The ULTIMATE Budget Jellyfin Server

[@JeffGeerling]

You mean I don't need a 4090 and a 13900K for 4K transcoding?

[@curtisbme]

We do "need" pointlessly hefty hardware, but you should feel dirty for running things on anything other than Pi.

[@abageigy]

LoL, nice one Jeff 😂

[@annebokma4637]

No, a 4090 connected to a pi cluster would do the job too 😂 when can I expect that content? 😊

[@E_Proxy]

Hey, i needed that 3070TI to stream in twitch for an average of 0.3 specs

[@LennyMiller739]

Obviously you need a threadripper if you want 265

[@michaelsasse8427]

I think the "ultimate budget Jellyfin server" is whatever old PC you have laying around

[@tonysolar284]

With Linux and not windows.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Challenge to find a better Jellyfin server accepted! Will start by buying new kitchen sink to mount hardware in

[@HardwareHaven]

Hahahaha you and the kitchen sink

[@ks90e]

Found 12500T optiplex pc which has uhd770 for $220 on Facebook marketplace. Pretty much maxed out for a media server

[@paul.kallert]

Because of you I bought a new server yesterday! It's an Optiplex 3050 with an i5 7500 and 32GB of ram. Thanks for your videos!

[@HardwareHaven]

That's awesome! Congrats!

[@G-Foxy.]

How many drives and what sizes (2.5" or 3.5") did you manage to fit in the 3050? As far as I remember you can only properly mount a single 3.5" HDD in there?

[@paul.kallert]

@@G-Foxy. yep thats right. Just one 3.5" drive but I have a m2 PCIE 1TB SSD for OS and one 2TB Sata SSD for data like movies, shows, nextcloud etc.

[@ydiadi_]

Bro hows this for jf Dell optiplex i5 with 7500t

[@HardwareHaven]

@@ydiadi_ if it has room for the drives you want, it should be great

[@rollcalltech]

I went with a Dell Optiplex 3050 SFF, 16gb DDR4, i5-7500. Currently have one 240GB SSD, and one 4tb WD hard drive (no redundancy so I'm rolling the dice) Installed Ubuntu Server 20.04 and running CasaOS. Setup a network share and copied my movies over to it. Installed Jellyfin and its working flawlessly. This is my backup media server, but it works like a champ! (And I run it off my small 350 watt solar panel setup, with a small 600 watt pure sine wave interter)

[@Abro86]

From both my research and experience so far, it's been worth the difference to at least get something with an 8th gen intel cpu. This in when the UHD630 igpu was introduced to replace the HD630 and is a transcoding powerhouse. Also, this is when i7 cpu's started coming with 2 additional cores making them 6 cores and 12 total threads(great for additional unraid things). A good example of a model with 8th gen would be something like the HP Prodesk 400 G5.

[@harrytsang1501]

Also worth looking into would be laptops of those generations. Screen and keyboard condition does not matter and sometimes you can get an Nvidia GPU and low power consumption to boot

[@sethperry6616]

8th and 9th gen don't usually have hyperthreading except for i9.

[@haydenc2742]

You can find x265 readily online (in decent compression as well)...the lower processors can decode it for streaming but can't encode without full brute force CPU compiling. Most players can also decode as well...saving bandwidth

[@williamp6800]

@@sethperry6616 the 8th gen i7 8700 is the one exception to what you said. It’s 6 core/12 thread.

[@Rafy_24]

Some low end 8th Gen is the sweet spot for someone trying to run Jellyfin with hardware encoding 4k hdr... Actually... That was the whole reason for me to switch from a RaspberryPi to a full desktop i5 8400... It has been running great tho!

[@RobertNuno]

I just bought a HP 800 G5 SFF w/ i5-9500 on Ebay which I was changing out my EMBY/Gaming server. Upgraded the RAM to 32GB. Actually a great PC. The 3 drive bays and 2 M.2 is very compact. Even has 2 PCI-E x16 (one at x4 i believe) and 2 at x1.

[@cjmoss51]

That HP EliteDesk 800 G3 has to be the best small form factor PC. In addition to all the things you said it also has some PCIe Lanes that can be used for adding NVME slots. If you actually get your hands on one you could make a nasty little NAS. That would be an incredible project for the channel. 2x 3.5 drives (pick your capacity for backups) 1x NVME drive (for the OS) 2x NVME adapters for the PCIe slot (primary NAS storage, ZFS mirror optional)

[@HardwareHaven]

I wish it wasn't as proprietary (I forgot to mention that in the video), but other than that, it's awesome! Need to get my hands on one

[@12gark]

You can even chop off the 2.5" mount and put a third 3.5" drive there, with a bit of DIY skills. I have a G4, which is very similar, and I have 3 HDDs and 3 SSD in mine, plus a dedicated GPU and dedicated 10Gbps card.

[@Volgin.]

