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.
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.