I've been thinking about building a Plex home media server. I came across this article from testee from a couple years back. http://www.tested.com/tech/500455-building-home-server-using-freenas/
And it seems like a pretty good setup. What I am looking to do is rip dvds and blurays at 1080p and with the 5.1 audio tracks. Trying to figure out the right build when looking for the CPU, ram either normal ddr4 or ECC ram etc.
Of course you can do it with this hardware even though it's not the latest. But what exactly is your question? 
I guess my question is help finding some recommendations for a build using more up to date components so I wouldn't have any issues in say the next 5-6 years. Should I pick Intel or AMD? Desktop or server CPU?
That all depends on how many devices could connect to the Plex Sever at the same time? What type of hard drives or SSD are going to be used How high of a bitrate do you what your streams to run.? There are a a lot of thing to consider the article didn't mentioned.
Hm, server CPU seems a little overkill, it depends on what you want to do though. Since you said Plex I assume you also want to use the transcoding, though depending on your client-devices you can also just serve the plain files.
If you want to use the transcoding you want some cores.
wendell built a NAS a while ago, see here:
It's not the most recent hardware either, but it's pretty low power for what it can do, and DDR3 ECC is relatively cheap. If you want to use FreeNAS with (assuming) ZFS you really want ECC RAM, and also a lot of it depending on your poolsize.
If you do get a board like this, they are pretty good, but make sure you get a recent version since the old stepping tends to die (look up the Atom C2000 series bug). I've had 2 myself and they run without issue... well, apart from the dying part, but I had boards with the old stepping.
So roughly more at least more then 4 cores like six or eight.
I'm thinking NAS Drives as for brand etc no idea yet.
As for bitrate I'm guessing pretty high since it will likely be wired and want a pretty good 1080p stream I do have couple Chomecasts and Steam Link
Ok any hard drive that is use for a NAS will work, just don't expect cheap hard drive to last very long. As for how many cores you will need depends on at what bit rate and how many stream you will want Plex to stream at the same time. I have included a link from the Plex web site that will help you decide how many cores you will need base on your usage. What kind of CPU do I need for my Server?.
One thing worth thinking about is old(er) used server kit. There are some very well priced LGA2011 Xeon processors on ebay. They are pretty powerful and cheap. Although their TDP may be higher than you want. Its worth checking what your power bill is to see if it would be cheaper to save on the build but pay a bit more for power.
Check out the E5-2670 (8-core, up to 3.3GHz boost) But with 115W max TDP
If the Oringinal poster wants to steam more than two streams at the same time he probably will need a Xean.
There's a Plex competitor called Emby that supports Intel quicksync and is opensource, but has fewer apps.
Quicksync might help with transcoding.
There's also Kodi.
As for hardware, if you only want to stream within your home, you don't really need to transcode anything.
If you're transcoding from Blu-ray for mobile devices, then you need CPU power. Ryzen 5 1600 should be able to deal with 2 streams, possibly more.
So it boils down to Ryzen 5 1600 for about 200 + some B350 motherboard for <100 + at least 4GB of ecc ram + a case and power supply (100-200) and then drives as needed. 8TB Seagate Archive drives look interesting in terms of price/capacity. It might help to have an old GPU on hand to be able to setup the motherboard and install the os more easily.
I'm using a few cheap desktop drives for a few years 24/7 now, no issues. Depends on how heavy they are used tho. And I don't really want to kick off that debate again, YMMV anyway.
Kodi can't transcode (yet) though. There's been work done on it in the past but it's stalled for quite some time now (still at Helix or something). Apparently it needs some work done in the video render backend first.
If all clients can handle the original files though this is fine too.
Fractal Node 804
HGST DeskStar NAS 3.5" 4TB 7200 RPM x2
ASRock AB350M Pro4 AM4
EVGA SuperNova 650 Gold
AMD RYZEN 5 1600 6-Core 3.2 GHz
Kingston ValueRAM 16GB (1 x 16G) DDR4 2133 ECCC
Which comes to about $930 for a Ryzen build but a little bit of an expensive build I must say. As for ECC ram was tough to find ecc ram in PCPartPicker for compatibility.
I dont think I wouldn't have more then two streams really
If you're going for that build make sure that the board supports ECC as well. Just the CPU having support isn't going to cut it.
650W might be a bit overkill even with a lot of drives, then again I know it's a pain to find a low-power PSU with a lot of drive connectors... I ended up using a Corsair RM450 (the old yellow original one, not the i or x) and will get some quality Molex->SATA adapters later on.
Then again, if you won't have more then 2 streams active at any given time, I really wouldn't spend a grand on it total. I mean, the starting cost is fine, but imo it has some downsides.
