I’m looking to create a Plex/media server so my family and I can stream our Blu-rays. It would also serve as a cloud of sorts. This is my first time making a server. A thorough search on the i3 has been made, but I remain unsure if an 8 yo processor will meet my needs.
At most, we would be streaming on one or two devices. Aside from that, the storage would just be a nifty way to keep my photos off of iCloud. I plan on making it redundant, but I need to get my hands on another 8TB drive.
My current build is a small quad-core Xeon from the Haswell era and does just fine. I added a Quadro P400 for PLEX transcoding. If the rig also did storage, it would also be fine. You’d be good if you wanted to add a Quadro card to yours.
What is the power draw like on the P400?
Somewhere around 35 watts maximum. It can handle multiple 1080p streams, but only one 4K stream, and the limitation is due to the 2GB of RAM on the card.
I have a very low-use server, so the card is perfect for my needs.
If you ever get a system that supports hardware transcoding, consider jellyfin instead of plex, transcoding has no $cost there
I’d rather get an N100 minipc in this case. Similar performance but able to do media transcode a lot better
I was using a old Atom Netbook with 2GB RAM as a Plex server. No transcoding, but it certainly did the job! The only limitation was it was all from an external USB2 drive, but even then it was still decent depending on the file. No 4k files, but it worked with 1080p.