The absolute best value system for PMS is an ex-corporate desktop PC used on eBay. These are very well built, dirt cheap & even five year old systems will have plenty of CPU power for transcoding (if you really must transcode) & have QuickSync so Plex will transcode in hardware. I recently bought an i3-4130 system with 8GB RAM & a 320GB disk for just £70 & here is a similar one for £84.99 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ProDesk-400-G1-SFF-Desktop-PC-i3-4130-3-4GHz-4GB-1TB-SATA-DVDRW-Win-8-Pro/112987195034?hash=item1a4e8fc69a:g:EGQAAOSwGV9a9ZjW or an i5-4570 for £135 HP ProDesk 400 G1 SFF PC Intel Pentium G3220 3.0ghz 4gb RAM 500gb HDD Windows 10 for sale online | eBay
+1 for this idea - with caveat
I personally like the USFF (ultra small form factor) HP 8300 Elite Desktops - And you can get one of the Seagate external 4TB drives and pop off the enclosure (that is basically a double thickness 2.5") and it fits great in the HDD caddy. And these also have little MSATA slots so you can have SSD to run your OS, plus a slot for mini PCIe Wifi card if you want one (external mini dual antenna too if you look on ebay). Quiet, small, and ubiquitous on ebay with i5 2.9GHz, or if you have a reason can upgrade to i7-3770 CPU. Uses laptop DDR3 RAM which is often cheaper, can take 16GB. The used i5’s are commonly on Ebay for <$120. Also, other than CPU there’s literally no part over $25 to replace on these, other than perhaps the power brick PSU (which are rugged). Actually the i3 Ivy CPU’s are about $20 also (get the ones with the HD4000 GPU onboard if you can, 3225 I think it is). These are enterprise grade machines, meant for constant abuse under a dusty cash register, doctor office, etc. Perfect Plexinators, quiet and power sippers too. Plus the case is rugged, meant for vertical or horizontal placement - and strong enough to be used as a base (or has VESA screw holes in the case for mounting behind monitors). They literally still sell these new for $1500 !! https://www.amazon.com/HP-Business-Desktop-Elite-Computer/dp/B00CH3HRJA?tag=cnet-api-20&SubscriptionId=AKIAJ3NOW7JKGQLTEY4A&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00CH3HRJA&ascsubtag=4ab27580-63b5-11e8-90eb-8181f531b237
They also run Linux perfectly. Go a step further - use UnRaid server and you get a Docker hypervisor (free) app store - (Plex, Handbrake, etc. - you name it) and it will run VM’s for you while allowing direct passthru of the GPU, DVD, etc. to the VM of choice. UnRaid’s main use case initially was cheap HTPC that allowed JBOD with software array protection instead of forcing matching drives, hardware RAID, etc. All in a nice little $100 Box ! http://lime-tech.com Also, now the new 18.04 Ubuntu has come out as has FFMPEG4, so just “snap install ffmpeg” and it automatically applies the right settings to enable hardware acceleration for your encodings and get all the right dependencies for things like Handbrake to use it - apparently even if the other app isn’t yet updated to use FFMPEG4. Slick ! Apparently not far off is auto-hardware detection as well inside these Snap “Packages” (containerized apps basically).
PS If you do want more room or ability to add a vid card, the HP8300 Small form Factor has PCIe slots and 3(+) 3.5" bays - has enough juice in the PSU to power most 1050Ti cards. Just be sure to go low profile (it’s basically only a 2u sized case).
