Thumbs up on SSD dedicated to Plex

What a shill! Top shelf gaming hardware to build a mediocre server? Dude! Do you even server? Why all the energy sucking wallet robbing high power components? For the price you're paying for the hardware alone, you could build a decent entry level energy efficient server. Plus, you would potentially save additional money on electricity. You're only here to "recommend" things which you get a commission for selling. I feel sorry for any server newbs who get dooped by this con artist. Guy's obviously full of it.

Great video. I’ve been obsessing about a budget Plex server build but then always end up with ideas like yours.

Have you thought of creating a RAM drive for your transcoding tasks? A 128gbs of DDR5 seems a bit much. Half of it as a ram drive sounds nice maybe?

I disagree with almost everything recommended lol. I chose a 11700 non k last year for my new build, (uhd 750) with 8x wd gold sas drives it idles at 100w, with 4+ concurrent streams it's 110w in use. I got a gold power supply 650 w. Very few devices need transcoding these days. most things will be direct play unless you've got a bunch of apple garbage, then prepare for headaches with h265 and av1.

Nothing to do with setting up quick sync in unRAID. Poor description.

Is quick Sync better than NVIDIA transcoding now?

Thanks for all of your direction and assistance w Unraid and Plex. I have a NVME drive w Plex cache and unraid appdata folder on it and have been running that way for two years

Great video. I went down this rabbit hole as well. I have a home theater and recently discovered plex, and have been loving it. I wanted to have my raw rips available for my theater for faster load times on my Sony 5000Es 4K projector, and also be able to access my files while traveling. I can't believe I am this late to the plex party.

I ultimately pulled the trigger on a 13600k. I wish they had the 65W version available at the time of this post. I was leaning for the 12700 2.1ghz 65W version as opposed to the K/KF versions for power usage. However I got a better price on the 13600k on black Friday. The 13600k outperformed the 12900K in a lot of the testing that I saw on LTT and other benchmarks. I got the ASrock Z690 Extreme, balance of cost, and it has 8 6Gbps Sata ports. To overview; my first dedicated plex server(i have been using my Ryzen 5500U laptop) that I ordered over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I got a SilverStone Technology RM41-H08 4U server chassis(will be in the theater AV rack), 13600K, 64GB 4x16gb 3200, 512tb M.2, 2 16TB Exos(to get started) and a 650W PSU. I did wait on the CPU cooler because I really want to get the measurements in this unique chassis case before I buy that. I am limited with my supplied fiber modem in my area at 2.5g, so 10G wasn't really a factor in my case. Bottom line, I was out the door this weekend under $800 for the PC parts(minus the Exos drives that I already owned), and $350 for the chassis.

If you read this, let me know what you think. I am looking forward to getting all my parts in to do this build, but I haven't decided on OS, as I really only know windows. That is my next rabbit hole.

Any chance you could help us out with a more cost efficient solution? Like $500? I'm looking to build something expandable for 3-4 people and I don't mind getting my hands dirty with hardware or software configuration stuff.

Soooo overkill for a Plex server. The only way to justify those components/costs would be if you were charging a fee to access your Plex - like your own Netflix. Still fun to watch this vid of dream components.

a 12900k just for a plex server? How many streams you plan to do? 10+?

Kinda late in the game here but you linked the kf processor.. The kf doesn't support onboard video.

i keep getting a corrupted database using plex in unraid, can u cover fixing that?

Important question, your link says it's the "KF" version which doesn't have Integrated Graphics... The "K" version has integrated graphics. DOES THAT MATTER FOR QUICK SYNC??

Just upgraded mine from i7 3700.
ASRock Z690 PRO RS ATX LGA1700
i7-12700K
64GB (2x32GB) 3200MHz DDR4
Noctua NH-D15
2x Samsung M.2 drives for OS and Plex DB/temp files
Fractal Design Define 7
And a few Seagate drives

I run two nvme drive one for Plex and the os and one for the cache and meta data ...its so fast no load wait times

Did I miss the part where you said your Plex server was intended for use by dozens of concurrent users? Because this build is insanely overpowered otherwise.

