Right now I’m running Jellyfin on an old mini-PC with a Celeron J4105. That seems a bit underpowered. I’m using Linux Mint and the installation is with Docker. I’m looking to replace it with something better, so what would you recommend? My criteria are:
- Easily available (second hand is fine)
- Budget friendly (under € 500 would be nice)
- Repairable
- Upgradable (at least SSD and RAM)
- Low power consumption at idle
- Handles all the transcoding stuff without breaking a sweat
- Plays nice with Linux
I guess my best bet would be some sort of second hand mini PC like they’re being offloaded on eBay by the truckload. But I have no idea which particular models would be a good fit for me. I’m also fine with buying something new, of course.
I bought a Dell OptiPlex 3070 with a i5 9500T CPU for a good price, filled the RAM up right away, it can run anything I throw at it.
If you go for one of those make sure the CPU supports QuickSync for hardware acceleration.
Sounds interesting. Does this take SATA or NVME SSDs?
I’ve been shopping for the same thing. I can report that Intel N100-based computers currently (February 2024) have issues with Linux WiFi drivers. Not a problem if you’re hardwiring it.
I’d also avoid the really tiny PCs because they use the shortest M.2 drives (2242), which limits capacity and upgradeability. You want one that fits a 2280 M.2 drive. Or a 2.5" SATA drive.This is why I like to stick to something a few generations back. More likely to have the kinks ironed out. I’ve heard good things about the N100 but it still seem to have some teething problems.
Do you transcode right now? Do you want to transcode?
Honestly, I’m not sure about the whole transcoding situation. I watch content on a ChromeCast hooked up to a 4k TV. With video in MKV containers I cannot fast forward or even pause sometimes. Transcoding those to an MP4 container in in Handbrake also didn’t help. I don#t really know anything about all this stuff so I’m not really sure what to do.
That’s imo the most important question. If you do not transcode the specs don’t need to be crazy. Maybe there are test files somewhere. Mkv is judt a container, there could be anything inside of it. I play x265 and 264 in mp4. All devices support it and I don’t need to transcode anything. No worries. Very quick.
There is a chart in the jellyfin docs that shows what codecs are supported which will help see why or when you need to transcode. I’m not sure how upto date it is, but it’s an ok starting point.
If you are using handbrake to limit transcoding, bring the file to h264 or h265 and eAC3 for audio. Audio transcoding is very easy for most hardware, but video can be tricky. With that said, I don’t have transcoding enabled for my setup and it’s been working great for over a year now. For the few times I have audio codec issues, I’ll just fix the file myself with ffmpeg and remux the file with the new eAC3 track.
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I’m based in Germany but I’ll have a look if I can find something similar here. I’ve looked at a Dell Optiplex with a i5 9500T. Does that also support Quick Sync? Is there a list of CPUs that have this feature?
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