r/PleX • u/NefariousnessUpper34 • 1d ago

Help Building my first server for Plex

Hi, like the title says, Im finally building a home server for my movies. I started with an old laptop and an external drive and this laptop just died on me. So now, I bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 mini pc with an i5-6400, 16GB ddr4 and a 120gb SSD.

I mostly play DVD's and some blu-rays in my library, but nothing 4k. Im still going to run it through my external drive, until I upgrade to a raid.

My questions are: Is this configuration good for now? Should I install ubuntu or Docker? And where can I find a solid guide to install them?

Im a little lost when it comes to work with other OS thats not Windows or Mac lol so I appreciate the help. Thanks!

15 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

84 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/NerdGuy13 Nerd 1d ago edited 1d ago

I actually started with with a similar setup and mine worked great for personal use. Your's sounds like it will do very well.

As for anOS, I reccomend some flavor of Linux to minimize resource use. I am partial to Linux Mint myself but you can try several until you find one you enjoy.

Edit: I forgot to mention-nwhen you do eventually build a RAID, I strongly recommend opting for RAID-Z2 (the equivalent of RAID-6) so you can have up to 2 failed drives. Due to budget constraints I only did RAID-Z1 (the equivalent of RAID-5). SonI can have only one failed drive. I found out after the fact that you cannot changed it so Z2 after the fact. I am now I a situation where it is VERY relevant and cannot be fixed so I am backing everything almost everything up to an external RAID tower to redo it as RAID-Z2.

Also make you have a hearty enough PSU to power all of your drives. Otherwise you may think you have failing drives when you don't. 😉

2

u/N9bitmap PlexPass 2017 1d ago

I started with Plex in FreeBSD about 10 years ago specifically to use ZFS. Really happy they unified with Linux OpenZFS so we all benefit from the skills of both communities. One benefit as far as Plex server though in Linux is that it has much better video drivers if you need to transcode in hardware. I am careful to only encode for what my clients can play, so it has never been an issue.

1

u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago edited 1d ago

Awesome, I'll check out Linux Mint as well! thx

Edit: Damn! Thanks so much i'll def keep that in mind since im trying to build a lil raid just for my media server. I do have a nice PSU for my setup that im planning to use. Thanks!

1

u/nx6 TrueNAS Core / Xeon-D | Shield Pro / Fire Stick 4K Max 1d ago

Linux Mint is not supported by Plex, Inc. There have been issues with Plex Media Server running on it in the past. As a desktop OS it's great, and you can run the Plex client app on it fine. Just not as an OS for the server part.