@@12gark Can you post a picture of your build showing some details? I've got the same system and I really want to do something like yours. Mine is currently running with only 2 HDDs and 1 NVMe

[@12gark]

@@Volgin. Sorry, I'm not really a guy to post stuff on reddit, and it's very tight so I have no idea how to take useful pictures in that mess, but I can give you a quick description. Basically you disassemble the from metal tray (of you look carefully from the side, there is a position where you can push out the pins holding it in position). Then you chop off with an angle grinder or a manual saw for metal the 2.5" tray. There are 2 bends where the metal goes down to hold the 2.5" drive, you cut right on the bend, and everything else that gets in the way. Use a hdd to check where it's hitting, and cut everything it hits until is sitting on the flat part. Don't worry for stiffness, it's plenty strong for a pc case even after cutting, make sure you remove everything thst could be an issue. Don't cut the front mesh, otherwise it may become visible from the outside, ruining the looks. Mine is sitting below the TV, so I wanted it to look nice from outside. This way you have enough space for a slim 3.5" drive when you reassemble the from tray. To fit the chonky disks you need to lower the 4 pin psu connector that goes into the mobo. I tried with an extension cable (cutting a piece of the plastic connector), it can be done and it works, but I didn't felt safe and decided to opt for a slimmer drive I had laying around. I then placed 3 corks cutted to the appropriate height below the disk (hot glued to the bottom of the case), and a 0.5mm rubber pad I had laying around from another project above it, in the areas where the disk makes contact against the metal tray. I added a couple of zip ties just to make sure, but they are useless, the drive sits between the corks and the rubber, and that's more than enough once you close the tray in position. It seems awful described, but it worked just fine for a year straight, and disk hasn't moved 1mm (I marked the position with a CD marker just to make sure, and both the cork and the rubber work to damp down the vibrations). The real pain is fitting the 3 power connectors to the 3 drives, be gentle and be patient, two things I'm not particularly good at. Short and flexible sata cables are really helpful if you find any. The third Nvme is just a no-name 1× pcie to m.2 adapter from amazon, maybe 10$. Then a x540 pcie 10g card and a Quadro A2000 from ebay and you're good to go. You can also add more stuff using the WiFi M.2: you can add 2 sata, turn the A+E key into an M-key with an adapter for a regular Nvme, or add a 2.5gig ethernet nick to that port. I wanted to put a 2.5" sata ssd into the dvd slot, but I gave up, too tight with the third 3.5". Absolutely doable if you want a 2×3.5"+2×2.5" setup. My entire home lab runs on it with no issues, but I do spindown the drives when not in use, so maybe check for temperatures if you plan on leaving them always on. A slim 40mm fan fits between the drive and the gpu if you want to improve cooling. Having a blower gpu, the psu pushing air out, and the cpu cooler kind of blowing air out with the stock plastic cover, I never had any issues with internal heat, there is always air sucked in from the front.

[@Volgin.]

@@12gark Nice, i got an AI step-by-step guide transcription out of your reply and i think it'll be easy to follow along. I may do things slowly at first, probably getting an intel arc for transcoding, 10gb nic and a pair of ssds for caching. Good think is that standard ssds can be glued anywhere without a problem. Then i'll look onto modding the case to add the third drive and do an RAID Z1 :)

[@Bushidounohana]

Great video! This is why I keep old laptops around-recently repurposed an old work laptop (Intel i5-6200 CPU) for a 1080p Jellyfin server. The caveat with laptops is as you allude to-no internal storage space. Been thinking about migrating my server to something like this, though, as it would be much better (and give me an excuse to buy and setup another machine). Thanks for the inspiration!

[@nalinux]

No big storage inside, but you can use an external USB drive. That's what I do, with a small USB 2 connection. It's enough. My server is a Core 2 T5800 with 4 Go ram, it's more than enough :) No transcoding, but I don't need it.

[@tomdr93x]

Built my first sever pc running unraid for plex and makemkv after your 4K HDR jellyfin server video. Used some hard drives I had on hand and went for some really cheap parts. 16GB 3200MHz memory, 500GB 980 nvme for cache, 10TB iron wolf, H510M-E asus board with an intel 10100T i picked up for £30 from CeX. Case and PSU was a £13 used office pc unit from local pc repair store and dropped in the LG drive from your video, flashed to read 4K blu rays. Have ripped my entire 1080p and 4K HDR blu ray collection to it, direct play across my house with no issue on gigabit LAN. Thanks for the videos!

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s awesome to hear!

[@dwindle13]

I wish hardware prices in Europe were that cheap, hard to find a deal over here 🙁

[@vitoswat]

I just buy on US ebay. Including VAT and shipping it is usually still cheaper than buying in the EU.

[@lordofenron]

Buddy.. you have one of the most intereseting channels on youtube. I really really really like your content and the way you approach hardware and projects. Keep it up, buddy :)

[@HardwareHaven]

I appreciate that, thanks!

[@seantellsit1431]

I have the i5-7500 version of the system.... draws less than 17 watts idle.

[@SilentDecode]

I have a HP ProDesk 400 G6 as my main docker host. This is an USFF machine with a i5-10500T and 16GB RAM. I run several containers on it, including Plex. Plex is also using the iGPU for transcoding. Pretty nifty little machine. Got that for €100 from a friend. Can't seem to find that deal anywhere else though.

[@HardwareHaven]

Nice deal!

[@fanshaw]

tl;dr: If you're used to having an old PC with a couple of disks just serving video, you're probably fine. There are severe limitations if you want to serve main storage to another device (compute node for a home lab or your main workstation). I've got a couple of the 800 G3's. First off... transcoding. Is this something that's actually time critical? If not, its probably something you can let the server chug along with and once its done, you're fine. Be aware of your use-cases. Speaking of usecases: If this thing is a main file server, you may well want to go faster, so you can centralise all your storage onto it. 3 small disks are better than two large mirrored for capacity and speed reasons... but they won't fit... unless you go for 2.5" inside the 3.5" bays, in which case you might start thinking of SSDs. If you're thinking of SSDs, you need a faster network to make use of them. 10G is fine with a single drive or stripped SATA SSDs, but then you start running into "not enough PCIE lane" issues. I made the mistake of thinking the 800G3 had 2x16 slots... one of those x16 slots is only wired for x4 - good for a single nvme disk. I ended up going for a very power inefficient older xeon, because it has 2 x16 slots and one x8 slot straight to the CPU. One x16 for an old server NIC (recommend 25G max, or the cables get expensive), and the other can be used for one of those expensive SSD carrier cards with a built-in PCIE switch (because bifurcation is a new and rare thing). Beware of motherboards with lots of SATA ports bottlenecked by the chipset if you want SATA SSDs, but SATA spinning rust for high-capacity/low bandwidth video are fine. Also, USB drives are (apparently) not recommended for truenas as drive identification can be uncertain (which sounds horrible). I know motherboards with dual x16 PCIE slots have fallen out of favour as crossfire and SLI died, but we now need them back for storage and high-speed networking - I'd like to do iscsi from SSDs just as fast as a local drive :)

