The Plex NAS build: Quick Sync, done right

Why Quick Sync is the whole decision

Board with CPU

Mini-ITX, soldered Intel N100 (Quick Sync)

The transcoder: Quick Sync handles 4K HEVC. Six SATA ports for the media drives.

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Memory

16 GB SO-DIMM

Plenty for Plex plus a few *arr containers. The N100 caps at 16 GB.

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Boot + metadata SSD

256–512 GB NVMe SSD

OS and Plex metadata/thumbnails, which are read and written constantly.

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Case

4-bay mini-ITX NAS case

Room for large media drives, quiet 120 mm intake.

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Power supply

be quiet! Pure Power 12 650W Gaming PSU, 80 Plus Gold, ATX 3.1, 12V-Rail

Efficient at the ~40 W a Plex NAS draws.

from CA$118

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Media drives

Large CMR NAS drives (12–20 TB)

Media is read once as a stream: favour fewer, larger drives for capacity and low power.

Open the drive-count calculator

Known subtotal: CA$118 · prices verified for 1 of 6 required parts; not priced: Board with CPU, Memory, Boot + metadata SSD, Case, Media drives

Plex's hard job is transcoding: converting a 4K HEVC file on the fly to something a phone or older TV can play. Software transcoding on the CPU chews through cores; Intel Quick Sync, the iGPU transcoder in N-series, Pentium and Core-i chips, does it in dedicated silicon, handling multiple 4K streams while sipping power. That is why the CPU choice, not the drives, defines a Plex build.

The trap to avoid: ARM NAS boxes and embedded Ryzen Synology models (DS925+, DS923+) have no usable hardware transcoder for Plex, so they fall back to slow software transcoding. For a Plex server, buy Intel with Quick Sync: an N100 is enough for most, a Pentium or Core-i for many simultaneous 4K streams.

The parts, and the drives for media

The parts cards above are the same efficient N100 base as the general N100 build, chosen here for Quick Sync. For the media itself, a large media library is written once and read as a stream, so it is the ideal case for fewer, larger CMR drives (12, 16 or 20 TB) sized with the drive-count calculator. An SSD cache does little for Plex (media is read once), so put the money into capacity, not flash.

One thing worth adding on a media server is a small SSD for Plex's metadata and thumbnails, which are read and written constantly: keeping those off the spinning drives keeps the library snappy.

Running cost, and Plex Pass

An N100 Plex NAS with four drives draws about 40 W: see the power-cost guide for the yearly figure in your province (roughly CA$27 in Quebec to CA$60 in the Maritimes). Note that hardware transcoding on Plex requires a Plex Pass subscription; without it, Quick Sync sits idle and Plex transcodes in software, so budget the Pass into a Plex build.