NAS

Brahma

Brahma

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Just wanted to give a follow up of my NAS. I went with a Ugreen DXP 2800 NAS and two 8TB Ironwolf HD's. ( I really didn't need much space) I must say, this thing is totally user friendly for those with even an ounce of common sense.

Amazon.com: UGREEN NAS DXP2800 2-Bay Desktop All-Round NASync Ideal for Small Team, Enthusiasts, Intel N100 Quad-core CPU, 8GB DDR5 RAM, 2.5GbE, 2X M.2 NVMe Slots, 4K HDMI, Network Attached Storage (Diskless) : Electronics

Amazon.com: UGREEN NAS DXP2800 2-Bay Desktop All-Round NASync Ideal for Small Team, Enthusiasts, Intel N100 Quad-core CPU, 8GB DDR5 RAM, 2.5GbE, 2X M.2 NVMe Slots, 4K HDMI, Network Attached Storage (Diskless) : Electronics
www.amazon.com

It took me no more than an hour to setup everything, and having my phone backing up nightly.

I do wish I got the the 4 bay now, just in case I wanted to start streaming in the house.

9/10. Do recommend.
 
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Rabbit_Games

Rabbit_Games

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I upgraded to the 4-Bay, love it. I’m giving the 2-Bay to my wife for her business.
 
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Jovec

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I've been upgrading my back-up NAS and stumbled across this Miniforum N5. Amazon has the 16GB RAM + 128GB m.2 SSD model for $639 currently- tempting. The 3 NVME slots are done with x1, x1, and x2 lanes. Hhas a half-height PCIe slot x16 slot wired at x4 for a small dGPu or other device and Occulink for an eGPU. CPU is overkill for a simple NAS, and the RAm apocolypse makes it expensive to go 64GB+ for home lab/server use.
 
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Kithani

Kithani

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So I’m planning to build a miniPC Plex Server this week using a BeeLink miniPC. I’m not super tech savvy (don’t work in IT/Tech) but figure I’m good enough to figure it out as a hobbyist.

Seems Ubuntu is popular? Is there a best way to remote in once I have it set up so I can use it “headless”?

Also, I’ve got quite a few 4k rips with surround sound and the audio is shit through stereo TV. I know the solution is to build a 3.1 or 5.1 setup but is there truly not a good solution for serving those files up to standard stereo TVs in my house? Seems like most people say you have to re-encode the audio or download a totally separate file for the audio to come through good and I find it hard to believe there isn’t some better solution in 2026
 
Jovec

Jovec

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Kithani said:
So I’m planning to build a miniPC Plex Server this week using a BeeLink miniPC. I’m not super tech savvy (don’t work in IT/Tech) but figure I’m good enough to figure it out as a hobbyist.

Seems Ubuntu is popular? Is there a best way to remote in once I have it set up so I can use it “headless”?

Also, I’ve got quite a few 4k rips with surround sound and the audio is shit through stereo TV. I know the solution is to build a 3.1 or 5.1 setup but is there truly not a good solution for serving those files up to standard stereo TVs in my house? Seems like most people say you have to re-encode the audio or download a totally separate file for the audio to come through good and I find it hard to believe there isn’t some better solution in 2026
Click to expand...

If you run something like TrueNAS, the interface (after installation) is a web page you connect to. Otherwise, you can setup SSH and remote into a terminal on the Beelink. Or you can enable the Remote Desktop Protocol and use a RDP client to log into the GUI on the Beelink from another system.
 
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Kithani

Kithani

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Jovec said:
If you run something like TrueNAS, the interface (after installation) is a web page you connect to. Otherwise, you can setup SSH and remote into a terminal on the Beelink. Or you can enable the Remote Desktop Protocol and use a RDP client to log into the GUI on the Beelink from another system.
Click to expand...
Good Burger Reading GIF
 
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Void

Void

Yeah, and?
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Kithani said:
So I’m planning to build a miniPC Plex Server this week using a BeeLink miniPC. I’m not super tech savvy (don’t work in IT/Tech) but figure I’m good enough to figure it out as a hobbyist.

Seems Ubuntu is popular? Is there a best way to remote in once I have it set up so I can use it “headless”?

Also, I’ve got quite a few 4k rips with surround sound and the audio is shit through stereo TV. I know the solution is to build a 3.1 or 5.1 setup but is there truly not a good solution for serving those files up to standard stereo TVs in my house? Seems like most people say you have to re-encode the audio or download a totally separate file for the audio to come through good and I find it hard to believe there isn’t some better solution in 2026
Click to expand...
I'm not a fan of Plex in terms of their interface, but I run a server for my family/friends and they all seem to like what it spits out. It will convert the audio (and video) to whatever the client that is playing it has. I'm assuming that would be better in terms of quality than just playing, for example, an Atmos track through the TV speakers.

You'd have to maybe tweak a few settings if you're running it off of the server itself because it is going to want to run it unconverted, and I have no idea where those settings are because I don't use Plex myself, but it is worth a shot if they are sounding that terrible. If you run the TV as a separate client (many smart TVs have the Plex app available on it), it should do most of it on its own.
 
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Cad

Sheriff Cad

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Void said:
I'm not a fan of Plex in terms of their interface, but I run a server for my family/friends and they all seem to like what it spits out. It will convert the audio (and video) to whatever the client that is playing it has. I'm assuming that would be better in terms of quality than just playing, for example, an Atmos track through the TV speakers.

You'd have to maybe tweak a few settings if you're running it off of the server itself because it is going to want to run it unconverted, and I have no idea where those settings are because I don't use Plex myself, but it is worth a shot if they are sounding that terrible. If you run the TV as a separate client (many smart TVs have the Plex app available on it), it should do most of it on its own.
Click to expand...
There's almost always settings on the TV too for down-converting the audio to stereo, it's hard to believe its not doing it automatically if you're just using tv speakers.
 
Kithani

Kithani

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I guess I should clarify what I mean is

5.1 audio rip

Play it through my TV and you can barely hear the dialogue while action sounds are extremely loud. Seems like the underlying reason is lack of a “center channel” that you can boost up to make the dialogue more audible, and when plex downmixes to stereo it doesn’t do this. From my googling there doesn’t seem to be any simple fix which was surprising since it seems like such a widespread issue
 
Cad

Sheriff Cad

scientia potentia est
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Kithani said:
I guess I should clarify what I mean is

5.1 audio rip

Play it through my TV and you can barely hear the dialogue while action sounds are extremely loud. Seems like the underlying reason is lack of a “center channel” that you can boost up to make the dialogue more audible, and when plex downmixes to stereo it doesn’t do this. From my googling there doesn’t seem to be any simple fix which was surprising since it seems like such a widespread issue
Click to expand...
Ya, I think I understand what you mean. I use plex daily though with 5.1/7.1 rips and it seems to downsample them fine, it's got to be a settings issue somewhere.
 
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