[@MyYewTubeAccount]

Such convenient timing, our old Synology NAS died in the shop yesterday and I planned on replacing it on Monday. I think I'll just go this route and repurpose an old PC.

[@VastCNC]

For reshaping metal like that, I’d highly recommend knipex plier wrenches. They can be steep, but sometimes easy to find depending on your local 2nd hand market. There’s also some equivalent wrenches from Irwin and Lennox that are cheaper new.

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks! I might look into that

[@DragonBuilds]

Wiha also makes a nice one. They come in handy for everything, not just turning bolts.

[@YerBrwnDogAteMyRabit]

​@@HardwareHavenI 2nd that. Knipex " pliers wrenches" are the way to go. Worth the little bit of extra dough.

[@KameraShy]

There's also a Horrible Fright Tools version. Icon is about half the price and is their professional top of the line brand.

[@danielrunyon4830]

they do not compare to Knipex. i have 4 or 5 sets of their pliers, and their plier wrenches are superb. honestly i'd probably pay twice what they cost, and they're not exactly cheap. @@KameraShy

[@testerrtestowwyyy3941]

I chose as a base a board for the 8.9th generation of Intel, and an i3-9100, the board can be expanded to 64GB RAM (currently 32GB), I have much greater expansion possibilities plus transcoding and that's what I wanted when switching from i5-3450 [I checked and i3-9100 is even faster synthetically than i7-4770, and I also had it on hand, which unfortunately is not supported in Jellyfin for QSV], together with 2xSSD [Proxmox system] and 4x2TB [data] power consumption is at the level of 50W capable idle time during transcoding about 60W, temperatures do not exceed 40 degrees C, and most importantly, I found a used motherboard with 2x M.2NVMe [ASUS PRIME B360M-A], I managed to keep the expenses to about $200, and I have really great possibilities, I am very excited! Greetings from Poland!

[@minikame2272]

I've been running this exact PC for years! Well I mean, the one you intended to buy rather than the one you bought. It's an absolute gem on the used market and this video's the validation I didn't know I wanted. Even though yours has a lesser CPU (I got the 7700 variant) that's easily sorted out with a 1050 Ti, it's powered entirely through PCIe and is absurdly cheap these days.

[@human__________]

i don't understand why transcoding is required. what are you watching on that can't decode (or whatever) on it's own? or do i not understand what transcoding is.

[@starfox.64]

I'm a year late, but here's a 20 second rundown: decoding is how you play files, but transcoding can make them small. that applies to both file size and resolution, for devices that don't have a 4K or 1080p screen.

[@codefallacy]

This is awesome, im currently going through a similar route as you took in this video, after watching your mini pc video i bought a used hp elitedesk 800 g3 sff for like 80 bucks, i wanted to make the ultimate home server on the cheap, including game streaming. i was amazed by the specs for the price: i5-8500 6 cores 16gb RAM 1TB ssd 2x 3.5 HDD slots 2x M.2 NVME slots (also supports sata m.2) and 4 pcie slots i ended up bying 16gb of ram for 20 bucks bumping it to 32gbs and $100 in total for the pc (not including hard drives) unfortuantely i found out you cant boot through the nvme drives no matter what you do, but they are recognized and can be passed to vms. i also ran into a hickup with the gpu i bought, i ended up getting a tesla p4 gpu which is enterprise but the machine is having issues recognizing it, ill have to continue to test. but i love everything in this video. im thinking of making a video about my results when its all set and done. love the content.

[@moniika000]

Have bought the mini version ans have the exact same problem, ssd nvme not recognized by proxmox at installtion, the fix was to disable a Intel feature on bios

[@peonyattache]

@@moniika000 What feature did you have to disable? I’m looking at getting the exact same setup as @codefallacy.

[@moniika000]

I had to disable the "intel optane" option@@peonyattache

[@mjmeans7983]

Do you know if the SATA controller on those pcs support SATA-PM protocol? Is so, it could support the QNAP Dual 2.5” SATA SSD to 3.5” SATA adapter in order to get 2 JBOD drives a single SATA port. And maybe even use StarTech M.2 to 2.5" adapters to get 4 JBOD M.2 drives into a single 3.5" bay on a single SATA port.

[@teamskeet2006]

I chose an RPi5 4gb, NVMe hat w/SSD and have had zero issues running jellyfin and qbittorrent simultaneously, non-stop. I can watch anything while jellyfin is transcoding and have not suffered any playback issues. Just works, but...I have several hundred dollars tied up in it, as well. I probably could have gotten a better mini pc for the same money, but not so sure I could have found one to equal the low power consumption of the Pi

[@rsaffi]

Tip, in case you already have some storage solution in place (in my case: Synology NAS): I bought a Beelink Mini S12 Pro for €100 to be a dedicated Jellyfin machine and it was by far the best decision! Super low energy consumption for amazing transcoding performance. That Intel N100 CPU is great! Highly recommend you check it out!

