Best Mac Mini for Plex Server. What's up guys, I'm thinking about getting a mac mini so I can put some downloadscrappers on it (couchpatato, sickrage etc) and use it as a plex server. What model would be best? Would the entry-level mac mini be goog enough? It has a 1,4-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor and 4 GB of ram. I run Plex off of a 2014 Mini (i5/8GB/1TB SSD + 2x 2TB externals) and treat it like a headless server or virtual machine (e.g. No dedicated display). More than enough power for transcoding and multiple streams. Dollar-for-dollar, a better value for my use case. My M1 Mini (16GB/256GB) is my daily workhorse.
With the arrival of the fourth-generation Apple TV, I found myself trying out the Plex media server, and I realized that using Plex is one of the best ways to watch media on the Apple TV.
Best Mac Mini For Plex Servers
You can install the Plex server software on a variety of devices: your Mac, a PC, a NAS (network attached storage device), and more. (Heck, you could even set it up on a Raspberry Pi.)
It’s advantageous that Plex’s server be always on, so you can start watching your movies and TV shows without having to boot your Mac. If you have a large media collection, you may want to use a Mac as a dedicated device to run Plex. The Mac mini is a perfect candidate for this. Plex doesn’t need a lot of horsepower to manage and stream your media, unless it transcodes video. (If you do have a lot of videos that need transcoding, a NAS might not be a good fit for Plex.)
In this article, I’m going to tell you how you can set up a Mac mini as a dedicated Plex server. You can, of course, use that Mac mini for other things, such as using it as a file server, or for Time Machine backups.
Read the rest of the article on Macworld.
Best Mac Mini For Plex Server
I'm gonna be honest upfront, I'm looking to save myself a couple hours of Google boredom.
I recently got a Roku stick for my TV, I feed it via a Plex server on my laptop. The actual media is stored on a NAS that is always on, I'm getting tired of having my laptop open while I listen to music or watch a movie.
So, what is the cheapest single board computer (SBC) that will run my plex and just hum along with little maintenance from me? Hopefully the system will be nothing but an SBC and a power supply. Requirements?
1) Cheap
2) Quiet
3) Wireless
I'm assuming it will run Linux, which I'm very comfortable with. But I'm not ruling out other OS's.
Thanks!