First off, it pulls relatively much power compared to alternatives. You might save a bit on the initial investment, but a NAS is usually running 24/7 and the cost adds up. I don't know your electricity costs of course, but depending where you live you may end up paying more then the initial savings in the first year alone.
Secondly it only has 4 SATA ports, one of which is going to host the OS. The other 3 for data, and that is assuming you don't use the M.2 for SATA, in which case it would be only 2 remaining SATA ports. Now you might only have one or two drives now, but imo a NAS is an investment that is supposed to last for years, you don't really want to swap out your mainboard in a few years just because you need to add a drive.
If I were you I would just get a C2750D4I and call it a day. Actually, that is what I did, but then again I'm not streaming. Also the full review on that board from wendell (timestamped for his streaming test):
The only thing that bothers me on this board is that the SATA Ports are split into SATAII (3 GBit) and SATAIII (6GBit), but if you don't have a lot of I/O (I mean... it's streaming/media storage) that shouldn't be much of an issue.
But again, if you go for that board (or any C2xx0 Atom CPU board), look for the newer revision (though I'm not even sure there is a new one yet) because the old Atom Stepping has that bug where it tends to die.
/edit
Oh by the way. I am using the Node 804 for my build as well, gotta say it's a really nice case, the only thing you need to look out for is that you can't comfortably fit a fan just above the mainboard tray because of the ATX power connector on this particular board at least, the fan kind of bends the cable and plug a bit, but with your chosen mainboard it would work completely fine I guess.
I slapped a total of 4 additional fans in my case. I took the pre-installed fans to the HDD chamber and set them to low-speed with the included fan controller (inaudible), and installed a total of 4 Fractal Venturi Fans into the main chamber which are controlled via the PWM headers, they are pretty much deadsilent at all times except when CPU is at 100% for a longer period, but even then it's more the noise of air moving then the fans.
I do plan on putting FreeNAS on USB so that I can try and keep all the SATA ports for storage. I also looked at this board ASRock Rack E3C226D2I Mini ITX Server Motherboard - 1150
Also, to keep cost down I am fine with using used server parts to also keep the costs down.
Are you looking to keep power down or are you wanting more performance? You can go used Lga 1366 or Lga 2011 and get a lot of performance for relatively little, or you can go used Lga 1155 or Lga 1150 and get less performance at still a relatively low price. I personally use an Intel 1155 Server motherboard with a Xeon E3 1230 and 16GB of ECC UDIMMS, and managed to keep it relatively cheap (although I didn't need much in terms of hard drive space, so I save a LOT of cost there).
What kind of price range are you looking at total?
I would say between Under $1000 with posibblity under $750 better with storage included
~255 Blu rays (Movie) lets say 25gb with stipping it down to the movie no extras
~10 Blu Ray Seasons
~40 DVD's
I'm thinking about at least 12-16TB and upgrading overtime is fine with me
So, here are the issues. I came up with something, but getting 12-16TB of usable is really hard if you want to use new drives, and even with new drives you can only get that much if your comfortable using Desktop oriented hard drives and not NAS oriented hard drives. Its really nice to have the NAS one's since they have some added software trickery to aid in the case of a drive dying, and the array having to rebuild. But desktop drives should be fine.
Here is the parts list for all the new stuff:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/WCsPBP
and here are all the eBay parts:
(two of those ^ )
Now, it looks great, 20TB of storage! But, not all of that is usable. For drives larger than ~2TB, you need to do raid 6 (in FreeNas this is Raid Z2). Raid 6(Z2) means you lose 2 drives of capacity, and this is necessary if you want a good chance of rebuilding the Array in the case that a drive dies (and run this long enough, and you will need to replace drives). You can do 1 drive redundancy, but the chances of a second drive dying during a rebuild mean that your chances of a successful rebuild, suck. So in practice, this is a 10-11TB of usable space array, and your looking at right around ~$1000 depending on taxes and shipping to wherever you are. You could use refurbished drives, but chances of those running continuously for a long time without failing are LOL worthy.
High capacity NAS storage is expensive 
You could cheap out even more on the system part of it, but really most of the cost is in the drives. One more drive gets you to 15-16TB usable, which gives you more growing room, so I'd say that is definitely recommendable. Especially since you can't expand a ZFS raid once you build it, without wiping it.
How is any of this different than sharing a HDD over your network? Using windows of course.
Windows is a $90 key fee, it doesn't do ANY data corruption prevention, and if he wants a dedicated box to trans-code and stream video from, then windows is a terrible choice. FreeNas is purpose built to do what he wants to do, and windows can't offer the same level of ease of use or data integrity that FreeNas can for this specific use.
No if you already paid it.
Sharing files around the home doesn't require $900 of equipment.