The starting point was that Raspberry Pi that had been languishing on my desk, but then I started thinking bigger. Oh, and I later sprung for a $40 powered USB 3.0 hub Remove non-product link and a $15 power strip Remove non-product link (for reasons I’ll explain in a moment). Being the beginner that I am, I opted for a rock-bottom budget, spending just $25 for an external DVD drive Remove non-product link (after realizing that I’d long ago shed my old PCs with optical drives) and $30 for a new 256GB USB memory stick Remove non-product link (which holds my entire 200-CD music collection, in lossless FLAC format, with tons of room to spare).

It’s certainly possible to spend thousands of bucks on NAS drives, “endpoints” and other hardware for your home media server. There are limitations to installing Plex on a desktop PC or a laptop-namely, you’ll need to keep it running whenever you want to stream media-but it’s a great, low-effort way to see what all the fuss is about. In minutes, you can simply install Plex Media Server on a Mac or Windows PC, pick some folders filled with music, videos or other media, and start streaming away. Of course, you don’t necessarily need a Raspberry Pi to set up a home media server.

I’m no expect at building PCs, but I had my first media server up and running on a Raspberry Pi in only a few hours. I then tossed some old MP3s and home video files on the memory stick, and before I knew it, my unused Raspberry Pi had turned into a media server. Mounting an 8GB USB thumb drive (I decided to start small until I knew what I was doing) on the Pi turned out to be a little trickier, although I even had that licked after another 45 minutes or so.

There are plenty of online tutorials on how to install Plex Media Server on a Raspberry Pi, and within an hour or so I had Plex up and running.

Best media server for raspberry pi