Oh... Ish, maybe you could recommend a solid NAS that holds 2 or 3 drives and doesn't use a ton of power and can run stuff like Plex Media Server by itself? I have a server that I was running 24/7 but I don't pay for power right now. When I get to Europe that might be a little pricey to run 24/7 although I am going to be dropping it down to just a basic old AM3+ microATX mobo, a few fans, onboard graphics and an old Callisto Phenom II (95w chip). I could even put in an old Athlon II 24B chip for even less power consumption I suppose. Would something like that run as cheap/cheaper than a NAS you think?
For a home setting or small business, I would recommend using an old PC that has decent onboard raid and installing FreeNAS on it.
FreeNAS Storage Operating System | Open Source - FreeNAS - Open Source Storage Operating System
I've been using this for personal use since like ... 2008 or so. Never had any issues, it's always worked great. I've even built lower end systems with decent onboard raid, nice HDD's and good PSU's and installed them in several businesses.
There is a little bit of setup to them but nothing crazy, you shouldn't have any issues if you go that route. Just make sure you can find raid drivers for whatever version of FreeBSD that FreeNAS is running.
You could also use OpenMediaVault. It's similar to FreeNAS but has plugins for things like bit-torrent and PLEX if you want everything together on a single system without VM's. I've not used it but have heard good things.
Another alternative and one that I have thought about, if I ever go the PLEX route is getting some decent hardware and going with VM's. I've had a parts list for over a year about doing something like this. Basically, a mid-range build (likely ryzen 1600 with 32GB ram) and install VMware ESXi as the hypervisor then install FreeNAS, then something like Ubuntu and maybe something else. Only thing stopping me is no real need.
If you are looking for a plug and play type setup, I've always tried to use Drobo if it's in the budget. They make good stuff and it just works.
Synology is generally pretty decent. I've never used their lower end stuff but the enterprise stuff is good for the money.
I've also installed some Buffalo LinkStations but out of the probably 20 I have setup, they have all lost drives within the first 2 years. Not sure what it is about these but they eat drives. Doesn't seem to matter if they are Seagate, Western Digital/HGST, IBM or Toshiba. I've lost drives with all of them.
As for the hardware, I would think a Callisto Phenom would be able to do what you are asking. I'm not sure how many streams you are running through PLEX with that CPU but 1 or 2 should be possible, especially if you can unlock a core or 2 on it. Assuming you aren't just using it as a NAS.
The biggest drawback on that old of hardware besides power draw is the going to be your disk speed, ram for caching and possibly network speed. On my NAS, I went from using an old first gen I7 920 with sata 2 to a Pentium G4560 and noticed much better performance over the network. Transfer speeds are now maxing out my local gigabit network at 111 - 118 MB/s and are best of all, consistent. On the old setup, I would get around 88 MB/s but get some heavy fluctuations. Also, according to my Kill A Watt, power draw dropped from around 250 watts under load on the I7 920+ 7750 GPU to around 85 watts on the G4560. Storage drives haven't changed between the two systems.
Check this out for power draw -
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Phenom_II_X6_1055T/11.html
Looks like the 6 core Phenoms use the same or less power at idle than the 2 core Callisto 550BE and the 6 core only draws 40 more watts under load. You still have that OG 6 core Phenom?