I am pretty new at all this. But I got jellyfin and such setup on my window box. I have a roku client and all that working. So now it is time to look into a standalone box to run 24/7. But I don’t know what specs matter.

I have read that I need at least a 6th gen intel i7 or i5 to take advantage of a feature that helps with this sort of thing.

But outside of that. Does ram matter? How much of a drive do I need on the box? (Going to get a NAS for real storage). Any other specs that matter? I am hoping to go fanless (not because I know anything, but cause I want it to be silent), is that ok? And which flavor of linux is the most popular?

  • ASeriesOfPoorChoicesEnglish
    7•7 months ago

    Cpu, ram, etc only really matter if you do a lot of transcoding. Otherwise, Jellyfin does and uses very little.

    If you have a system that supports hardware transcoding (like most Intel cpus QSV), then you can get by with very little again. Otherwise, you need a lot more for software transcoding.

    Storage space: a couple GB is plenty.

    Linux: in general? Debian, maybe? But it doesn’t really matter when you can also run it in a Docker container. Just pick something that’s user-friendly for you.