MP 6,1 Should I use a Loaded 6,1 Mac Pro as a Plex Server?

[rasputin666]

I have a loaded 6,1 [12 core, 128gb ram, 2tb ssd] doing nothing as I moved to an M1 Mac Mini. I am thinking about using it as a NAS/Plex Server instead of buying a NAS.

I'm looking for any feedback on the use case. ease of setup and everyday use is very important to me. i see many youtube videos but still don't have a real-world feel if this is a good idea

 

[HDFan]

If ease of setup is your primary criteria then Infuse might be better. Plex does automate the setup process fairly well. It is much more powerful, with a ton of useful options, which can be confusing for some. A lot depends on what media you will be putting in the server.

If you don't worry about your electric bill if you run it continuously the 6,1 would be fine. It is overkill, you don't need that much horsepower for even 4k transcoding. Don't forget to consider the disks and configuration (JBOD or RAID) that you will use.

 

[DFP1989]

You'd be be better off cashing in on the 6,1 and getting a cheap ex-corp Windows machine as a Plex server.

A loaded 6,1 is still worth good money, whereas a 3-year-old Dell Optiplex SFF with an i7 will only be a few hundred dollars.

My Plex server feels like a bit of overkill (i7 6700K, 16GB RAM, nVidia Quadro K620 that supports hardware encode) but it was cheap, run silent, and has been rock solid. It replaced an older Optiplex running a 3770K (was also rock solid, sold for basically what I paid).

Edit: Also as noted above, you'll get more storage flexibility from a more traditional system. I like the small form factor desktop as I can fit enough storage for my library, while keeping it compact.

 

[ekwipt]

Agreed don’t waste the Mac Pro, you’re better off selling it and getting a synology you can use for backup as wel as a Plex server

 

[Juicy Box]

I use my old Mac Pro 1,1 for my Plex server. I used to use iTunes, and use the Apple TV Computer app, but Plex is so much better in almost every possible way.

It probably uses a lot more energy than it needs to for my needs, but it has lots of dive bays, and I can use it headless.

I control it from my other Macs using screen sharing when I need to, but most times, I don't need to touch my Mac Pro.

I'm looking for any feedback on the use case.

I am unsure of exactly what you are looking for, but setting Plex up isn't that difficult to me.

The basic setup is easy, the key is to use the proper file naming convention. Even if you mess up with the exact format for file naming, Plex is pretty smart and it will probably figure out what the video is.

Naming and organizing your Movie files

The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from...

support.plex.tv

I am a lot better with the file naming than when I first started using Plex, so if you end up trying Plex and don't understand something you can just ask here.

Special features are pretty easy as well once you know how to do it.

More complex and rare situations, such as multiple versions of the same movie, movies that are split up into two files that you want to play seamlessly, etc. often leads to me looking up online how to do it. Even though I have done it before, I sometimes forget.

For TV Shows, do a search of the TV show name with tvDB, and follow the format from the tvDB.

Some TV shows have different play order depending on when it originally aired and the DVD/Bluray version, Firefly comes to mind, for these they of shows, there is a setting in Plex to set it to DVD or Aired play order. This is more rare as well.

One thing that I do not like about Plex is how it handles TV Shows special features. I actually came up with a better method for me using Plex than the built-in way.

 

[rasputin666]

I use my old Mac Pro 1,1 for my Plex server. I used to use iTunes, and use the Apple TV Computer app, but Plex is so much better in almost every possible way.

It probably uses a lot more energy than it needs to for my needs, but it has lots of dive bays, and I can use it headless.

I control it from my other Macs using screen sharing when I need to, but most times, I don't need to touch my Mac Pro.


I am unsure of exactly what you are looking for, but setting Plex up isn't that difficult to me.

The basic setup is easy, the key is to use the proper file naming convention. Even if you mess up with the exact format for file naming, Plex is pretty smart and it will probably figure out what the video is.

Naming and organizing your Movie files

The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from...

support.plex.tv

I am a lot better with the file naming than when I first started using Plex, so if you end up trying Plex and don't understand something you can just ask here.

Special features are pretty easy as well once you know how to do it.

More complex and rare situations, such as multiple versions of the same movie, movies that are split up into two files that you want to play seamlessly, etc. often leads to me looking up online how to do it. Even though I have done it before, I sometimes forget.

For TV Shows, do a search of the TV show name with tvDB, and follow the format from the tvDB.

Some TV shows have different play order depending on when it originally aired and the DVD/Bluray version, Firefly comes to mind, for these they of shows, there is a setting in Plex to set it to DVD or Aired play order. This is more rare as well.

