DS1513+ Upgrade?

[Enquiries]

I've got a DS1513+ I bought in early 2015, and have been riding the cusp of max capacity for nearly a year. (RAID 5 configuration with 5 x 4 TB WD Red drives, so ~ 16 TB). I've scrubbed through my data on several occasions removing media where I can, but I'm at the point where I can't continue backing up my family's media and keep the movies and home videos that have consumed much of my NAS's storage.

I should also mention I have a Netgear R9000 (with 10 Gbe) that I've been wanting to take advantage of since 2018.

Considering the DS1621xs or the QNAP TVS-x72xt (6 or 8 bay) for my next major upgrade and will donate my 1315+ to my in-laws with family archive redundancies for them to watch at their own home.

The whole family are heavy PLEX users.

What's your recommendation? And what options (adding more memory or SSDs to the new systems) should I really consider before moving forward with this much needed upgrade? I do have several 4K UHD movies we enjoy watching and the current Synology system can barely (if ever) keep up.

Thank you kindly in advance.

[ed]

If your 1513+ can stream some 4K but sometimes it can not keep then more likely it is a network issue. Original files should stream just fine. WiFi6 or wired connection would be required or such heavy video files.Qnap 72XT is a very popular choice among Plex users because it comes with an intel core I CPU and embedded graphics chip. It can handle the majority of the video files.DS1621+ has no graphics, but its CPU is so powerful that it can transcode videos on the fly. During those times other apps might suffer due to a lack of remaining resources though.Having more RAM and cache would help if you had virtual machines, web servers, or many users accessing the data. In a home environment, this is not something that will give a considerable boost. Having a couple of SSDs in 3.5inch bays where Plex is installed would do a better boost.I hope this helps.