The new raspberry Pi B+ is a lot faster then it’s predecessor and with that I thought I would try it at running a Plex server, the thing runs, but there are some downsides.

• The Raspberry is under-powered for video trans-coding, so to get around this, you have to select the optimize setting on the video and then allow them to render, which for a single film, if the Pi is under load could take a couple hours, so don’t expect to be watching the latest film instantly.
• The Pi gets hot, I have used heat sinks to cool it down, but still it’s hot to the touch, a small fan would fix this but it doesn’t overheat or anything so I just let it run hot.
• The Pi uses ARM, so things like Plex Requests don’t run without running through a hundred other hoops.
• The Pi works well with the apps, however trans coding is not an option, so if you need subtitles or downscaling, you cant.

Other than that, which seems like a lot but its really not, its a fairly nifty machine, it can stream multiple 1080p video streams over WiFi, I’ve not managed to max this out yet, so I suppose thats good, It works well with Sonarr, Couchpotato and Deluge. Overall its a low cost, low power media server with minimal compromise. However, a small Bare bones PC would be my first choose if I was to do it again.