Reviving My Damaged MacBook as a Superior Plex Streaming Station - Surprisingly Exceptional Performance!

Key Takeaways

• Repurposing a broken MacBook as a Plex server was a cost-effective solution.
• Setting up Plex on an Apple Silicon Mac was simple and comparable to using Windows.
• The M1 MacBook Pro performed flawlessly as a Plex server, doubling as a desktop Mac.

Plex is a great way to make your personal media library available to all devices on your local network, but for a laptop user like me it’s hard to have a Plex server that’s always plugged in. Until I ended up with a MacBook that’s just broken enough for the job.

A Mac Too Expensive to Fix, but Too Valuable to Throw Away

My daily driver is an M1 MacBook Air which I dock to a desk setup most of the time, and grab to take with me when needed. My wife had an M1 MacBook Pro, but sadly the Touch Bar started freaking out and flashing constantly about one month after the warranty expired. Our local iStore informed me that it would cost an eye-watering $400 to fix this issue since, like so many things, this repair needs a top-case replacement.

Without the top row of “keys” and that annoying, eye-searing flashing, the MacBook Pro is effectively unusable as a laptop, and not worth the money to fix. Otherwise, it’s in perfect condition and still a cracking little computer. So I decided I’d hook it up permanently, and turn it into (among other things) our Plex server.

Setting Up Plex and Drives Was Easy

We’ve gone over how to set up Plex in detail before, so all I have to say about my first experience using it on an Apple Silicon (or any) Mac is that it’s no harder than doing it on a Windows system. I downloaded the Plex server Mac application from the website, installed it, and ran it. From there, the process was identical to add my media files to a Plex library.

I have a dual-port USB-C dock connected to the Mac, which is in turn connected to a Dell monitor with a built-in USB hub, and that’s what my media drive is connected to. One way or another, I recommend a powered USB hub rather than running the drives from the MacBook’s internal power, since even one big drive might put too much strain on the little guy as a permanently-connected media drive.

Zero Performance Issues

To be honest, I didn’t really expect any real hiccups just because I was using macOS. After all, Plex is on lots of operating systems, including Linux . What I was really wondering is whether the M1 chip in the little MacBook would be up to the challenge. It’s still a very powerful CPU, it sips power both at idle and under load, and since it is a laptop I don’t have to worry about the odd blackout messing everything up.

The M1 has four performance cores and four efficiency cores, and this model has 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. I tried watching multiple 4K streams on different devices, and it went off without a hitch. So far I haven’t found a way to make the little MacBook choke, so I can only imagine that any Apple Silicon Mac would be simply great at this job. Like an M1 Mac Mini that you pick up used for a bargain, perhaps.

It’s My New Desktop Mac Too!

In fact, the M1 Pro is so performant that I felt it was a little wasted as just a Plex server. So I decided that my MacBook Air would now be just a laptop, and I’d use it around the house and on the hoof like Steve Jobs would have wanted. The M1 MacBook Pro is now essentially a Mac Mini with a built-in battery, permanently docked to my desk setup.

Even with the added burden of browsing the web and writing, I’ve had no complaints about Plex’s performance from anyone else in the house, so I think we’re good until the wounded MacBook’s battery swells up or something truly fatal goes wrong.

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