Thank you again! It’s been probably two decades since I’ve built my own computers, and so much has changed! I really appreciate your guidance.
And thanks particularly about the point about i7 and i9 having the same GPU…that’s definitely relevant to me. How much is the CPU involved in Plex activities, I wonder, and how much difference would it make if this is a dedicated Plex machine?
If I understand correctly from Picking the best bang for the buck in a Linux PMS Intel CPU – what would you choose?, the CPU is involved in subtitles, and I definitely like subtitles on all the time, but I’m rarely clear on when the server is burning in subtitles in live transcoding:
I also noticed this comment on What's the most recent Intel CPU generation that doesn't have any Plex on Linux hiccups?:
That sounds like a good argument for i9 or i7 (if that’s really equivalent for transcoding).
And it sounds like I’ll be needing to buy both RAM and an SSD.
- Would 64 GB work for RAM? OWC 64GB (2 x 32GB) PC21300 DDR4 2666MHz SO-DIMMs Memory (OWC2666DDR4S64P)
- And this for the SSD? Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN570 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive SSD - Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, M.2 2280, Up to 3,500 MB/s - WDS100T3B0C
Basically, it’s been 9 (almost 10) years since I’ve purchased a Plex server, so I’m definitely due for an upgrade, and I’d like something that will perform well for years to come. It doesn’t have to be “bleeding edge”, but I do like things that are top of the line and stable and easy to maintain. (As a reference point, I dropped a pretty penny on my top-of-the-line MacBook Pro in 2017, and it’s still chugging along like a champ!)
I wonder if @ChuckPa would be willing to also chime in with two-cents for a novice. 
