ThinkCentre M70q

Your bottleneck isn't network or storage — it's transcoding. The Pi 4 doesn't have hardware video acceleration that Plex can use, so when a mobile client can't direct-play (mismatched codec, screen size, bandwidth limit), the Pi software-transcodes and 4 cores aren't enough. That's why "optimize for

Id buy this: Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 – Tiny Desktop – 14th-Gen Intel Core i5-14400T – 16 GB DDR5 – 512 GB NVMe SSD – Intel UHD Graphics 730 – Wi-Fi 6E & Gigabit Ethernet – NO OS – Raven Black (Open Box) https://sellout.woot.com/offers/lenovo-thinkcentre-m70q-gen-5-tiny-desktop-14th-gen-intel-c

I would say go for 2nd hand Lenovo Thinkcentre M70q Gen 3. I bought mine for $200 with warranty and upgraded to 16gb RAM and added a 1TB 2.5" HDD. (Came with i3 12100T, 8GB ram + 500gb nvme) and keep the extra cash. It supports 2 x NVME + 1 x 2.5" SATA + 2 x DDR4 SO-DIMM + and has like 6 X USB 3 + H

To be candid, finding a ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 with a SATA SSD, not NVMe, is slightly concerning as Lenovo didn't ship SATA SSDs with the Gen 3. Often when I've found this setup there been an issue with NVMe support. Depending on region, a Core i3-12100T + 32GB of RAM isn't bad @ 350$, although I'm

I guess it depends on the use case. My kids do game stream (Sunshine/Moonlight) so codec support was important and therefore we went with NUCs (12 Pro I think). For my homelab, I went with two Lenovo M70Q Gen 3. Quiet, small, easy to upgrade and quite thrust worthy brand. Those can be found for €250