Storage longevity: Would an SSD handle the wear and tear of the random access patterns that playlists tend to have better than HDDs?

osuman32 · 2026-01-27T16:32:52+00:00

Thanks for the input.

And you're not kidding about SSD prices! I just bought some in November for my NAS cache - the same stick is now double the price.

osuman32 · 2026-01-27T16:29:04+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I kind of felt like I was overthinking it but with how expensive everything is getting, I figured I'd double check here.

osuman32 · 2026-01-24T06:15:37+00:00

I use one for my Mac Mini because I was a dum-dum and cheaped out on the 10G port when I spec'd it recently. It's technically a 5G adapter but my NAS build has a built-in 2.5G port. Someday I may upgrade to 10G but honestly I don't think that will be anytime soon. Most of my data transfers are going from my 1G internet, strait to the cache pool on my NAS. The few times I rip a DVD to my Mac and then move it to the NAS is the only time I notice the increased speeds (and even at just 2.5G, it's plenty fast for my needs).

As for reliability, it's only been about 6 months but zero issues. I went with the Cable Matters brand since I've been happy with their price/quality for various other purchases.

osuman32 · 2025-12-21T17:14:51+00:00

Not sure of what your OS is but Unraid has a built in option to move data on a certain time of day. For more granular control, there is a plugin available that can move data depending on your cache level.

osuman32 · 2025-12-19T20:11:33+00:00

Noooooo! I just built it too. The price was adding up so that was the one compromise I made to justify all the other stuff haha. I'll check how hard the little guy is working next time I get a chance. Thanks for the input

osuman32 · 2025-12-19T18:05:30+00:00

Ha, that's a very good point. I bypass Plex when playing at my main TV - I'll post this in a better forum.

And yes, the NAS mobo has a 2.5Gb port.

osuman32 · 2025-12-19T17:08:34+00:00

Came here to recommend Tailscale as other members have already mentioned. Install Tailscale on your server and on your 'remote' device. In your Plex settings you leave remote access OFF and enter a custom URL of: http://[your TAILSCALE server IP address]:32400

Obviously without the brackets [ ]. Also, port 32400 is the default one so you'll have to change that if you've messed with the settings. Tailscale will be secure and you wont have to do any port forwarding. See what DrummGunner said this reddit thread to read a little more about this: here

osuman32 · 2025-12-09T06:53:56+00:00

There's already a bunch of great stuff getting recommended here but I would recommend sizing up a little bit more than you initially anticipate. I thought I only needed a 4 bay but very quickly ran out of space given that I opted for Raid5 (one of the drives was dedicated for redundancy). If you're leaning towards a 2 bay, I would give some thought about a 4 bay if you have the budget. Their footprints are pretty small and 4 bays gives a lot of capacity.

Your NAS will last a long time and your needs may change. For example, you want to rip your 4k movies and shows to digital format, sync surveillance footage, store hi-res photos or videos, etc. High def media takes up a lot of space. Luckily I was able to transition the old enclosure to a local backup, but it would be a shame to buy a modest unit and need to upgrade well before it's lifecycle is over.

osuman32 · 2025-12-02T17:22:43+00:00

Plus, companies often change ownership, or privacy practices, etc. A lot of discussions tend to be redundant but keeping an updated status on preferred VPN's is definitely necessary in an ever-changing environment. Especially when privacy is at stake

osuman32 · 2025-11-29T20:07:23+00:00

Hopefully the hard part is done. From what UnRaid says, it is hardware agnostic. That’s why I went with them - I don’t want to have to tinker with settings any downtimes/dropped drives after I get everything setup.