One thing that I do not like about Plex is how it handles TV Shows special features. I actually came up with a better method for me using Plex than the built-in way.

sorry, should have worded that better. I did install plex on my M1 Mini and fooling around with it. Being able to keep a movie in MKV vs the time/effort to use HB to convert to an AppleTV/iPad/iPhone-friendly format is a nice plus. I like Plex as an alternative, now I just have to decide the 6,1 vs NAS.

Seems like the DS920+ is the popular choice

 

[Weisswurstsepp]

I have a loaded 6,1 [12 core, 128gb ram, 2tb ssd] doing nothing as I moved to an M1 Mac Mini. I am thinking about using it as a NAS/Plex Server instead of buying a NAS.

I'm looking for any feedback on the use case. ease of setup and everyday use is very important to me. i see many youtube videos but still don't have a real-world feel if this is a good idea

Sell it! Really, if you don't use your Trashcan then just sell it. 12 cores go for insane money, which you can use to buy something else that is much more suitable as a NAS than a expensive Mac with a power hungry Ivy Bridge E XEON, two obsolete GPUs and no real expandability.

I'd sell it, bag the $1500-$2000 you will probably get for the config you have, and spend a part of it on a HP MicroServer running TrueNAS Core on top, which will do everything you need (and much better so) than the Trashcan or even most pre-built NAS devices.

 

[HDFan]

The basic setup is easy, the key is to use the proper file naming convention.

Naming is crucial to how things are displayed. I'm always making changes, but here's my current schema:



I throw everything that isn't the main movie into featurettes. They show as separate titles on the bottom of the movie display page. There are naming conventions which you can use to make the titles more descriptive but I don't bother.

Plex automatically selects the artwork, and gives you choices if you want to change them. As the artwork does not show the format - DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K I scan the media cover and copy it into the movie folder as poster.png. In most cases Plex will pick it up, if not it is a simple matter to select it. That way if I have 3 versions of a movie (DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K) I can tell which is which on the Movie library page since the blu-ray bar, 4K logo or whatever is shown.

More complex and rare situations, such as multiple versions of the same movie, movies that are split up into two files that you want to play seamlessly, etc. often leads to me looking up online how to do it. Even though I have done it before, I sometimes forget.

there is a setting in Plex to set it to DVD or Aired play order. This is more rare as well.

There is always something new to learn with Plex. Where is the option to show episodes in Play order? Is that the "last date episode added" option?

 

[rasputin666]

Naming is crucial to how things are displayed. I'm always making changes, but here's my current schema:

View attachment 1792346

I throw everything that isn't the main movie into featurettes. They show as separate titles on the bottom of the movie display page. There are naming conventions which you can use to make the titles more descriptive but I don't bother.

Plex automatically selects the artwork, and gives you choices if you want to change them. As the artwork does not show the format - DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K I scan the media cover and copy it into the movie folder as poster.png. In most cases Plex will pick it up, if not it is a simple matter to select it. That way if I have 3 versions of a movie (DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K) I can tell which is which on the Movie library page since the blu-ray bar, 4K logo or whatever is shown.






There is always something new to learn with Plex. Where is the option to show episodes in Play order? Is that the "last date episode added" option?

wow, great info thx. As I play with and learn Plex, I read about naming TV SHows and I had to rename a few shows like this: Billions S01E01 and that's it with the seasons getting their own folder. There was a time I named them like this: S01E01 Pilot and the word Billions wasn't even in the file name. Plex didn't seem to like that so I renamed them and it seems to match everyone perfectly. Looks like I'm selling my Mac Pro!

 

[Juicy Box]

I throw everything that isn't the main movie into featurettes.

My naming scheme has also evolved over the years. For movies, I have been doing this lately:

Everything within a movie in one folder, and each special feature separated by the type of special feature it is.

For TV shows, I really dislike the "Season 00" for special features. I have some shows like that, like Firefly for example, but I hate going back and forth between seasons to watch the episode specific special features. Plus, shows that have a lot of seasons and episodes, and a lot special features per season, the Season 00 would get crazy bloated and messy.

So, I recently started putting special features at the end of the seasons, and giving them an episode number of something higher than what the last episode was.

For example for The X-Files:
Episode introductions start at S0xE10y, with x being the season of the special feature, and the y being the episode the scene introduction is for.
Deleted scenes are similar, they start at S0xE1yy, with x being the season of the special feature, and the yy being the episode the deleted scene is from.
Same for SFX, or the Chris Carter Talks special features that are about specific episodes.

