Should I Get a Simple Graphics Card?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I don’t have a Plex Pass.

I watch a lot of 4k things.

I don’t access my server outside of my home.

I run plex on Windows with an Intel 11th Gen processor and the on-board Intel 730 graphics.

I sometimes encode video, which is slower than on my main PC, which has a graphics cars and a couple of generations newer processor.

Would a graphics card do anything on my plex server in this scenario?

2

You’ll need a Plex Pass membership to use hw-accelerated transcoding (which would be using the GPU). If you have a Plex Pass, the iGPU of your processor should also be able to handle this.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/

3

Do you mean you transcode Plex videos during playback. or something else?

Anyway, the iGPU in your server’s Intel CPU should be very good for anything Plex needs to do if you have Plex Pass, which unlocks hardware accelerated transcoding.