[@frankchau]

Hey, I have a synology NAS. What’s your setup like? How did you connect your beelink to your nas?

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

love the beeinks

[@rsaffi]

@@frankchau jellyfin running on the beelink as docker container with GPU pass-through and mounting the NAS shares via NFS, directly in the container.

[@Nalianna]

Where is a link to the table you have showing at 3:12? That looks really handy to have.

[@TribbleBot]

A couple of months ago I moved our Plex server from its old home to one of these machines as a dedicated Plex server, running an i5-6500 and a bare-metal Ubuntu server install. It was a refurb system off eBay with an NVMe drive and a 500 GB HDD, which got replaced with the 8 TB media HDD from the old server. All I really had to do was install Plex, copy its directory over, and mount the HDD in the same filesystem location and it fired right up. We don't have any 4k media but it handles transcoding Blu-ray rips to my phone quite well. I also installed Jellyfin to try it out and while it works well enough, the version of WebOS on the LG TV in the living room is unfortunately too old for the Jellyfin app to run. Also unfortunately, the Blu-ray slimline drive from my 800 G1 SFF Proxmox server doesn't fit the bay in the G3 - the drive's too tall, believe it or not.

[@jjmmjj9999]

you can install jellyfin on a firetv stick, which is how my girlfriend watches stuff on the tv

[@arielaco]

I got a DELL Optiplex 5070 USFF PC With i5-9500T /8Gb RAM (No disk) for $96.00. There's no much room for hard disks, just m.2 and 2.5" HDD, but it has USB-C and I'll put an ORICO 5 BAY with RAID though that, and maybe a 4 bay disk tower as a backup. 35W CPU, but enough power for transcoding and a lot more

[@justanotheramerican8394]

Great video! For a future video idea it would be cool to see you do a security camera NVR setup

[@nalinux]

My Jellyfin server is an old laptop with a Core 2 T5800 2 GHz and 4 Go ram, running Linux Debian, with an external USB drive :) Of course, no transcoding with the integrated Intel video card. but I don't need it. If you don't need transcoding, about any computer can run Jellyfin.

[@HardwareHaven]

True! Just ran it on a t620 that can barely run Lubuntu lol

[@jusk2ru]

Bought a G3 a month a go for my mom for office use and now a G4 for my self to make a server. What a versetile little machene.

[@kris.andrews]

I use my Mac Mini M1 as a Plex and Jellyfin server as well as being my photo video computer. With an external drive it works great as a media server. It is really low power and also great to rip your DVDs and Blu-rays, getting around 300 frames per second for encoding DVDs and 60 for Blu-rays. They are getting pretty cheap now they have been replaced with the M2 version.

[@sudarshan6530]

How is transcoding performance? I am thinking to connect M1 mini to my Synology for jellyfin.

[@kris.andrews]

@@sudarshan6530 seems fine so far, I have enabled hardware acceleration and watched quite a lot of films in different ways such as mobile phone/tablet/fire trv stick/browser and all have worked great. Also watched a mix of h264 and h265 source files with no problems. Hope yours works out well.

[@canny8228]

Wow! Small world... I actually bought that same ProDesk 600 G3 with the Pentium G4560 from that same ebay seller. Mine fortunately came in better physical shape than yours did. I dropped a 6TB HDD into it and use it as a backup drive on my network. You're right that it sips power! For my Plex server I have an i3-8100 running Linux Mint that I've been using for quite a while.

[@Johnny_1122]

I have a similar system, but with an i5 7500 in it. I upgraded it to 24 gigs of ram to be able to run docker while running windows server. I even got a quadro p620 for video transcoding an video output, so now it works as a server/htpc.

[@yourpcmd]

The funny thing is, is that I have an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF with an i5-7600 32Gb ram running with a 128gb nvme boot and using a PCIe 4 port SATA card and 4 4TB SSDs. Hell of a home lab server for all in of around $150. I had the memory, nvme, and SSDs since I own an IT shop and rotate out business machines.

[@EJD339]

Just want you to know this video made me get what you set out for me. I was using a 9020 dell optiplex and it was working but this video made me want to get the intel 8th gen cpu and so happy I did. I’m using half the amount of energy on my new server and it’s doing so much better. Only cost me 160!on eBay.

[@HeroRareheart]

The more stuff you stack on the software side the more needlessly complex your setup and troubleshooting will become. IMO TrueNAS is great for this kind of build, it functions as a hypervisor and has a Jellyfin plugin ready to deploy in the app catalog. Unfortunately to make it work though you'd need to get a slimline optical drive to 2.5 bay adapter though. Edit: Oops, I didn't notice the SSD on the board, that'll work fine as a boot drive for TrueNAS to. Either way adding a 3rd drive would allow for a RAID 5 and gain you some wright speed improvements and more space while still allowing for 1 drive failure!

[@savirien4266]

My home server setup: Windows server with a cheap key. Run truenas core in a vm for zfs and pass the storage to windows through iscsi. I get a big shared drive on the network I can just pass media to, jellyfin will pickup the new files automatically. iscsi allows me to use postgres, which was the real reason for it. I got 32gb worth of ecc memory, a sas card, and 10 used 4tb enterprise drives (using 8 with 2 for backup) from ebay. Had on hand a ryzen 2700X, mobo, psu, case, low end gpu. Probably spent less than 200 for a decently powerful do-all home server. Using raidz3 as I have family photos and videos going back decades stored on there. I think I ended up with 21tb total of some pretty resilient storage.