I also have the movies in the TV show episode list to make viewing easier and in order.

This is what it looks like:


I also use MetaZ to add a few tags to all my special features for TV shows. This helps with the names in Plex, so you can see what exactly the special feature is, and not just a crazy episode number, (like episode 101).

So, special features can look like this in Plex:

There is always something new to learn with Plex. Where is the option to show episodes in Play order? Is that the "last date episode added" option?

First, click on the pencil:

Then in "Advanced", click the "Episode Ordering" and make your choice:

I read about naming TV SHows and I had to rename a few shows like this: Billions S01E01 and that's it with the seasons getting their own folder.

You don't have to have the name of the TV show in the file name of a specific episode, but it needs to be in a structure similar to how I have Buffy, with the name and year of the show in the folder the contains the epsiodes:

 

[Juicy Box]

but it needs to be in a structure similar to how I have Buffy

Oh yeah, it doesn't need the episode name either, I just added it for my own reference.

It could be like this:
TV Show
>Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
>>Season 01
>>>S01E01
>>>S01E02
>>Season 02
>>>S0201


You also do not need to separate the episodes in separate season folders. I just do that to make it less crazy if I need to find something.

It could be like this:
TV Show
>Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
>>S01E01
>>S01E02
>>S02E01
>>S09E01

I have some TV shows organized like this.

There isn't just one way to do it, and Plex is flexible with file naming, and good at finding what your content is supposed to be.

Sometimes, even with everything exactly to Plex's recommended file naming, I still have to manually match a movie though.

 

[MVMNT]

Get a Synology, much cheaper to run and frees up a much more capable machine for other applications or to sell.

 

[rasputin666]

update/review: sold my 6,1 and I bought a DS920+ really enjoying it so far. i have 4 iron wolf 8TB drives with 500GB SSD for the cache. I saw a lot of mixed posts about the need for SSD cache but I actually had them already and wasn't using them. getting plex app on my Apple TVs, iPhones and ipads was a breeze. it helped that I was playing with plex for a few weeks while I was contemplating the nas purchase.

I will say the plex app has performed better than audio station. AS is nice on my mac but I like to listen to my music while I ride my motorcycle, and even after downloading the songs with AS, I found playback spotty. songs wouldn't play, even if downloaded, and some would end early. The plex app just works.

everything said about audiobooks is true. plex needs to do a better job with them. I am a huge audiobook fan and own a huge library. Prologue app is great but the filing/name structure is tough.

USB Copy is great for plex library backups and CCC backing up my M1 Mini to a backup folder on the NAS is seamless.

Overall, should have done this a long time ago 😎

 

[MVMNT]

You've chosen well! I bought a DS920+ late last year with a pair of 12TB WD Whites I shucked from external drives. Still getting to grips with everything it can do.

Have you checked out Docker?

I would be wary of keeping it connected open online, which I know sounds counter intuitive, being the safest option in lieu of the recent QNAP and WD attacks.

DSM 7 looks like it's right around the corner too. Looking forward to the updates that brings.

 

[MacClueless]

Sell it! Really, if you don't use your Trashcan then just sell it. 12 cores go for insane money

Found this old thread because I’m thinking about doing the same thing, by the way, they’re cheap, I got a 12 core 64Gb D700 for 180 bucks yesterday. It was 10K new.

Edit: Doesn’t seem like the 6,1 would be a great Plex box, the processor is so old it’s not supported by any of the transcoding tools, so you’d probably get better performance out of a five year old low end Celeron.

 

[MacClueless]

Sell it! Really, if you don't use your Trashcan then just sell it. 12 cores go for insane money, which you can use to buy something else that is much more suitable as a NAS than a expensive Mac with a power hungry Ivy Bridge E XEON, two obsolete GPUs and no real expandability.

I'd sell it, bag the $1500-$2000 you will probably get for the config you have, and spend a part of it on a HP MicroServer running TrueNAS Core on top, which will do everything you need (and much better so) than the Trashcan or even most pre-built NAS devices.

I realize this is a couple years old, but I picked up a 12/4 for 180 and I’ve seen people get better deals. Hard to believe it was “insane money” a few short years ago lol.

 

[haralds]

I have had a Synology NAS for about 6 years now and never looked back.

A note on older Intel-based servers: they suck a lot of power!

 

[vanc]

I have had a Synology NAS for about 6 years now and never looked back.

A note on older Intel-based servers: they suck a lot of power!

That's true. It consumes at least 80watts just idling.