Man, I really wanted to love those low-power chips, but unfortunately my experience with the N100 was pretty rough. I had issues with setting up a small ASUS Prime N100-AD4-CSM Motherboard build thinking it would be a perfect silent media box, but it was just not as good as expected under load. Transcoding worked okay for one stream, but once you start adding background tasks or a heavy dashboard, the whole thing just chokes. The problem is the single-thread performance just isnt there for real server work. If you can find a used Intel Core i5-12400 6-Core 2.5GHz Processor it might be right at your $130 limit. Those extra cores make a world of difference compared to the i3. I learned the hard way that saving a few bucks on the chip usually costs way more in frustration later when the web UI feels laggy... stick to the standard sockets for sure.

TL;DR: Stick with the Intel Core i3-12100 4-Core 3.3GHz Processor. Honestly, I was super disappointed with those Alder Lake-N boards... the lack of PCIe lanes is a total killer if you ever want to add more drives or a fast NIC. Its just not as good as expected for a real server. The 12100 handles 4k Plex like a beast and gives you actual headroom.

Re: "Man, I really wanted to love those low-power..."

• Completely agree. Those embedded boards are risky. You can't go wrong with any standard Intel desktop processor for better stability and easier replacements.

Late to the party but this whole thread is 💯. Glad I found it.