[@boostaddict_]

I don't have anything that supports 4k, and size is one of my concerns. So I ordered a 600 G3 mini with an i5 6500T lol. Have a 2TB M.2 SSD, just need to decide on boot media and I'll be watching for a cheap 2TB 2.5" drive for a raid 1 backup. If I want 4k transcoding in the future, all it takes is a CPU upgrade.

[@cordlesswire]

why transcoding? if you are streaming in home, just do direct play. if outside, then yes. but in home? leave the cpu and gpu, let them rest. why use 200w when watching a movie on your tv, when you can direct play and use like 40w. it adds up if watching regularly.

[@HardwareHaven]

Don’t know where 200w and 40w came from. I posted the power consumption in the video, which was 30W while transcoding. Also, plenty of people do exactly what you mentioned. Stop applying your use case/preference to everyone else.

[@cordlesswire]

@@HardwareHaven yeah, saw that right after i left my comment, lol. ok, so its 30w. frankly, not a big difference from 30w. sure. but, still. i get it that you wanted to explain how to set up transcoding, and thats fine. have good one.

[@HardwareHaven]

​@@cordlesswire Well to be fair, 200W to 30W is a big difference, but oh well haha. Have a good one as well!

[@CatWithoutAHat901]

Those Intel Chipsets support Hardware Raid, I would've used that instead of a software raid solution. You have to switch the SATA Mode in BIOS from AHCI to RAID, then at startup you can access the option rom for the raid controller.

[@igorschmidlapp6987]

"Be sure BEFORE you click"... words to live by when online ANYWHERE... Makes me appreciate the "Are you sure?" confirmation pop-up...

[@rafisburganov]

And what should "CasaOS doesn't support raid" mean? Isn't casa just some container manager on top of any linux os? Is it that hard to config raid using 1 config file and couple of commands? Is it THAT critical to have this functionality in fancy web ui?

[@HardwareHaven]

You're correct, and I have setup RAID with it, but I imagine someone setting up CasaOS is wanting a simple solution. I also had some weird issues with how CasaOS recognized the mount point for the array, so I just went the route I went. Not saying it was the best option.

[@rafisburganov]

@@HardwareHaven yes, probably you're right speaking about newcomers, I think casaos will add this feature in the future, afterall it is still relatively new project. Thank for the video!

[@severgun]

When you know nothing about computers. No fancy button = does not support.

[@HardwareHaven]

@@severgun Poor choice of words, sure. I should've said that they still haven't implemented support for managing raid within the UI. Get off your high horse dude, lol

[@HardwareHaven]

@@rafisburganov Last I checked one of the developers either said they're working on it or plan to. It would be great to have that as an option to recommend to family/friends

[@Fearless13468]

My mom got a new PC so I got her old Dell with an i5-8400. She couldn't use it anymore because Windows 11 became practically unusable on it's single HDD. I threw in 32GB of RAM and it works great for hosting MC servers, DVD ripping, encoding, and hosting Jellyfin. It just takes some patience to get it all set up. I only have a single, 1TB HDD. It is the only drive in the PC so it it fails I lose everything, but I mostly store DVD rips anyway, so I can always spend a week recollecting them from the source after getting a new drive.

[@rwstarke]

I got this off of am for $132 ... HP Prodesk 600 G3 Micro Computer Mini PC (Intel Quad Core i5-7500T 2.7Ghz, 16GB DDR4 Ram, 512GB SSD, 4K Support, DP, USB 3.0, USB-C) Win 10 Pro (Renewed). It came with a DP to HDMI adapter. I am using my WD My Book 3TD external drive to store videos. I installed Jellyfin.

[@revealingfacts4all]

i'm attempting the same exercise for frigate. I need at least a 10th gen processor to get QuickSync. I also am looking for a dual NIC setup to isolate the video onto its own network.

[@WoodyTheArmadillo]

I've done a jellyfin out of a raspberry pi 3, no transcoding only direct copy, works great and cost me only $30 for the rpi and $10 for the sd card.

[@jonspoonamore3721]

Old Network/System Admin here.... In my home media server, I went the other way. I favored using a lot of drive space vs space-saving x265 transcoding. Large drives are getting cheaper all the time. I pre-transcode all my media to X264 to minimize "On-The-Fly" transcoding. This basically eliminates any need for X265/HVEC hardware for me because I media-serve my Family and Friends. At any giventime, my Emby Server will be streaming anywhere between 1 and 7 streams. I currently have a fairly beefy Xeon with 12C/24T and it really can't handle more than 2 X265 transcodes at the same time. This is why I stick with X264. Currently, I stick with 1080p. I won't go to 4K until AV1 becomes a standard video codec across the board. I just recently purchased a Samsung 4K TV for the living room. It does a great job upscaling video to 4K!

[@jonspoonamore3721]

I am currently building a new Desktop/Media-Server for myself. It will by Ryzen based. I am almost of drive space in my current system. I will be replacing my current 4 8TB WD Reds with 2 20TB Reds for $290 a pop. I was only able to get 2 on sale. I'll buy a 3rd when I catch them on sale again.

[@HardwareHaven]

That’s awesome! And it goes to show there are multiple approaches that might make sense for different people. Thanks for the comment!

[@l4nzo0]

i wonder if you can make a home server with only a phone, it doesnt have to be new you could use a used phone

[@HardwareHaven]

Possibly!

[@moraespaulo2]

It would be awesome!

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

it is possible I have seen some attempts on XDA forum's. but dealing with battery puffing up is a pain. I have not seen a easy to modify battery less mods for any phones. as most don't even boot without a battery.

[@biscuitsofdeath]

In my use case I need to have this connected to the network. Then I'll have my tv jellyfin client connect over the network. Do you know how it performs over the network. Would your hardware recs change?

