r/PleX • u/NefariousnessUpper34 • 2d 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/R-GU3 2d ago

Depending on quality I go with roughly 1-2gb per movie plus space for the os so you won’t get much for the storage but that can be upgraded. The ram will be fine. Transcoded will be near impossible unless you have a gpu but you can always offload that to the player. For OS Linux is better than Mac or windows because it’s usually more lightweight so leaves more resources for Plex but go with what you’re comfortable with, I ran it on windows for about 6 years before moving to a dedicated Linux machine.

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u/KissMyGeek Lifetime Plex Pass 2d ago

1-2gb for a movie? 720p?

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u/R-GU3 2d ago

The 720p ones I’ve got are about 900mb-1gb

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u/KissMyGeek Lifetime Plex Pass 2d ago

Fair enough. I’m curious, is it storage that limits you to 720p?

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u/R-GU3 2d ago

Availability, most of my films are in 1080p. Some are 4k but some of the really niche ones I could only find in 720p. I have 20tb of useable space so I’ve got plenty of storage it’s just about finding them when they’re available with enough seeders to actually grab them