Can I speed up Plex performance with SSD cache?

[Martin]

Many thanks for all your great video's on NAS selection, it was a great input for my current selection in replacing my DS710+ as it is getting really slow on resources now that I found PLEX as my new multimedia center.
Based on your video's, your enthusiasm and as I'm very happy with the current Synology, I want to buy myself the DS918+.

The question I have is on the two optional M.2 NVMe 2280 SSDs that you can add to this NAS. Do you recommend this from the start and if so, what would be the best size (and brand?) for these SSD's?

Many thanks & keep up the great work to help folks like myself choose the best NAS device for their situation.

[ed]

SSD cache do speed up things a little. But the most improvement can be seen only while copying files forward and backwards. Because all data will be first loaded on a SSD rather then slower HDD. But if you really want to speed up Plex, you should use one bay for 2.5 inch SSD like Samsung Evo960/970. Then you can install NAS operating system DSM on this first SSD. Then rest of the bays can have a RAID5 across the HDDS.If you do want compatible nvme cache then Samsung Evo 960 and evo 970 seem to be the most reliable choice.Here is a full list of compatibility:https://nascompares.com/ssd-for-synology-cache-sata-nvme-ds918-ds1019-and-more/https://nascompares.com/ds918-and-ds1018-compatible-m-2-nvme-ssd/I hope this helps.