These processes, unlike gaming PCs, are designed for use for days, weeks and months at a time and do not have the luxury of liquid cooling systems or customised temperature control systems inside.
Despite this, the range CPU used in NAS is still very diverse and unsurprisingly, many users will assume that a CPU with a high-performance speed in Gigahertz (GHz) and a larger number of cores will be best for Plex media server use.
However, a processor that features embedded graphics, integrated graphics, on-board graphics or whatever they like to call it, will always perform better than a likewise processor without it in a single comparative playback. There are some remarkably affordable Celeron and Pentium processors on the market that can often outperform some Xeon processors at Plex media server performance, thanks to these CPU having an element of hardware onboard that is dedicated to visual and graphical structured data. Always check to see if there is an embedded graphics CPU alternative before purchasing a non-GPU equipped CPU.Ī more powerful CPU may still ultimately handle more high-end media than a lesser Pentium or Celeron, however, it WILL use substantially more resources in order to do it. I recommend an Intel Xeon-W series or the Intel i3/i5/i7 Core range processor. Something that I discuss a great deal on YouTube when discussing more powerful NAS solutions is the subject of noise.
