2-4 Bay NAS with multiple 4k streams

[Enquiries]

Hello,

I am a bit confused and I was hoping you might be able to steer me in the right direction.

I am looking to buy a NAS for storage and Plex.
I am familiar with Synology, but I don't have a preference for the manufacturer.

I would like to get into 4K streaming. It is possible I could have up to 3x 4K streams at once.

I should clarify only 1 of those would be 4K in my home.
The other two streams might come remotely.
I believe I can set that so they only can remotely stream @ 1080p?

So this may not be an issue and only 1x 4K stream might be required.

I only need the NAS to be 2-4 bays.
My orginal plan was to go with 2x 16TB drives in Raid 1.
I will do a 1GB nvme drive if the NAS has the capability to do this for caching.

1GB to 2.5GB networking is all that is needed.

The main reason I am confused about all of this is because I have read a few articles I think one from Plex saying they recommend an i7 for 4k Transcoding.

Thank you for your help!

[ed]

Based on your requirements, a 2-4 bay NAS should be sufficient for your needs. Here are some recommendations:

Synology DiskStation DS423+: This NAS supports up to 4 bays and has a quad-core Intel Celeron processor, which should be powerful enough to handle up to 3x 4K streams. It also has 4GB of RAM, which can be upgraded to 8GB, and supports NVMe SSD caching. Additionally, it has 1GbE networking and can be expanded with a 10GbE add-in card if needed with ds923+ option.

QNAP TS-464: This NAS also supports up to 4 bays and has a quad-core Intel Celeron processor, similar to the DS423+. It comes with 2GB of RAM, which can be upgraded to 8GB, and supports NVMe SSD caching. It also has 1GbE networking, and can be expanded with a 10GbE add-in card if needed.

As for transcoding, while an i7 processor is recommended by Plex for 4K transcoding, it's not always necessary if you are not transcoding multiple streams simultaneously. If you plan to direct play or direct stream most of your media, then a lower-end processor such as the Celeron should suffice for your needs. However, if you plan on transcoding multiple 4K streams at the same time, then you may want to consider a more powerful processor.

Finally, to address your question about remote streaming, you can set the maximum streaming quality for remote users in the Plex settings. This can help reduce the bandwidth requirements for remote streaming, which can be particularly important for 4K content.