Discrete GPUs also offer flexibility beyond Plex. If your server doubles as a workstation, runs machine learning workloads, or handles other GPU-accelerated tasks, the additional horsepower isn’t ...

Hardware transcoding unlike software transcoding, relies on the server’s CPU to convert media files into different formats, hardware transcoding offloads this intensive task to a dedicated component ...

tl;dr is: scrounge up some hardware, preferably on a recent-ish Intel platform with an igpu (i think 8th gen+ is the sweet shot), and then get a slew of storage. Pick a base operating system (I like ...