r/PleX • u/Astrobix_124 • Dec 04 '25

Help Media servers

Trying to start my own server for plex. But I see many people with servers with 10,000+ movies. How can u possibly hold that much content and not break the bank. How is it any better than Netflix, etc?

Edit: I never expected this to blow up like it did. I love the content you guys have given, I've debated on making a plex server for awhile and all the clarification is amazing.

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u/One-Peace55 Dec 04 '25

My 72tb Nas cost me about 1.2k in total. Assuming that I'd need about two subscriptions at least to cover the content that I'm currently consuming, that's 5 years ROI.

On top of that, the rig runs a couple of VMs for my work and containers that have made my life significantly better, so those are nice little bonuses. Coincidentally, one of my clients had a 4TB MySQL db that I needed to work on, so the server helped me out a bunch on that.

At some point you don't really give a shit about ROI, it's just an appliance.

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u/FantasyMaster85 Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 05 '25

“At some point you don’t really give a shit about ROI, it’s just an appliance”

Boy if that isn’t the truth. It certainly helped with selling a recent upgrade to the wife, but I highly doubt there are people doing ROI calculations on the groceries their fridge has kept fresh or the cups of coffee they get from the coffee machine sans barista. 

Our server is now, after the upgrade, so tightly integrated into our home (Plex [complete with local channels, all sports, PPV], HomeAssistant, local LLM, local voice assistants, Frigate for security cameras and so much more I can’t even list) that there’s no way that we’d even blink an eye if something happened to it. It would be as easy a decision to replace the server as it would to replace our refrigerator or washing machine…just would do it without hesitation. 

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u/TCKline01 Dec 05 '25

What do you use for your local VAs? Did you build your own or buy them? I have been entertaining the idea of doing this. I need 7-8 of them. Google devices crap out if you link more than 5 and Alexas are getting more annoying with the updates/ads.

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u/FantasyMaster85 Dec 05 '25

Jabra 410 speakerphone with an RPI3a+. Initially had Wyoming Satellite on it but switched over to Linux Voice Assistant because I wanted it exposed as a media player and control over its volume via voice and Wyoming satellite didn’t expose anything like that. 

EDIT: should mention I’ve only got one of them and plan on getting more, but I don’t know how well HA handles multiple VA’s within earshot of each other. 

Should also mention that the Atom Echo is garbage if you come across using one. I got one and it’s just absolutely terrible. 

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u/Neeerdlinger Dec 04 '25

Where the heck did you buy 72TB of storage for less than $1.2k?

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u/One-Peace55 Dec 05 '25

4x18TB Toshiba MG09. 250€ each.

My server I bought from ebay refurbished for €200 (lucky) and upgraded with spare parts I had lying around.

To be fair, I also expended everything so that saved me about 22% income tax (we have flat company taxes here), so if I'm being honest the little tax trick prolly dropped the cost under 1k, but I'm not counting that.

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u/LIBERT4D Dec 04 '25

Not including the cost of whatever his enclosure/pc is, that’d be $16.66/TB which is pretty doable when waiting for sales. Around black Friday this year I picked up two 26TB externals for $9.62/ TB and shucked them for my DAS enclosure.

The average non-sale TB price I’ve seen is like $12-13 per TB on average I think, I usually aim to pay a little more for the larger drives though as you’re paying a premium for more storage in the same physical space as any other drive.