[@rrq]

Just picked up one of these recently for $65. Great PC

[@Bastian354]

Nooooooooooo, i needed one or two more of these for myself to finish the cluster :D But as it's too late now, i can wholeheartedly support you getting one, got two at the moment and i love them so far

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

I hate when I am eyeing something to buy and a youtuber drops a video and the product is are either overpriced or out of stock.

[@sbarneaionut]

I just bought one but the 400 G4 for 65 quid. I want this to replace my Dell server which is not as used as I believed and that draws 60-70W compare to this which I hope will idle at around 20W and still be not 100% used by far. Should achieve Plex,Adguard,Transmission and few other jails plus a linux virtual machine without being not even 50% used. Hopefully will go well :)

[@asaskald]

I love low tech Linux projects. I'm planning on building a jellyfin server for my girlfriend's house. Excellent content, man!

[@TheMisiel12]

I did this six months ago and its working fine, I just have problems with transcoding to a Roku TV (tone mapping, some codecs, subtitles in ASS format not working), I will look into moving JellyFin from docker to an OS install, or to get a 20dll 4k .onn tv box for that TV.

[@TheMisiel12]

UPD: the linux server docker image ¨linuxserver/jellyfin¨ solves the transcoding configuration issues.

[@cameronfrye5514]

I bought an Elitedesk 800 G5 with an AMD Ryzen Pro 3400G. It came with 16 GB memory on a single stick (unfortunately) and a 256 GB M.2 drive. It idles at 17 watts and has 2 m.2 sockets, 3 SATA connections and 4 memory slots.. but I didn't think to look at which video codecs it handles. The Ryzen might have been a mistake.. I'll have to get JellyFin on it this week and see what it can do.

[@HardwareHaven]

I think it can still do quite a bit using the VA-API, but Intel’s quick sync is definitely a bit better typically if comparing the same generations

[@EagleSightLabs]

How's this working out for you? I got the 800 G3 based on your recommendation in this video. I got it as a barebones kit for $49 and even bough a HP Blu-ray drive so I can start building my own Plex collection. I got the G4560 and 32GB of memory. I got a 2 TB SSD am just waiting on the money to buy me a couple of 14 TB HDDs to use for storage. My thought process was I could set up TrueNAS and install Plex, automatic-ripping-machine, & Tdarr via Docker. Goal is to make this a bare metal ripping machine for setting up my Plex collection and testing everything. Then later on when I have the money to set up a NAS I'll move the finished files over to that for a true Plex setup.

[@anvostok]

It's been to hard for me to understand all the issues 'cause I'm a 'bit' far from all there servers/streaming))) So... what are basic steps (os, vm, etc. step-by-step) and good choices to get Jellyfin machine on 'naked' HP 400 G5 with two mirrored hdds?))

[@HardwareHaven]

If you're able to afford it, I would check out UnRAID. It's probably the simplest and easiest OS to use for NAS and hosting VMs and containers. Outside of that, you could try out Open Media Vault, as there are some decent tutorials on there. You could also just install Debian and setup aa RAID mirror yourself, but that involves a bit of cmd line. There's also TrueNAS, but I'm not as big of a fan of running containers with that because it uses Kubernetes by default which is a bit overkill imo.

[@jhonyortiz5]

Ive tried using jellyfin in a docker container using rootless docker but i dont know enough to get it working. So i just installed docker with root privileges and added the dev/dri folder in the devices section of the docker compose file. Also i think i had to add the groud id somewhere in the compose file. Anyway, cant get jellifin to work on rootless docker. Hardware transcoding gets difficult.

[@eddezz]

I just bought a HP Elitedesk 800 G3 with a i5 7500 today before finding this video for the exact same use case for 135 Euro with Shipping from the UK to Sweden without the Shipping it would have just cost me 80 Euro but in Sweden they go for more than my price with the shipping if you want one with a 7th gen cpu here the cheapest i found was 170 Euro. And I also scored a 14 TB Iron wolf 150 Euro that a kid had used to store his 4K videos for 2 Years so haven't had a rough life and many use hours. So in total my NAS that will run Jellyfin have cost me 285 Euro.

[@zacherykromowidjojo5773]

Will the transcoding also work in a windows machine?

[@Riptide1884]

One of these worked great for me, thanks for the recommendation.

[@natearrigoni]

Thank you for this video. I just got a Zima board and adding jellyfin to the other Dri entry group got my trans-coding working! I'm so new to all this but chugging along.

[@stephenxs8354]

Why run in VM at all and not direct OS on drive? Ignore shipping in actual total cost?

[@JTBivens]

I tried jellyfin. It would not work like at all. Not sure why. It would not let me even log in. And the android app would not connect either. Plex was super simple and worked no problem.

[@Daniel-CoolTI]

Powerful hardware is never necessary for fun little home projects. My home server is a tiny Dell Micro with a laptop based 4th Gen I5 running 4 cores 4 threads @ 2.0GHz. 1TB SSD inside, 16GB Ram + 4 drive bay on USB3 with loads of storage. It's in the barely used Basement Living Room, running Windows 10, connected to an old 60" plasma TV and it runs the following jobs. TV Computer for netflix, prime video and whatever else. Runs VMWare with an Ubuntu vm configured as my plex server. Run another VM with FreePBX for my phone system Runs UrBackup service keeping backups of all my home computers. My Upstairs TV PC is actually an Elitebook G3 with an I7-6700, 32GB Ram, 500GB NVME. I added it an Nvidia Geforce 1050Ti 4GB. But no server usage on this one. It's all TV, Emulators and light couch videogames such as Streets of Rage4, heroes of might and magic 2/3, and to my surprise it runs Jedi Fallen Order on 4k with medium settings respectably well.

