Old system... should I update??

[Snake3y3s]

Information is king :D

I see that getting a N54L is not REALLY expensive, but at the moment, my cash is lacking... I am trying to save up for a new GPU
At the moment I honestly don't see much of a point to upgrade. It's running stably and does what i need it to (baring a few problems on the plex side that i still need to figure out), so maybe I should just stick to the version I have

 

[Yorick]

some higher bitrate formats still stutter on playback

Are you transcoding those? Direct streaming should resolve the stutter. You want to avoid on-the-fly transcode as much as possible. If you have PGS or VOBSUB subtitles, you can solve this by either switching to SRT or using handbrake to burn those in ahead of time.

 

[Snake3y3s]

I try not to, but some of the larger formats seem to just not work, or stutter.
I will just have to double check my settings again and see if it is infact trying to transcode/downscale it

 

[Adrian]

Nevertheless, after searching for people with HP ProLiant Microserver (N36L) on the forum, I have found that @Adrian has reported that HP N36L can run FreeNAS -11.2-U6
So I guess that your server should be able to run also FreeNAS 11.3 (and even TrueNAS Core 12).

My N36L is now running TrueNAS-12.0-BETA. It does not do much, just a replication target and a test SMB share.

 

[Snake3y3s]

for some reason, all of a sudden I have lost all performance on my NAS.
I have changed nothing (have not done the updates because for the past 3 months have been busy with student finals) and now the NAS is taking around 20 minutes to boot, and plex does not start immediately (also takes a good 20 minutes to come up once booting has finished) and when I do eventually get into the plex GUI, the posters take forever to load where as before it was almost instant.

There is nothing taking CPU power, the discs are nowhere near full, so I cant understand what could be the cause.

Does anyone have any solutions on what I can check/test to see what is wrong?

Could it be that the USB thumb drive that FreeNAS is installed onto is on its way out?
I had Yorick helping me on another thread a while ago, and he suggested that I get away from the USB thumb drive ASAP and rather use a SSD with a USB to SATA converter. I have been trying to ask him for some more assistance, but he seems to be away so decided to post a new thread for help.

 

[ThreeDee]

definitely pick up a cheap SSD (120gb's can be had for $20'ish) and the USB to SATA adapter ( about $10'ish)

Hardware wise, if you are looking for a cheap upgrade that will do everything you need it to do, and then some .. I bought the motherboard/cpu (in sig) and 32GB RDIMM's for $125(sold the 32GB for $50 and bought 64GB for $70 .. ECC DDR3 RDIMM's are way cheaper than UDIMM's) .. video card was $10 .. you would also need an ATX case that would hold your drives and an at least 80+ Gold rated 500wtt'ish PSU so that could be another $100'ish.. 120GB NVMe SSD was about $20.

With your files on Plex .. how are you formatting your movies? .. all my content is only 1080p and try to keep them around 2GB's a pop. I've noticed that some smart tv's, playstations, and xbox's will have a slight stutter on H.265 codec but are fine with H.264. I'll have up to 8 friends/family streaming stuff at a time off of my server.

 

[Snake3y3s]

I have a Kingston 64gb (SSD NOW Vseries) and a external seagate drive that I pulled open (that was dead) that has a SATA to USB converter in it that im going to use.
I REALLY dont have the cash to upgrade my NAS system... I am struggling as it is to save up for a new GPU which I need more at the moment as my current one (AMD R9 390) is starting to black screen at random times.

At most though, when i do have the cash, I would like to keep the microserver formfactor and just upgrade the board and chip thats inside of it.

For plex, I am only streaming to the PS4, nowhere or no one else streams from the server. the main use of the server is for storage though.
Most of my files are also around that... tried sticking to around 1080p aswell (honestly dont need much more than that... im not running a cinema or even a high end TV) although I also did notice buffering issues when running certain codecs or anything larger than 1080

I am going to attempt a fresh install (with HDDs unplugged) and see what happens, then plug the HDDs back in and try re-import my configs

 

[ThreeDee]

1080p/2GB/H.264 = smooth play on everything. I use Vidcoder to encode stuff (basically just a front end for handbrake) super easy to use.

With your video card, you might want to try pulling heatsink off and reapplying cleaning off GPU and reapplying thermal paste .. clean it up if its full of dust and if you are only running one power lead to it to power it, try using 2 separate leads to each plug in .. might cure your black screens. Your problem could be not supplying stable power to your video card and not really the card itself.

 

[Snake3y3s]

I have stress tested the hell out of my GPU... it ONLY black screens when i'm doing just about nothing. so watching youtube or even just typing a document.
I have narrowed down the issue to being AMD Wattman trying to undervolt the VRAM which for some reason causes the blackscreen.
as a work around... i have been running Tabletop simulator in the background to basically keep my machine stable. have not found any other solutions.
I am going to attempt to DDU the drivers and install drivers ONLY (not install the stupid AMD control panel that runs Wattman) and see if that sorts things out. BUT getting the NAS stable and up at the moment is of a higher priority

 

[ThreeDee]

..that's where the stable power comes into play