Morning all, new user, first time posting
Bought a new DS1621+, a really nice setup for someone who had never set up a NAS before, now all our phones and PCs are back up to it no problem.
BUT I want to migrate my Plex server away from my desktop and offload that to the NAS. The DS does have a PCI expansion slot, but Synology only sells add-in cards geared more towards more networking or more storage.
Would adding a low-power graphics card even be a viable option to help the NAS with encoding plex?
Thanks
Short answer: no.
While a graphics card can certainly offload the (re)encoding of the video files, you can’t just put one in a “ready-made” NAS. You’ll run into power and device compatibility issues.
So, if you want to have a NAS with a GPU for Plex, then you’ll have to build it yourself.
There are a few exceptions like the ones from iXsystems
Question
Do you have experience with this particular model? Maybe you know if you can add gpu driver?
Is M.2 in 1621+? Is also free pci-e there too? Maybe some adapter and external gpu?
The only problem is whether can add drivers there
I don’t have experience with this particular model, though I do have experience with Synology.
With the way they work and how DSM (their NAS OS) works, I don’t think that you’ll have success getting this to work.
This is one of those “if you’re asking here, then chances of you getting it working are practically nil” cases.
It might be possible with a lot of fooling around. But at that point you’re probably better off just building your own NAS, instead of using an off the shelf model to get what you want.
About the most you can do now days with consumer grade Synology’s is upgrade the NIC with custom Synology branded ones. Even upgrading the RAM or adding SSD caching is troublesome as they won’t just accept anything. They even went as far as removing support for a ton of USB devices in the last major DSM version revision. That was right around the time they started trying to force people on the higher end models to use the Synology branded HDD’s which cost like 3x as much. I’ve not heard of anyone getting a GPU added into a consumer level Synology device.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that device you have has hardware transcoding either. I’ve got a 1019+ with hardware transcoding, except it doesn’t work for HEVC 4k and HDR, which is pretty much the only thing I’d ever need to transcode on the fly. I love the ease of use you get with Synology but the hardware is very underwhelming.
Exactly! Though to be fair to them; their hardware is generally quite nice. But if you’re specifically looking for something for video transcoding, you might be better off looking at Asustor or QNAP. Some of those even come specifically equipped with an HDMI out for video.
I am currently running the Plex beta on the Sysnology system, and it does work, just not at well as having a dedicated encoder.
You can also manually install the packages for Plex if you want a more up to date version.
The ones in the package manager (even the beta version) are pretty old.
Won’t improve the performance though it might give you some features/fixes.
Just go to the Package Centre and select the “Manual install” in the top right corner.
The correct package for your model can be downloaded from Plex here: Media Server Downloads | Plex Media Server for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and More
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