Okay, so I’ve been messing around with my Synology 923+ lately, trying to figure out just how much this thing can handle when it comes to transcoding 1080p videos. You know, like when you’re streaming movies or TV shows and the format isn’t quite right for your device, so the NAS has to convert it on the fly? That’s transcoding.
First off, I noticed some folks online saying the 923+ isn’t great at transcoding because it’s got a Ryzen CPU, not an Intel one with that fancy Quick Sync thing. Apparently, that makes a difference. Some people even said it can’t transcode at all! But then I saw other posts saying it can, just slower than some other models, like the 423+.
So, I started digging. I found out the 923+ can handle 1080p, but 4k is another story, it’s not really made for that. It’s gonna lag and stutter if you try to push it too hard with multiple 4k streams, according to my findings. And yeah, it doesn’t have hardware decoding, only software. So, it’s all on the CPU to do the heavy lifting, which is probably why it’s a bit slower than it could be.
My test setup
Now, I wanted to see this for myself. I loaded up a bunch of 1080p videos, mostly MKV and MP4 files, since those are what I usually deal with. By the way, if you’re curious, this thing also handles MOV and AVI, among others. I know all those videos can be played on my 923+.
- I grabbed a couple of devices – my phone, my tablet, and my laptop.
- Fired up Plex Media Server on the NAS. Oh, and I made sure hardware acceleration was turned on in Plex, even though it’s not the best on this thing.
- Started streaming to all three devices at once.
At first, everything was smooth. No lag, no buffering, it was all good. But then, as I added more streams and tried some really high-bitrate videos, things started to slow down. The NAS’s CPU usage went way up, and I started seeing some stuttering and buffering on the devices.
I played around with different settings, like limiting the number of simultaneous transcodes in Plex. That helped a bit, but it was clear that this NAS has its limits. I mean, it’s not a dedicated media server, so I didn’t expect miracles.
My conclusion? The Synology 923+ can handle a couple of 1080p transcodes at the same time, no problem. Maybe even three or four if they’re not too demanding. But if you’re planning on doing a lot of heavy transcoding, or if you need 4k, you might want to look elsewhere or consider a dedicated solution, like an Nvidia Shield, for example. That is one of the options to make it transcode better. I heard of it but I did not get to try it since I do not have one of them.
Another thing I wanted to mention – I was also testing transfer speeds, and I was only getting around 400MB/s. I was expecting more like 860MB/s. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but that’s a problem for another day. Maybe I will update if I find out why it is slower than expected.
Anyway, that’s my little experiment with the 923+. It’s a great NAS for storage and other stuff, but transcoding is not its strongest suit. Hope this helps someone out there who’s wondering about the same thing!