Does anyone have any advice on a nuc that would be good to run a Plex server for mostly direct 4k streams locally? I have an older pc I could use but I was wondering if it made sense to run a lower power device as my old gaming pc would probably be overkill.
Check out the mini pcs by Minisforum and Beelink
I use the Beelink MINI-S12 and it’s worked really well. Its been able to handle 4k streams without any issues.
I’d look into something with at least a Intel® UHD Graphics 730 iGPU.
It’ll give you some flexibility to add hardware transcoding in the future.
Honestly if it’s direct 4k stream I feel like any modern mini PC will do, especially NUCs. Your bottleneck will be your network. I’m having trouble playing direct over wifi 6, so I recommend hard-wired if possible.
If you can tolerate a slightly larger form factor than a NUC, you can often find better deals on SFF PCs on ebay or from refurbished office equipment sellers. For example, a small Dell Optiplex or a HP or Lenovo would easily meet your spec requirements, plus they have space for a hard drive inisde.
I would recommend anything Gen 8 Intel or higher. The quick sync is just so good.
