Need help finding NAS Options please!

[skatethiest]

I am looking for the right NAS for me. I dont know enough to insure I dont under/over buy and could really use some help.

I am wanting to use the NAS as a Plex server firstly, a file backup and eventually I will probably add some home surveillance cameras to it.

I currently use my dekstop as my media server and have no issues but I want to ditch the desktop and would like to have everything centralized on a NAS that can always be live while I use my laptop when needed.

Generally we have 1-3 folks watching plex but usually its just me.

I mostly have 1080p content but watch on some 4k devices. I rarely use actual 4k video files because of the size. MP4, MKV, and avi are basically the files I use with some others mixed in.

So far I am looking at the Synology ds218+ or possible the WD My Cloud pr4100.

Ovbiously, I would want some element of futureproofing as media grows

Please let me know if I need to provide any additional details!

 

[USAFRet]

I have a Qnap TS-453A, that would seem to tick most of your requirements.

 

[failboat]

For plex and multiuser you have to be careful about cpu for transcodes. 4k transcoding will likely use a lot of cpu.
plex is recommending an i7 for a single 4k transcode. 4,000 passmark per stream. I wouldn't recommend speccing super high for a ton of 4k transcodes at once. there is barely any 4k conent. <10 movies i believe. it will only transcode if someone tries to watch it in 1080p or less. once the gpu offload is mainstream in a few years transcodes will be very fast.

I'd recommend building your own box with a 65W intel coffee lake or one of their 4core low power chips if your goal is cpu power. They haven't released new low power ones that i've seen. 100W 24/7 = approx $120/yr

NAS boxes usually have low power chips and some can handle lite transcoding.

A third option to consider is the nvidia shield tv for transcoding and a cheap nas for only file share. both units are low power and the shield is a very good tv box. i'd find some reviews of people who have set this up and are happy with it.

for hdd go with seagate or hgst. megascale is good but pricy. spin rpm isn't a factor in seq reads/writes. the lower power drives still have good r/w in seq. 1Gbs LAN is 125MBs so check the listed seq r/w against that. 4k streams at like 25-50Mbs so it would take a ton of them to saturate it.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html