So no GPU and the CPU doesnt have an iGPU. so no transcoding lol

hey jason I'm having trouble getting quicksync to work on my nuc box with ubuntu. any chance of making a quick how to video?

Wouldn't using a gpu be far more cost effective for hardware transcoding? This build is quite expensive.

If it's recommend to have around 1gb of ram per 1tb with zfs, then I should get even more for plex transcoding? Is there a rule of thumb for how much per transcode? This server is gonna be expensive.. lol

You should not be using a aio in a server that has 100% uptime, but a noctua, cheaper and better.

Don't buy the ddr5 ram you can get a p2000 for that price.

Thanks for walking through how to build the most expensive plex server. Can you do actual tests with cheaper, way more efficient CPUs?

wow u talk on and on and on! The title says 2022 Plex/Unraid Server build.. after 14 mins I realized your just talking and talking... just show the build already! Couldn't even make it through this video.

With this system, what would you suggest using to expand the HD capacity up to 18 after you use up the six SATA connectors on the motherboard?

I'm really inexperienced with setting up large RAID arrays, but I am looking at doing one soon. I want to do 8 16TB HDD's on a RAID 6, but I noticed this motherboard only supports RAID 5. Okay, so even if I go with that, I still run out of SATA connectors, so I'm assuming you add a PCIe card with SATA connectors... This is where I'm completely lost.

Is it possible to get RAID 6 on this build? And regardless, how would I build it and plan for expansion of the number of HDD's I have connected to the system?

Dude, seems a but much. I stream 4k on plex server on i7 10th gen build. Files on blue drives, apps ok nvme, 32GB ram. I even play fornite while plex is streaming movie.

I want to build a similar system, just have a question. About the liquid cooler 360mm radiator size, will the space be sufficient in the hard disk configuration? And if yes, then should it be front or top mounted?

Thanks

If you're buying a surplus 36 bay server case it's going to come with 1200w+ redundant supplies.

Who are you providing the massive overkill Plex server to? do you have 10+GB internet connection so your plex server is for all your friends and family to leach off?

I wanna try the a380

The 12th gen isn't supported still. You can pass the igpu, but if you have tone mapping on, your whole server will hang, and you'll need to reboot. Speaking from experience. Haven't been able to use igpu transcoding yet :/

I'm not entirely sure why you would go with the parts you did. I would never recommend anyone ever run an AIO in a server nor would I recommend a 12900, 128GB ram, etc. for a Plex server build lmao.

The intel 770 igpu starts at the i5's including the T and E low wattage lines. If this is a plex only build with no VMs then.... ????

128GB of DDR5? Why? How many transcodes are you doing? 20 or so with Quicksync? Are they all 4k? Can it even do that (the answer is no)?

10gig should max out at 1.125GB/s, most 20TB spinners are what 250MB/s reads at mac theoretical? So you'd need to have 4 or 5 of those maxing out to utilize that? Then consider how many transcodes the igpu can do or what types that need to hit that bandwidth max.

Power supply yea I would recommend a Titanium only because of warranty and over that amount of time price savings. I would have went with Seasonic to get a 12 yr warranty at 750-850 though.

Case yes, the Fractal Meshify 2 and 2 XL are the industry standards imo for large unraid servers.

CPU cooling, I would go with a Noctua branded HSF that supports 2 fans by design and just get whatever is cost efficient to you or whatever suites your preference.

NVMe's I personally can't find any issues with the recommendations though the sizes were huge but whatever. I can see the use case for having a Plex drive and normal docker apps drive.

Why not 12900 or 12700 with out K

Thanks for this detailed walkthrough about a plex server build. Just recently finished my plex server with these parts you mention with some difference (case, psu, cpu-cooler). It's a beast, and can run everything thrown at it. Anyway I hope you in the future plan to create a video on how to optimize plex to the fullest in unraid... so many settings that probably can be tweaked.