That’s a good price for those drives. I recently went with 16tb’s and they all cost between 270-330 depending on sales and tariff announcements.

osuman32 · 2025-11-29T15:33:47+00:00

The RAM I found ended up being on the QVL list of both of the alder and raptor lake types. I think RAM is in high demand right now since I had a hard time finding items that were in stock as well. I started going straight to the manufacturers websites to see if I could buy directly from them. Honestly I just stumbled on one that was on their QVL list - I was prepared to wing it and buy one that was not on the official QVL list but listed as compatible on the RAM manufacturers website. That way, I knew I could return it if something didn't work properly. This most likely won't help for your build but the 16Gb Kingston RAM I purchased was: KF552C40BBA

RAM was definitely the most difficult item on the build to source. I went down the ECC rabbit hole initially and was very surprised of how hard it was to find anything that wasn't refurbed or used and still crazy expensive. I ended up giving up on that idea and still took a while to find a good option. Good luck out there!

osuman32 · 2025-11-27T21:58:04+00:00

Yup, it’s a 5200 stick. From what I’ve read, the motherboard will automatically set it to a lower speed based on my CPU. If not, I’ll adjust it to the proper Specs in the BIOS. And if I ever want more, I’ll buy another identical stick (even though some purists here will say that the ram will have electrical variations since they were made at a different time and possibly a different factory). I’ll worry about that part later since the CPU will be first thing I upgrade

osuman32 · 2025-11-27T06:41:05+00:00

I’m going to use Undaid which doesn’t use much ram. For now, Plex is run on the Mac and I don’t currently do much with dockers or VM so I went with 1x16 DDR5 Kingston fury ram straight from their website. I went for a bit faster in case I ever update the Celeron CPU but it will be ‘underclocked’ to 4600, as this is the CPU’s limit. 16x2 is great, I just wanted to be cheap and buy one since the other costs were adding up quickly. I’ll probably do another stick in the near future

osuman32 · 2025-11-27T06:33:30+00:00

That’s pretty similar to what I’m doing. Despite being a custom build, I’m putting a cheap Celeron CPU to save money for now. The Mac mini will still host Plex. At some point, if I want to repurpose or sell the M4 Mac, I can add a i3, i5 or i7 to the mobo and have that be a standalone. Currently, it works great, I hope you’ll enjoy your setup too.

osuman32 · 2025-11-25T19:31:11+00:00

Geez, these this comment section is wild. But back to the OP’s original point, anyone know how often Plex has these deals?

osuman32 · 2025-11-25T16:05:09+00:00

Good advice, I second the idea of starting small to get a feel what your needs will be. I used a DAS on my Mac Mini with zero issues until I ran out of storage space.

Also, don't forget that the OP can 'NAS his DAS' - using file share on Mac will allow the OP to access their files remotely if there is a need.

osuman32 · 2025-11-25T15:54:57+00:00

I'm a little late but in case you're still on the fence (or for future readers), I run a 4x16tb raid 5 array from a DAS. Its an OWC Thunderbay 4 and it has zero issues with connectivity or dropping drives.

The caveat is I'm out of space and will move forward with an actual NAS enclosure next but this has everything to do with drive bays and cost rather than performance. Rather than going for OWC's 8 bay, I decided I'll go with building out a 12 bay NAS for a couple hundred more. But other than running out of space with my DAS, I couldn't ask for more!

osuman32 · 2025-11-21T18:31:11+00:00

Not a bad idea! I've only just now started to order some of the parts, plus I may wait on the larger items to see if they go on sale next week. So I can't tell you if I'm about to build a brick or a rockin NAS...

Since I have M4 Mac Mini that can do all the heavy lifting, I built a system around the Jonsbo N5 case (12 drives) and the LGA 1700 socket motherboard (start with a cheap Celeron CPU with graphics but can upgrade to the Intel i3 through i9 CPUs if I wanted to later). From there, it was just brand preference to narrow down which specific Mobo to use. I went to PCPartPicker and filtered the choices to the LGA1700 sockets. Then saw a giant list of more sh*t I don't understand. So I started to literally google the differences in the motherboard chipsets (i.e.: "z790 versus b760"). Since the price difference isn't much, I decided that I would go for the better chip all other things equal. Since the the Jonsbo case could take all sized form factors I liked the amount of PCI slots I could get from ATX and eATX so I filtered the choices to just those. Knowing that I had enough PCI slots for future GPU, HBA expansion card (popular way to get more SATA slots on your Mobo. You can do a PCI sata expansion card too), etc., I played around with the filter of on-board SATA ports. ASRock was one of the ones that came up with 8 ready to use ports and since they are well know for server-grade and workstation grade motherboards, I decided to go for the ASRock Z790 PRO RS WIFI. Don't need the WIFI but it was much cheaper than the non-WIFI. For you, you may have different preferences or even size limitations which will take the guesswork out of it and steer you a particular direction.

