QNAP TS-431K-US 4-Bay Personal Cloud NAS EXPIRED

QNAP TS-431K 4-bay personal cloud NAS

https://www.newegg.com/qnap-ts-43...6822099101

$222.40 after 20% off promotional code 28UPTNP334
Free shipping

Anyone have this unit? Wondering how it does with Plex

Quote from GeoffG : Anyone have this unit? Wondering how it does with Plex

4 bays is too limiting for plex.

I believe this one is limited to 1GB of RAM and you can't upgrade the RAM with this model
With the xxxx KX, you should be able to upgrade the RAM

Quote from SiennaPlant9626 : 4 bays is too limiting for plex.

4 bays? What? I have 32 TB in mine (24 after RAID) and it's plenty. Some have nearly 50 TB in theirs.

Do you mean RAM?

Quote from SiennaPlant9626 : 4 bays is too limiting for plex.

Me thinks you ate too much lead paint as a kid

Quote from GeoffG : Anyone have this unit? Wondering how it does with Plex

It wont transcode, but it should direct play anything 1080p you got just fine.

I wonder how much longer transcoding will be necessary. My fire tvs play everything direct. And my phones play probably >80% directly with no transcoding needed.

Quote from PeteyTheStriker : It wont transcode, but it should direct play anything 1080p you got just fine.

Just curious.. How do you direct play the content. I've seen that mentioned several times.

Quote from genkam : Just curious.. How do you direct play the content. I've seen that mentioned several times.

I believe typically if the device supports the resolution, codecs, etc. the video file will not need to be transcoded. You can get a $20ish FTV stick and it will direct play just about anything except maybe super high bit rate 4k files.

I got this back around Christmas and have been generally very happy with it. It does has its limitations and if you are the nerdy sort that like to tinker and try new things the ability to see the vast array of apps and uses for a NAS that this one just can't quite handle well, may be a frustration. It is underpowered compared to the higher end units. Performance will start to take a hit if you start trying to use the multimedia apps. Most run and work but you can tell it is definitely stressing the unit when you start indexing and such, especially if you have massive amounts of music, photos or videos.

On the opposite side of that if you are just looking for backup, media storage and sharing across your network you will be impressed at some of the other things you can do with it. There are many apps available that do quite amazing things. I did get mine set up to download phone pictures to be ready for the time when Google limits storage. NZBGet and Sonarr run fine on it. Well maybe I shouldn't say that as I'm still running that stuff on my other NAS as of now but they are installed and running fine. It is much snappier with file transfers than my old WHS2011 and older NAS boxes. I paid close to $100 for those old boxes back in the day and in comparison to that price the Qnap is real value. Much more user friendly and usable piece of hardware. For his price point just a box that can hold four drives is a value. With the ability to do raid and backup storage pools and such it is definitely a great box that gives you lots of options and utility.

Quote from SiennaPlant9626 : 4 bays is too limiting for plex.

4 bays isn't what's limiting Plex. Pretty sure it's the weak processor and 1GB RAM that is limiting it.

Quote from genkam : Just curious.. How do you direct play the content. I've seen that mentioned several times.

Quote from clocks11 : I believe typically if the device supports the resolution, codecs, etc. the video file will not need to be transcoded. You can get a $20ish FTV stick and it will direct play just about anything except maybe super high bit rate 4k files.

You are correct, you need a player which a lot of them can support all the standard formats. Two you need to be on the same network. Primarily most people only transcode if they are trying to view something on their mobile device outside the home network, thats where just about 90% of all people who transcode do it. The other 10% is if they manually change the resolution of the original file to something else. So for a lot of people you dont really need to transcode if you do all your viewing from within the home using plex.