I am glad you have have made a simple point and also admitted you are new to Plex, which in all honesty shows you seem to speak alot about RAM! it has nothing to do with trans coding if you have a choice of RAM and CPU, CPU is the winner where it concerns Plex so in reality you can have 20gb of ram it will not make a difference as ram will only allow you to have more applications open at once :), secondly a good choice of CPU an AMD even 8320 are really good at trans coding and one of the best CPU's for converting videos. AMD over Intel has always been better at that job although Intel has the lead when it concerns gaming but we're not talking about that. Now my CPU is running at stock as she's a very capable girl at an 8350 Black Edition and i can run her up to 6 GHz if i wish maybe slightly more if needed but it will be silly to kill a processor with the right gear cool at her (Young) age. USB 3.0 is as quick as sata 2 5,200 rpm sometimes faster which can read at 150 mb/s on reality tests no bench marking so i believe it'll work. I have knowledge on keeping my stuff together and again a 6tb red WD is alot slower that a WD 1tb External on USB in reality on read/write speeds as i have tested. I believe people will enjoy quality over quantity but i can do both using the right files and codecs so trans coding is easily peformed in a viable climate and AMD's always work better on a hot and high start :) so good choice pal. It's all about keeping it small but trying as best as you can to keep video quality and Audio quality which all my gear is 1080p and 5.1 surround and took more that 200 on the old server using just 4gb ram with no glitches. So why not get involved have join the fun you honestly can't make a judgement until you have tried out fantastic server. Happy Plexing..