I'm looking to buy a second-hand mac mini to run as my media server from. My macbook is, unfortunately, dying otherwise I'd continue using that.
I don't have a massive budget. I've found a 2012 Mac Mini with 2.5GHz duaI-core i5 processor, 4GB RAM (RAM is upgradable in this model though) for a fairly good price. I intend to use the Mac Mini for direct play or transcoding of just one 1080p stream at a time, but also want to be able to run the computer as a replacement for laptop (just browsing, Spotify and Microsoft Office mostly).
Would Plex run (well) on this processor or is it worth buying the (quite a bit more expensive) 2012 i7 quad-core 2.3GHz processor Mac Mini? I want to make sure Plex runs smoothly if I'm going to spend this money, because I don't have a huge budget to buy a computer and something else for a media server - so if the i5 won't be sufficient I'd much rather pay extra. But if it runs great on i5, I will stick with that.
Thanks!