I’ve been running a full tower Windows server with a dozen drives for a decade and decided to downsize. This ministack does everything I need at a fraction of the power, noise, and heat.

I use it primarily for Plex but also host a few games servers for buddies. It fits perfectly in my entertainment center.

Spent around $200 on the Mac Mini plus $600 on the drives and enclosures. I’m using SoftRAID for RAID1.

  • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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    2110 months ago

    Most Macs are overpriced, but the $599 M2 Mac Mini is an absolute STEAL compared to the rest of their lineup. And its existence drives the price of used Mac Minis down, which is also great.

    • @Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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      1810 months ago

      It’s a pity that also the RAM and SSD are a steal.

      250€ to add 8gb RAM and another 250€ to add 250gb SSD. Prices that even ten years ago didn’t make sense…

      I wish they sold the M2 motherboard with standard DDR 5 and m.2 slots. I’d pay 1000€ for that and i wouldn’t even want the fancy aluminum case

      • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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        610 months ago

        It’s only limiting if you’re doing things that need more RAM and faster drive speeds (most people are not). Of course, if you need more, don’t buy this thing? I didn’t say it was great for EVERYBODY.

  • Possibly linux
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    810 months ago

    You run Windows server for Plex? Couldn’t you just use a basic Debian install or Truenas?

    • @KitOP
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      110 months ago

      I’m running Mac OSX.

  • Skunk
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    10 months ago

    What are the drives enclosures ?

    I have an M2 Mac mini not really used and that would be a great idea to do something like you, instead of the huge supermicro server.

    Thanks !

    Edit: OWC mini stack

    • @KitOP
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      210 months ago

      Yep you got it, the Ministack enclosure. The brown wood base I got on Amazon - it’s a no name brand, just search for Mac Mini wood stand.

    • @KitOP
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      810 months ago

      I haven’t tried. The vast majority of my streaming is in the same network and direct play at 1080p. The rest is remote when I’m at work at 480p because I have to use data instead of WiFi.

      I’ve heard that the M1 Mac Minis can transcode at 4k but I didn’t want to shell out the cash for it.

      • @tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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        510 months ago

        They can, but only one stream, and it’s spotty. I’ve got a Synology, and I tried to see if I could run another Plex instance on an M1. It wasn’t as amazing as I had hoped.

        • @KitOP
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          210 months ago

          That’s disappointing. I wonder if the M2 is more capable. Granted at that price point there’s little reason to go Mac instead of Linux or even Windows.

          • @tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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            310 months ago

            Oh also, I just found out that Plex doesn’t take advantage of the GPU on the M series as of now, so either wait, or go Intel.

          • @tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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            210 months ago

            It doesn’t seem that much faster. As much as I love apple, I think you’d get more bang for your buck using a PC with specific hardware geared towards this.

            • @KitOP
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              110 months ago

              Admittedly I was mostly drawn to the clean form factor of the mini stack. It’s just so pretty.

              It was a happy bonus that Plex was originally designed for Mac and works flawlessly on Mac hardware.

    • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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      710 months ago

      Don’t transcode on Plex if you can avoid it. It’s very compute-intensive and it makes your streams look like shit. Convert your videos to nice formats that most people can direct play (like x264 or x265) and turn transcoding off. It’ll keep your hardware running longer, keep your electric bill down, and your streams will look better. Win-win-win-win.

      • Doubletwist
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        210 months ago

        That’s assuming you can afford the storage to store multiple copies of your media.

        • @PeachMan@lemmy.one
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          10 months ago

          You can convert most movies to 1080p x265 and it takes up a little over a gigabyte of space. If you’re already hosting 4K movies, why do you give a shit about another gigabyte? If you’re NOT hosting 4K movies, then you have ZERO reason to transcode, just make everything 1080p and call it a day.

          Also, transcoding DOES cost you money, your electric bill goes up, even if you don’t track it or care. So spend the extra fifty bucks on a few extra terabytes now rather than spending it over the course of several months transcoding. And if you cut out transcoding, you can run Plex on VERY cheap hardware, so that saves you money too.

          Transcoding. Is. Dumb.

      • @tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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        210 months ago

        Yeah that’s what I do now but I’m running out of space and would really just like to have those original 4k rips. Those converted files add up fast with 200TB