Retail router vs home (plex) server acting as router, for high device count

[Kc7vwc]

Looking for general advice...
There's 6 people in my house, and we've got 4 Chromebooks, 4 phones, 2 Wi-fi gaming PCs, 2 wired gaming PCs, 2 Rokus, a Nintendo Switch and a dedicated Plex server all on my network. 

Currently I'm using a Netgear R7000p as the DHCP center, and a Netgear R6260 as an Access Point extension, which is hardwired to the R7000p.
Each device is setup with a separate SSID, along with a separate label for each band, Like this:
R700p Wi-fi 2GHz
R700p Wi-fi 5GHz
R6260 Wi-fi 2GHz

R6260 Wi-fi 5GHz

 

All of my kid's hardware is connected to the R6260 - Chromebooks on the 5GHz band, 2 phones on the 2GHz band, and the 2 Roku on the 2GHz band. 
The gaming PCs are connected to the R7000p (wired & 5GHz band), along with the Plex server & the N-Switch. My wife & I's phones are also connected to this router on the 2GHz band. 

I was mostly trying to evenly distribute the load, based on types & volume of traffic. While everything works for the most part, file sharing is hit or miss, and sometimes everything just bogs down on the LAN itself. Speed tests of the WAN/internet are fine. 
Area coverage is fine, with both wireless networks accessible outside the house & into the yards. 

 

My Plex server is an Intel i5-6500 with 16GB of RAM (using the iGPU) that basically sits around doing nothing. All the devices in my house will DirectPlay the content from it, and I only have one remote viewer so the iGPU is more than enough to transcode for him. 
So I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to convert/modify the Plex server into an actual server, and use it for all the network routing functions? Would a full desktop PC + network switch & a single dedicated Access Point give any better or more reliable speeds than a consumer grade router with everything built in? 

 

Mostly it just seems a waste for my Plex machine to be doing nothing, and if I could put that capacity to use, and improve the quality of my network then it'd give me a good hobby to look into for the summer. But only if it's a worthwhile goal. (And it'd be nice to get away from Netgear's janky config interface that often doesn't remember my settings) 
I was look at Ubiquiti's APs & switches, for what that's worth. 

 

Advice...? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

A consumer grade router should be able to handled those devices fine, but you can try setting up your own router if you want to.

 

Id keep it seperate, and just get something like a UDM if you want to go unifi, or a edge router. Could run a vm with like untangle, but thats probably a bit too complex fo most setups.