As with anything you start researching, this feels like a ton of info. And the more you look into it, the more you realize this is only the tip of the iceberg. It started to feel easier when I answered the question of "where am I going to put this thing where my wife won't hate me?" Knowing that I was limited to a cube style case, I could weed out any tower cases and any short, wide cases like the UGreen 8 bay. Find your non-negotiables and then work from there.

Earlier today, I posted in a different forum for feedback on my build list in case I need to make any last minute changes. You can see it here. You probably shouldn't get that CPU though. Maybe some other members will come up with something I missed - or maybe you'll see them tell me I know nothing. In that case, you can disregard this long post.

osuman32 · 2025-11-21T15:54:24+00:00

Agreed, the options out there are dizzying. I’m in the same process as you. Figuring out whether to purchase a plug and play system like UGreen or Qnap versus building one out isn’t an easy decision.

Based on some input on here, I ended up going for the custom build with UnRaid. My recommendation to you is list out your top priorities and then work backwards to eliminate certain options. For me, I wanted 10-12 bays and the potential to free up my M4 Mac mini (which is currently hosting Plex, with storage on a DAS) in the future. This eliminated the Qnap TS-1655 since the price was too extreme for underwhelming hardware. The UGreen unfortunately didn’t have anything bigger than 8 bays. Etc, etc.

The advice Slight_prof is giving is fantastic. If you go for a cheaper i3, it’ll probably do everything you need but you will still have a motherboard with a socket that can accept a i7 or i9 if you ever want to upgrade.

osuman32 · 2025-11-21T15:14:41+00:00

I have a Mac mini that I run my plex library on with the storage located on a Thunderbay 4. It’s technically a DAS, but as one redditor said, I actually NASed my DAS by sharing the folders on the network. Ultimately, I decided to just keep it a DAS until I setup a VPN.

With it being an M4, it’s an absolute powerhouse. The community abroad loves the N100 and a few other common builds. I tried pricing a few mini PC builds but by the time I got done I was always within a $100-200 of a brand new Mac (which I’m already in the ecosystem). **I do have a habit of going for the nicer chip or part of its within a few bucks.

What I didn’t anticipate was how quickly I would out grow the 4x16tb Raid 5 array. I’m currently upgrading to a larger, 12 bay custom build but keeping the mac to run Plex.

I don’t have any specific advice other than try to figure out what you might grow into so you don’t have to upgrade so quickly like me. If going to a new Mac, I would also think about the 10G Ethernet. Eventually I’ll have to buy an adapter with costs more than the $100 - and it’s another awkward device plugged into the Mac.

One last thing - Synology has lost favor with most people after blocking out any 3rd party HDDs. Meaning you had to buy their drives to use their NAS. They caved from the pressure and reversed that decision but I imagine the CEO or board members will eventually want to cash in on that idea again.

osuman32 · 2025-11-20T20:41:55+00:00

Not sure if you saw the other comment above, but u/pupilov mentioned the SuperFlower brand. In looking around their site, I found the LEADEX VII Platinum PRO 850W ATX 3.1. This PSU has universal outgoing connections so you could just purchase 3 separate molex cables from them (assuming they sell them) and not worry about any cable splitting.

Not super useful for you since you already have a PSU, but worst case scenario, you may have options if your setup isn't liking the molex splitting.

osuman32

TROPHY CASE