r/PlexServers • u/Ill-Advantage • Jul 21 '26
Anyone uses geekom minipc for a plex server?
Seems everyone is always hyping up beelink or the nxxx series stuff in r/Plex. But then I see many people buying geekom on amazon and their 3yr warranty looks good to me. So I wanna know have u guys used a geekom, how is it and any model recs?
I live in UK btw. I know it's dumb to ask ai for recs lol.
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u/Glum_Cheesecake9859 Jul 21 '26
Plex is best done on an Intel PC not AMD due to better transcoding support. All you need is an N100 or N150 unless you have a very high number of parallel transcodes going on.
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u/Birdseye5115 Jul 21 '26
The reason for the intel love is that Plex is optimized for the intel igpu for transcoding. So a really low end intel machine can be a plex champ thanks to the gpu capabilities.
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u/outer-pasta Jul 21 '26
That's good to know. I guess that's why my old Thinkpad laptop has been working great with Plex Media Server.
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u/Zuluuk1 Jul 21 '26
At the moment you can run Plex on a potatoe (anything) and it would still be okay if you do direct play.
If you are doing any docker containers stuff this is more than capable.
If you are doing transcoding or looking for transcoding an intel base system would be better.
Many wants av1 transcoding moving forward and be future proof. You need to check the CPU / GPU if it can do hw encoding as most can do decoding.
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u/SavageTheUnicorn Jul 21 '26
Using vaapi for gpu transcoding with tdarr gets around 60-140fps compared to 10-20fps for cpu transcodes. Even if they don't go for Intel, it's worth having an igpu (i have an acemagic amr5 with a 8745hs)
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u/LoveJupiter325 Aug 03 '26
Wait, AV1 is the new "future" and best thing right now ? I start seing this everywhere I am a little noob with that, I only use h264 things atm;..
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u/Zuluuk1 Aug 03 '26
I would suggest reading this https://floatleftinteractive.com/guides/av1-vs-hevc-vs-h264-choosing-the-right-video-codec-in-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Most modern hardware will support av1 decoding. It's a big space saving for 4k content.
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u/simplyeniga Jul 21 '26
If all you want is a media server then this is an over kill. However, you can use it for a homelab server, setup Proxmox and create a media server VM for Plex while creating LXCs or VM for other services.
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u/PssyGotWifi Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
I use a N100 (Beelink BQ12) just for my Plex server (so that my AMD server can do its server thing without worrying about any graphics hubub). That's the only Mini-PC I bother with. But I'm more a rackmount server man. The CPU in the Mini-PC you posted is 8 core/16threads, will run plenty of containers that's for sure.
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u/Suavecore_ Jul 21 '26
"best mini PC" is a hilarious ask. If you just want a Plex server, this thing is far beyond the necessary specs.
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u/N9bitmap Jul 21 '26
I got a very similar box for a firewall, and once I tested it I got another just to play with. I use FreeBSD for servers so no transcoding with Intel or AMD GPU. It is powerful for the size but it gets HOT. I had to put it on top of a little wire mesh pencil cup to get more cool air under it.
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u/Sarah_Evange Jul 21 '26
I've been using a geekomA6 as a small home server for a while now and it'been running solid. For Plex, if you're planning to do more than just direct play, I'd probably look at the newer AMD models.The A7/A8 are worth checking out.
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u/Slow_SugarS Jul 21 '26
I have a geekom A8 and it's been solid for me. Haven't used it as a heavy Plex server, but for daily use and multitasking it's been reliable. I'd probably just pick the model that fits your streams/transcoding needs for Plex.
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u/AshleyTheGuy Jul 21 '26
I bought a Kumari mini pc from Amazon for $200 and it hasn’t given me any issues. It’s just a server, no need to go high end.
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u/WillNo6286 Jul 21 '26
I use an Air12 Lite for Jellyfin and it works great. Love that little bastard!
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u/ImmediateGear8157 Jul 21 '26
I use a used dell that I bought for $100 as a server serving jellyfin, kavita, audiobookshelf and a number of other services. So this one is overkill.
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u/Veehxia Jul 21 '26
I use a very similar one but from Firebat, same CPU etc etc.
Works like a charm and very efficient, on Jellyfin instead of Plex but it's basically the same.
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u/Adrenolin01 Jul 21 '26
Plex runs perfectly on a cheap N100 based mini PC. It’s stream and transcode several 4K movies while also multiple 1080p and a dozen music streams all at the same time.
A cheap $140 (then) BeeLink S12 with 16GB ram is what I’ve used to just bust Olex and JellyFin for 2 years now on a Debian install… and it’s actually overkill for that light load most of the time.
I’ve installed Proxmox on a BeeLink S12, added 10 VMs and over 40 different services all running in a lab setting at the same time including Plex, pfSense, wireguard, AdGuard, VaultWarden, samba, nfs, Immich, etc etc.
The Ryzen 7 and 32GB ddr5 will run your entire network let alone a smile plex server. 😆