Plex on a Pi?

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: latest release on Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Player Version#: latest release on Roku

I’m currently running my Plex Media Server on my gaming rig. For reference, said gaming rig is:
Core i5-4690k @ 3.5 ghz
16 gb Ram
GTX 970
OS and PMS are on a Crucial MX500 SSD.
My media is on an internal Seagate Barracuda 3gb Sata HDD. (which is currently about 70% full of media)

Obviously, I didn’t build the computer for plex, I built it to game on several years ago, and plex just came into my life after. So it’s about time to graduate to a dedicated media server / NAS and I’ve looked into things just a little bit, but I need guidance.

Other important things to note about how we use Plex…Remote Access is completely disabled. I only have 2 TV’s in the house, but its extremely rare that they’d both be on at the same time (and even then, unlikely that they’d both be on Plex). We have a few tablets and phones that could get on Plex too, but that is also extremely rare/unlikely that they’d be on Plex simultaneously as well. And then, even if multiple devices were on Plex, I’d say about 90% of my video content is only DVD quality 480p, and nothing is over 1080, and all of my music content is MP3 320kbps. And with all that being the case, from what I understand the Raspberry Pi 4 should be sufficient to do what I need. Or am I wrong?

I do realize I’d be building it for what works now, and not so much for the future, but I figure that by the time I’m ready to upgrade my TV’s and media to 4k, 8-trillion-k, or whatever, it would be about time to upgrade the server too anyway. Mostly I feel I’m wasting a lot of electricity on running my gaming rig all the time and risking drive failure using non-NAS drives all the time, but the budget is slim so I gotta make the move as efficiently as possible from every considerable angle.

I’m really interested in this little combo in particular wiki.radxa.com/Dual_Quad_SATA_HAT though it’s not released yet, so I’ll probably try to find something similar if I can.

So what do you think, Plex Community? Terrible idea?

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You will be downgrading – from a “decent” ability to transcode content, (to make it fit for your TVs) to “non-existent”.
The Pi has an entry-class mobile phone CPU. Hardware transcoding is not possible in Plex. RAM is scarce.

My advice: stay away from it, unless you want to pre-convert all your videos so they fit the specifications of your TVs exactly. Burn-in subtitles, downgrade audio quality, restrict color bit depth and/or codec levels… etc.pp.

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What about something like this… https://www.seeedstudio.com/ODYSSEY-X86J4105800-p-4445.html

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No one is willing to support that.
This is a board for tinkerers. If you are such a specimen, you can get one and try your luck.
But if you want a machine that “just works”, steer clear of such parts.

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Certainly I cannot be the only human in existence to want to build my own little “tinker” system into a capable Plex/NAS server.

Is there anybody else in the Plex community into this sort of thing? If so, I’d like to hear about what you built and how it’s going.

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