I posted Mac Studio performance in the New Transcoder Preview thread.
It’s worth upgrading your 2012 Mac Pro (Intel Xeon W3665 w/an ATI Radeon HD 5870)
I was wondering how well Plex would work if I moved my Plex files to a fast external drive connected to a MacBook Pro (14" 2021) with an M1 Pro server.
PMS is meant to run 24/7, and it does significant tasks in the middle of the night.
Laptops don’t historically fit into that concept.
I would attach the USB drive to the Mac M1 Pro or to a router.
We’re also in a chip crunch when it comes to SSDs, and spinning rust has its uses. For either drive technology, you can get more space with Disk Attached Storage. It’s a battle with Amazon’s algorithms to find your sweet spot in $ / TB 
