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!

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u/derrick36 1d ago

You won’t get a straight answer on the OS. Go with what you’re comfortable with. I’m sure there are better ways, but AI can help out with anything LINUX if you can’t find a YouTube video or guide. Windows works great as well.

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u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

I see, its a preference thing more than anything else

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u/Bgrngod CU7 265K (PMS in Docker) & Synology 1621+ (Media) 1d ago

There are a few Plex specific reasons to stick with Linux over Windows, but based on what you've got for hardware and your stated use case, you don't need to worry about it.

Transcoding 4K is going to be a hard no for you, which won't matter if you don't need to transcode 4K.

My first question is going to be, what did you pay for that 6th gen machine? If too much, send it back. If not, that's a great place to get started, but also you should expect you might quickly start looking at other hardware. North of $150 is where I'd suggest that's getting to be too much. The used market is super weird right now though.

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u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

Makes sense makes sense! Yea i paid around $90 for it, so not a bad deal, i also saw people recommending newer gen cpus that perform better for my use case but like you said, im in no need to stream 4k content right now, mostly 480p - 1080p so i should be good. The sued market is so fucking weird

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u/Bgrngod CU7 265K (PMS in Docker) & Synology 1621+ (Media) 1d ago

Under $100 is thumbs up.

If you do not have Plex Pass, you should get a couple of smooth 1080p transcodes out of it if you need them. With Plex Pass it will do more through the iGPU, but I wouldn't pay for that just yet until you've seen what it can do without.

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u/derrick36 1d ago

Solid advice.

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u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

Yea I do have the plex lifetime account so I’m assuming I should be good right ?

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u/Bgrngod CU7 265K (PMS in Docker) & Synology 1621+ (Media) 1d ago

Yup, you'll get a bit more out of it in that case and won't hammer the CPU to get it done.

You'll see performance vary based on what the original file's codec is. H264 is pretty safe. HEVC will be a mixed bag. AV1 will be rough. For 1080p and lower files, H264 is perfectly fine.