[@Yuriel1981]

2 4tb ssds would have been optimal and since you can find them for under 150..... totally worth it.

[@HardwareHaven]

Probably not a bad idea!

[@hotstovejer]

Any idea on what the overhead is on running your media library off of your nas? If I'm able to pull data at 100mb/s over the network, I know I'm not reaching the throughput of some spinning rust, but I'd have to back up the media library anyways, right?

[@Shrapnel-dg3hd]

You've done got me hooked on these. Bought one last week, for jellyfin (went to Emby with it though). Just bought a M01-F1033WB with a 10th gen i3, that I'm thinking the power supply doesn't work. Should have it by Friday.

[@themillenial9405]

Hi, will there be an upcoming video about what you do on home server security?

[@lonster3000]

Why do you need Proxmox or Docker for a box that you’re only using as a Jellyfin server?? Throw some kind of Linux on it and be done. What am I missing?

[@crispaul27]

Would the EliteDesk 800 G3 support a pair of 6TB 3.5 HDDs?

[@HardwareHaven]

Yep, just make sure they’re SATA and not SAS. Probably shouldn’t be an issue unless you’re buying used enterprise or something like that.

[@crispaul27]

@@HardwareHaven Excellent! Thanks for the quick reply, I'm trying to snag one of these to upgrade from an old and limited QNAP SS-439. Your videos are awesome man... Discovered your channel recently and I've been binge watching every night for the past couple of weeks. Keep it up!

[@Suzuki_Hiakura]

I found a listing for the 800 g3 mini ones that was just a ton of used barebone systems that were used in hospital workstations. Bought 2 for about 60 dollars, and so far bought an NVME, 16 GB RAM stick, and a Wi-Fi antenna for about the same. I hope to build a server capable of running Plex when I leave it at home and outperform my dual-core-quad-thread laptop when I take it with me. Decided to go with the 7700 processor, which is not the 7700T that eBay keeps recommending, and is more than capable (on paper) of running a gaming server or two. Honestly am just hoping I can run the h265 encoded plex media tbh... it's the only potential issue I would have.

[@WaynePittenger]

I was trying some of the film footage you were showing because it looked familiar. Is it Exodus from 1960 starring Paul Newman?

[@HardwareHaven]

I think that was the Metadata that Jellyfin pulled up. The clip I was using was from here:kodi.wiki/view/Samples The 10-Bit HEVC 24 example is a trailer for "exodus"

[@jfogerty77]

I bought a month ago dell optiplex small form factor with skylake i5 processor so I can toy around in proxmox. It has only two 2.5" hdd spaces but otherwise I'm quite happy with it. Power consumption on idle is only 15W.

[@wagnsonner]

Can i use USB HDs for movie storage?

[@balarila99]

Will this also work with an Intel N95 miniPC?

[@timog6289]

Hey, I want to set up a home server that I can use for different things. I want to use it as a NAS, 2 Minecraft servers (1 vanilla and 1 modded), and something like Jellyfish or Plex for video streaming. What CPU and how much RAM would you recommend? As the Main OS, I wanted to go with TrueNas scale.

[@HardwareHaven]

It really depends on how much you’re using the NAS, what network speeds you’re using, how many people you expect on each Minecraft server, etc…

[@timog6289]

@HardwareHaven network for the foreseable future will only be 1gig maybe 2,5gig. NAS mainly for storing the ripped movies for Plex/Jellyfish, maybe some pictures and documents to backup. And minecraft at the start there won't be as many but I would like to have the option for about 50 people simultaneously on each. At least for the start.

[@anthonyrussano]

i have been running jellyfin in my proxmox cluster, i was never able to get gpu hardware passthrough to work properly for the transcoding though

[@dlshady]

Forgive my ignorance, but is there any benefit to adding more RAM to a system like this? I watched this video and decided this is the route I need to take for streaming my media library, and I just purchased an EliteDesk 800 G3 off of eBay with the i7-7700 processor in it. Is there any benefit in adding more RAM than the 16GB it already has?

[@rydonwunali]

I watched your video and boom just like that I found one for £20, now I feel on top of the world. It's like I can also see my self not paying those subs anymore in the future

[@Bassterino]

Funny, you always forget to mention Emby. Only Jellyfin and Plex.

[@HardwareHaven]

It’s because I HATE Emby… Nah lol I just haven’t had time to mess around with it. I should probably mention it, but I just don’t think about it. I also don’t get as many people asking for content on it.

[@WalterPetrovic]

I got an i7 Dell Optiplex recently and am running MINT on it. I would like to access it remotely, to watch movies, tv shows or listen to music on the three 10TB harddrives that I own. Would Jellyfin be a good fit for me? Also, I would like to know if it can be accessed by a few friends. I just switched to Linux this year and want to get the most out of it.

[@milangeorge]

Hi, i am planning on one with two 10TB disks, can you share which dell optiplex model you are using?

[@WalterPetrovic]

@@milangeorge Optiplex 3035 with HDGraphics 630 i5 7500 8 GB Ram

[@milangeorge]

@@WalterPetrovic thank you

[@WalterPetrovic]

The i7 I was thinking of was my tiny Lenovo which only worked for a week. Still ok for $50.

[@frankchau]

Hi there! If I have an old synology NAS what would be a good way to connect the PC to the synology NAS so I can make good use of the PC hardware while using the drives from the NAS?

[@waynebagger643]

The short answer is network shares. I have a similar setup with Jellyfin running in a docker container on an HP Deskpro mini G3 i5-7500T with just a boot drive locally. The media files come from my old Synology DS215j. Plenty of guides online - that's how I got mine working.

