Clueless about specs these days - guidance requested!

Plex Media Server
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1

Many years ago I vaguely understood how to compare hardware. Nowadays I’m clueless - if they’re not linearly increasing numbers, I don’t know what’s going on (see below). I’m currently running this:

  • Win10 laptop with Intel Core i5-2520M (2.50GHz) and 8GB RAM, running PMS.
  • ReadyNAS RN104 for storage (also running some utilities, slowly).

The laptop feels flaky and I want to upgrade and make things stable. My budget is not high. A friend sent me a link to these Beelink mini PCs, but I’ve really got no clue if any of them are faster or slower than what I’ve got. (The laptop is at least 5 years old from what I can tell, so I’d assumed I’d be able to upgrade for a good price by now, what with Moore’s “Law” and all that.)

This support article (three years old) says an i3 is needed at minimum, but I don’t know how to compare that to “Twin Lake N150”. I’m not even sure I can compare it to my current i5-2520M as I dimly recall that the “M” means “mobile” and it might be less beefy than the label suggests? (It’s definitely very sluggish when I actually RDP into it.)

We usually have a single stream inside the house; sometimes we transcode a big source if it stutters on the TV (slow wifi? TV unable to decode it? No idea). Occasionally we have two streams at once, and there’s been talk about wanting to watch remotely which will likely require transcoding as rural upload speeds are poor here.

Can anybody help me understand if I’m barking up the wrong tree with those mini PCs? I feel like the old laptop needs to be replaced, but if I’m spending money I’d really like it to be an improvement!

Thanks in advance.

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That pc you linked is not good

You need an Intel CPU with integrated graphics, something within the past 5 or so years. An i5 or higher

That means it can transcode 10+ files at a time (including 4K) using the integrated graphics and not using the actual CPU cores

There are many mini PCs with those CPUs, check reddit plex sub as it’s a common question

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It is a bad time to be buying new pc’s with the exaggerated RAM prices. The N150 cpu is 2X capable over the laptop and add in the modern graphics you are light years ahead.

Alternative is a 4-5 year old used machine with intel graphics from Ebay or other marketplace.

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Thanks both. Unfortunately I’m reading opposite sentiments in your replies - one says the linked mini PC is not good, the other says it’s better than what I’ve got! So actually what I’ve got is super-not good, and the one I propose to buy still brings me out ahead?

I’ll check Reddit, thanks.

Unfortunately I have to buy from Amazon as I’ve got a bunch of vouchers that I can’t spend elsewhere.