I just checked out your Library again. You have surpassed me. I am Jealous. 
/me Starts picking through Mason’s Library to find stuff I am missing.
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Haha yeah, I picked through your library the past couple months to add a bunch of stuff that I didn’t have yet.
If you want me to dump the list of stuff and send it to you, let me know. Might be easier than doing it through the Plex GUI.
aaaaaaaaah be careful… 
Do tell 
(via PM if you prefer)
If you can easily get a list it will make my life alot easier. 
I think they are past their Card Board Box server days. Its been like a Decade since that happened.
I mean just put “fdc servers” into Google images, I am sure it is not that bad these days like @ChrisM says but eh. Also it’s pure Cogent (to my knowledge) which in some areas is quite bad.
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Ahh yes, the infamous cardboard box server. Never knew that was FDC Servers
Not too worried about pure Cogent. Like I said I already have a box indirectly through them in Chicago and it’s been just peachy (assuming NYC will be comparable, hopefully).
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Coming right up, good sir!
Not to hijack this thread, but you guys seem to have considerable experiences with media servers so I’ll ask this over here: why Plex? Why not, say, Emby?
For me at least, it’s primarily due to having discovered Plex first and because of it’s high availability across platforms. I believe that Plex also utilizes less resources when transcoding media.
Plex Cloud is a large contributing factor too. It wasn’t great at first, but they’ve fixed the majority of the issues and it’s now my primary server (I do still have a minor backup server running for older platforms that Plex Cloud does not support).
From what I’ve heard, Emby and media servers are great, but Plex has been fantastic and I have no interest in moving away from it
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How do you guys deal with 4k? My best screen is just 2K:(
I am trying to upload 4K to google photo and redownload it to reduce CPU load.
I don’t, max resolution that I work with is 1080p - while 4K isn’t “new”, it’s still too Beta for me.
Only use a 4k tv at work for spreadsheets.
Platform support (Plex ships on every TV stick/box, Smart TV, etc) and ease of use for family/friends. If the library was just for me I’d probably look at other options, but I’ve got 30-40 people using it and it does a pretty decent, UX-friendly job of letting folks stream TV/Movies.
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Thanks for doing this topic, I’m working on setting up a personal Plex and having this discussion and the resources being linked are great research materials to review in my fits and starts.
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Welp… 8x 8TB Reds on their way. Saved 20% thanks to Plex Pass Perks (didn’t know this existed before a week ago, just had to wait for the 8TB Reds to come back in stock). Also saved another $150 by getting it shipped to my Mom’s house (tax free woot woot!). Comes with a 3 year warranty + an additional year from the CC.
Now I gotta search around and find a chassis and mobo tonight and tomorrow. Probably opting for the Supermicro 826 since I highly doubt I’ll ever need more than 12 bays. Gonna use my 2670s and 64GB of RAM from my spare server. Even though that amount of RAM is overkill, it’ll be there in case I come up with an additional use case for the box.
Last piece will be finding nice SSDs to RAID1 and use for the OS and Plex Library cache. On the hunt for a good deal. Debating if 512GB disks will be good or if I need to bump it up to 1TB disks.
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2x 512gb SSDs in RAID1 or 4x 240gb SSDs in RAID10. Which would you guys go with if they equate to the same price?
Really depends on the models, if they’re similar in speed - then I’d prefer the latter
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512s = 850 (or 860) Pros? 240s = non-Samsung?
Personally I’d opt for 2x 500 or 512 GB EVO/PROs in RAID 1 and then have bays open for expansion. I doubt OS + cache will require the speed of an SSD RAID 10 - I have 5-6 concurrent streams, light transcoding, and the box is running off a pair of HDDs (SYS box).
New Plex box (colo) will be 4xHDD and an SSD taped inside for OS/cache
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I think I’m gonna opt for Intel 545s 512gb SSDs. Getting smaller drives looks like it’d cost me an additional $50 or so total with the deal I found in addition to taking up extra HD slots.
On another note, my WD drive order got declined. Presumably due to trying to get the order shipped to my mom’s place to avoid tax. Probably looks a little shady getting a large order shipped to an entirely different state than the billing address, so can’t say I’m very surprised. Emailed them back to see what I need to do to verify.
Probably going with this Supermicro -
https://www.theserverstore.com/SuperMicro-6027R-W-X9DRI-LN4F-12x-2U-LFF-Server_p_656.html
Uses the CSE-826 chassis. And comes with the exact mobo I need and has 2x RAID Controllers. Doesn’t come with rails so I’ve reached out to them to see if I can swap the CPUs for the sliding rails since I already have CPUs. Seems like a decent price all said and done. Will be +$60 for shipping.