[@igorschmidlapp6987]

You sound like Michael Bolton in "Office Space", who said that he always screws up by missing some normally trivial little thing... LOL... ;-)

[@benzene15]

Just picked up a g4 for my home server!

[@jeffnew1213]

Unfortunately, your implementation tops out at the capacity of a single hard disk drive, currently 22TB. So the build relies on you having a small to mid-size media library. For those of up who have libraries more than twice that size, the selection of the base system you used necessitates another choice. What would you select, in regard to off-lease systems, for something that you could fit a reasonable -- say eight -- number of drives into? (Disclaimer: My primary Plex server runs on a Synology NAS with 12 drive bays. I'll be looking to replace that early next year.)

[@maskettaman1488]

I'd reckon 99.9% of jellyfin users don't see topping out at 22TB of media as an issue

[@Rockwolf50]

How long do you really need to keep that crappy one season sitcom from 2018 around? Do you really need Ironman in both 4K and 1080? The point is, any real media server in production doesn’t need any more than 16tb in my opinion. Media is easy to acquire so why keep stuff you will never ever watch again around?

[@jeffnew1213]

@@Rockwolf50I am not the only person who uses my Plex. Hence, both Little Mermaid and Barbie are in my library. I even have some content in Hindi, for coworkers and, yes a lot of crappy TV going back to the 60s and earlier (I dream of Jeannie, The Partridge Family, Star Trek: TOS, The Six Million Dollar Man, etc., etc.) A 16TB media collection is a nice start and I can see where you're coming from. Our use cases are different.

[@simmyqux]

Same here. I'm at 52TB covering 2 servers and my media library covers silent movies all the way to the latest releases and some of those were VERY hard to find. I'm not deleting anything unless it holds absolutely 0 interest from me or anyone that uses my server.

[@DominikZalewski85]

I already got an older Synology DS716+II NAS with INTEL Celeron N3160 running Plex on docker. It's not great for transcoding but by my streams are direct. I'm looking to get Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Mini PC Intel i3-7100T and make it dedicated Plex server with media mounted from NAS. Alternativly I might get Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny PC - i5-8400T and make it a Proxmox server with Plex and other services running under docker.

[@kenzieduckmoo]

One thing I’ve wondered is why people aren’t doing things like network storage. Since most of these builds don’t include drives, seems like it’d be no issue to instead run the stuff off of a smaller corporate or nuc style system and it pull your media off of a truenas or synology box

[@derrickwinslow3901]

Well then you’re looking at 600$ base.

[@chrisumali9841]

Thanks for the demo and info, have a great day

[@scotty562]

These would make a perfect NAS. Think I'll pick up a G4 and have it pull double duty as a Jellyfin server.

[@kevinhu196]

As a Canadian, I envy your ebay listing and shipping prices.

[@maskettaman1488]

No kidding. Just checked it out and shipping on ebay pretty much doubles the cost of everything. $60 for the PC and $50 for shipping just 1 province over. Absolutely insane.

[@rasyazafaropane]

I found your channel since the 2nd video was out, i even forget i subscribed. It's nice to see you appear in my recommendation again

[@HardwareHaven]

Nice to have you in the comments!

[@rasyazafaropane]

@@HardwareHaven by any chance, do you remember me? be honest please. (Sorry for this naive response)

[@put4ng1n4m0]

I have an SFF optiplex with 8700 (non-k) and I inserted a low profile 1650. Would it work?

[@HardwareHaven]

I would honestly just give the iGPU on the 8700 a shot. It handles transcoding pretty well and draws a lot less power than the 1650 would 👍🏻

[@JustinvEmst]

I’m running a Xeon W-2123 with 32GB RAM and Nvidia Quadro P4000 on a Windows 10 system with Plex.. Performance with transcoding is just to sad. Sometimes it tooks minutes to Watch an movie on the webapp. Or it stutters (Yes , i’ve Plex pass and HW encoding enabled)

[@LearnerX1]

Should I just go for intel mini-pc for media centres? or ryzen is fine?

[@omarguerrero6417]

What if someone just wanted to play the movie first without backing it up how would it play the movie or how would it work

[@frankwong9486]

Do we need ecc memory for running zfs pool ?

[@haydenc2742]

Don't forget to add ZRAM to the PROXMOX OS...it really helps Very cool...I have a few of those cheapo computers I build for my mother in law and such...these work great for PROXMOX builds and a few virtual machines...make sure you use SSD's or the performance of the virtual machines can be a bit sluggish! Keep em coming!!!!

[@AdamAmbrus]

thanks for the video. So compared to an off-the-shelf NAS solution this saves around a 100€ (considering the cheapest 2bay QNAP NAS at the moment in my area goes for 180€)... But you bring up good points regarding the HW Transcoding, hadn't thought of those. Decisions, decisions...

[@extsykush]

I don't check it. Why transcode? I run my jellyfin for years without transcoding. Only direct streaming. It works perfect.

[@williamhicks2763]

Could you explain this a little more for a noob? If I have a h265 10-bit HDR movie on my NAS or desktop but no Jellyfin app on my TV what do I need? Reading the comments it seems like I need a FireStick or something connected to the TV that will run the Jellyfin app. I know my NAS cannot transcode this file but the TV will if I put it on a USB stick and plug it into the TV. Could I still run Jellyfin in this direction mode so somehow the TV is doing the transcoding? Sorry, may be a stupid question but just trying to figure this out. Does the computer running Jellyfin need to be directly connected to the TV to use direct or can this happen over Ethernet?