What do you run Plex Media Server on?

GordonThree wrote:
If transcoding is a concern, the Pi has hardware accelerated h.264 encoding and decoding. I believe up to 30hz encoding and 60hz decoding at 1080p. There's newer boards based on more powerful SoC that will transcode h.265 and 4k video if that's your application.

There seems to be mixed information out there of if a Pi3 has enough horsepower to even decode HEVC 4K. And that is not even transcoding. I do work for an encoding/transcoding company and am quite familiar with server requirements for commercial equipment to run HEVC 4k video and there are very few companies that aren't using hardware acceleration (GPU) for HEVC 4K. HEVC 4K transcoding via software only is not very common yet, it will get there but again, I'm talking for commercial applications, not private applications where lower bitrates along with lower video quality are not as scrutinized.

And for the OP, although you did mention you didn't want a laptop running constantly, I am running my Plex on a headless MAC Mini. So not much different from a laptop except for no video monitor, keyboard, mouse. I do understand when not streaming or ripping/transcoding, power is pretty minimal on MAC Minis.