Couple questions about Plex. I have started digitizing my media library. I have a lot of movies and tv shows. Will running the media server on my normal desktop computer be okay for it. It is the only pc I have in the home and I do play a lot of video games on it so I don’t want it to ruin the cpu or anything of the like.
Space for the media is not an issue
I have an Intel i5 CPU
AMD RX GPU- although I don’t think that matters much
8 gb of RAM
I will be streaming the movies to my Fire Stick TV in my living room and also may be sharing my media with a friend who is going through a tough time at the moment. So it will be being streamed from my system.
Should I have a dedicated system for Plex or will my personal computer for video games and everyday use be okay running Plex on it?
Servers, and Plex is a server, should generally not have other tasks but Plex is designed to mostly work and play well with others.
The big caveat is that some of Plex’s tasks, transcoding is a big one, are very processor intensive. You can reduce that by getting your media in a format that will direct play on whatever client you use. By direct playing Plex will not have to transcode your content.
Gaming is a whole other can of worms as it also puts a large load on the processor.
In your case I would strongly recommend a stand alone system for Plex to avoid problems and disappointments.
Also ALWAYS connect your Plex server to your network wired. Wireless is just not generally stable enough no matter how good the connection appears to be.
The Fire stick is an OK client but if you do not already have one I would suggest a Roku Ultra or a Shield TV instead. The Shield can also run a Plex server fairly well but it does have limitations.
Okay, I was kind of worried about that but don’t want to cause any problems with my current computer as I use it almost every day. If I were to build a budget Plex server computer what would you recommend for a cpu to stream to two devices at 1080p
