So, the pi is $80. That is without a case, power supply, or hard drive. Once you add these things to the Pi, you are into the $100-200 price range. At that point, you can just get an old desktop or a micro desktop. There are some youtube videos about it. I think they are maybe twice as big as a pi, but have intel processors in them.
They will be cheaper or similar in price and have better performance.
I just use an old desktop that has a 4th gen i5 and it runs significantly better than the pi4 does. Plus, I can just throw all my drives in the case and not need to worry about USB connected drives.
I use a J5040-ITX ATM.
I know it says Pentium but don’t take that for granted. This chip is really just a lower binned i3 throttled enough to be passively cooled.
I run Plex as a docker-compose workload and bind mount /dev/dri which passes Intels quick sync accelerator into the container for Plex to use.
This enabled hw encoding. I also make sure I can direct stream from all of my clients. This setup can handle a few 4k streams and several 1080p streams.
I mainly use it hoard to losseless music and hard to find cartoons / movies.
I have an upgrade to a Pi Cluster planned but I don’t recommend it unless you specifically want to run Pis.
Any Intel CPU 8th gen or newer with quick sync can do like 20 simultaneous 1080p transcodes. You could get a Celeron and have a powerful plex box. Look up guides for the HP 290 as a starting place.
Will it handle all features of Plex? Like streaming high def and using all plexamp features?
Theres much better options for that
But are there cheaper options… who am I kidding. Raspberry Pi 5 will instantly get scalped for 80+ dollars.
Edit: looks like they are already 60-80 dollars
Any suggestions that you could make? I’m in the market for replacing my plex box.
So, the pi is $80. That is without a case, power supply, or hard drive. Once you add these things to the Pi, you are into the $100-200 price range. At that point, you can just get an old desktop or a micro desktop. There are some youtube videos about it. I think they are maybe twice as big as a pi, but have intel processors in them.
They will be cheaper or similar in price and have better performance.
I just use an old desktop that has a 4th gen i5 and it runs significantly better than the pi4 does. Plus, I can just throw all my drives in the case and not need to worry about USB connected drives.
Also, I recommend Jellyfin over Plex.
The problem with that is the power consumption. It adds up.
I guess, it’s not going to be a huge difference when you factor in using a bunch of hard drives.
The raspberry pi has its place for sure, but those micropcs are probably a better deal for most people who want them for home use.
I use a J5040-ITX ATM. I know it says Pentium but don’t take that for granted. This chip is really just a lower binned i3 throttled enough to be passively cooled.
I run Plex as a docker-compose workload and bind mount /dev/dri which passes Intels quick sync accelerator into the container for Plex to use.
This enabled hw encoding. I also make sure I can direct stream from all of my clients. This setup can handle a few 4k streams and several 1080p streams.
I mainly use it hoard to losseless music and hard to find cartoons / movies.
I have an upgrade to a Pi Cluster planned but I don’t recommend it unless you specifically want to run Pis.
Any Intel CPU 8th gen or newer with quick sync can do like 20 simultaneous 1080p transcodes. You could get a Celeron and have a powerful plex box. Look up guides for the HP 290 as a starting place.
4k decoding still drops frames, hardware is capable but drivers are not right now