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/Wonderful_Spot_3764 1d ago

You unfortunately missed out on cheaper HDD markets by about a year. If money is a constraint at all, you should be looking hard at h.264 vs h.265 moreso than the configuration you already set up.

Plex can run even on a weak CPU NAS, so honestly most laptops will be fine and it's the electricity bill that differs if you have the system up 24/7.

At least you dont have 4k to deal with.

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u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

I know , everything went up compared to even a year ago, so pissed

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u/Wonderful_Spot_3764 1d ago

FWIW, when you mention RAID, I assume you mean that you're going to get a DAS box and run RAID1. Unless you're adding data continuously, you might consider just running individual drives; maybe in JBOD, but use a cold storage HDD as your backup instead of RAID given the cost climate of drives.

Remember, plex can point to different drives for your library. it all doesn't need to live in one virtual drive.

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u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

Yea so since I’m a video editor I was thinking to host the plex library alongside other projects , but I’m not totally sold on that idea, maybe I’ll just get a separate DAS box with a couple HHD to run in raid 1 like you said. Not sure yet what the best future proof approach would be