I'm wondering if it is time to upgrade my hardware and what the benefit would be.

 

I use my unraid for media only. It stores did and blu Ray rips and now my digital downloads. It also runs plex from the server and feeds media to my cell phone, laptop, Xbox, and Apple TV (not local). It only streams to 1-2 devices at a time. Not all 4.

 

It seems to work fine for DVDs. Blu rays are picky. Sometimes they work great on the Xbox, never streaming through AirPlay to the Apple TV unless I knock the quality down extremely low.  Plex runs slow when making edits to the server through TOWER but I rarely have to mess with it so it's not a big deal.

 

Here is my current hardware. 

 

Super micro mdb-x7spa-h-o mono with integrated Intel Atom d510 processor

 

2gb DDR2 sdram

 

Six western Digital green drives @ 2TB

 

Is there a benefit to more powerful hardware with my current usage? 

Since no one else has jumped with a response, I will give you what I have gleaned from reading several threads from users who basically have asked the same question.  The Plex plugin (or any of its docker equivalents) can be a big CPU resource hog.  Especially when you are transcoding video/audio.  And, of course, going from Bluray to a lower resolution requires a LOT of CPU power. 

 

You did not say which version of unRAID you are running but version 6 does require a bit more memory then earlier versions.  But 4GB is probably enough unless you want to get into VM.  Understand that version 6 will utilize all the memory that you can install.  So make sure that you either install enough at the start of your built or that any new MB has at least two free memory slots. 

 

You should probably be looking at a CPU that has at least a benchmark of 2000 per Plex stream you expect to run.  See this site to find the CPU benchmarks:

 

    https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

 

Drive speed is never the constraining factor for playback, so any modern SATA hard drive (in good condition) will be satisfactory. 

 

Hope this helps...

I agree with Frank1940.  You can run a basic NAS with an Atom but Plex requires more CPU and therefore you'd benefit from an upgrade.

 

In theory you could upgrade to a Celeron or Pentium and they'd work better, but since you mention Blu Rays I'm going to assume (to be conservative) that you have full bit rate native BD rips.  They can be really challenging to transcode and I'd recommend a minimum of a Core i3 4170 and 4 GB of RAM for that situation.  If you can put in a better Core i3 or move up to an i5, great - you're buying more headroom.  If you can move up to 8GB, also great.

 

If you pre-encode your BDs down to something less than the original bit rate then you can make due with a lower end processor.  Honestly, though - if you like Plex and you want flexibility in media players and the formats you store your media in, don't skimp on the CPU.  It's the one thing Plex has to have to give you that flexibility.