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?
6th gen works, 8th gen and up works better.
As long as you have enough RAM, you won’t get much more speed. 4GB should be enough. A minimal Linux install plus Jellyfin takes less than 16GB on disk, and anything is fast enough.
Fanless Intel runs a little hot for my taste, but it’s your build. I’ve run tiny/mini/micro systems that were virtually silent but still had a CPU fan to help move heat out.
Go at least 8th gen. The computing improvement is insane vs 6th gen. My server runs in an 8th gen.
You’ll want a CPU with hardware accelerated encoding or decoding for the media you’re likely to watch. Intel is a good choice in that regard, but check up on Quicksync capabilities for each generation of CPU you’re considering.
As for storage: you’ll need as much as you’ll want to transcode at the same time. If you have three people watching three different movies, you’ll need at least 20GB of media space to get any decent seek performance. Add to that about 4-10GB for a small Linux install and you may get by on as little as 32GB of SSD space. Then again, for current SSD prices, you may as well get a 128GB SSD to make sure you never run out of space.
If you like debugging low level boot issues, you could even use your NAS as a PXE boot server and boot the entire server without any storage whatsoever. I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you’re going for minimal, “0GB” is pretty minimal.
RAM should be big enough to support the transcoding process, a small web server, and a few operating system daemons. 4GB should be enough, 8GB will be plenty.
I’d recommend looking for a server board thst supports 2.5Gbps networking. If your NAS supports it (or your future NAS will) this will make the transcoding process a lot smoother.
I’m not sure if going fanless is achievable with transcoding unless you only watch SD stuff. If you pick the right hardware, your server should be practically silent with fans, though (case with good sound isolation + some Noctua fans are basically inaudible). There are fanless cases out there, but they’re often either super expensive (the ones cooling i5/i7 chips) or built for super weak chips (Intel Celeron).
You may be tempted by some recent AMD Ryzen chips that will provide amazing performance with very low power requirements, but AMD’s media engine may not be sufficient. You should check encoding and decoding support for every CPU you consider, just in case.
Some GPUs also provide hardware accelerated transcoding. If you’re going to be running Windows as a server, Nvidia may be an option. If you’re going to be running Linux on the server, Nvidia is not an option unless you’re a masochist. If you set up a second hand laptop as a server (free UPS built in! power efficient by design! Often very cheap if you can buy one with a broken screen!) this becomes even more pressing.
If you’re going to run Windows, make sure to get some spare storage so Windows update doesn’t clog up the disk, make sure to set up your firewall and power saving settings correctly, make sure to configure automatic updates right, and keep in mind the extra CPU load that Windows Defender will take up. I’m not sure if I’d go with 4GB of RAM on Windows, I’d use 8GB as a minimum there. Also check if your hardware can run Windows 11 (8th gen Intel or up!) because Windows 10 has about two years of support remaining, unless you want to buy your Windows updates for a few more years through a subscription after 2025.
As for your choice of Linux distro: it depends. If you want to scrape by on minimum hardware, you may want to go with a server version of Linux that doesn’t have a GUI (only a console prompt, you’re supposed to manage those servers from your computer through SSH or other remote management tools). If you can spare a few gigabytes of RAM for a fully fledged GUI, you could go Linux Mint, an easy to use Linux distribution suitable for beginners that looks and feels a bit like Windows. Alternatively, Kubuntu could be a good choice for beginners, as it has the benefit of the large Ubuntu community combined with the Windows-like KDE interface.
If you want to fancy, you could also install Kodi as a GUI. That’ll allow you to hook up your server to a TV and basically use it as a self-hosted smart TV. Unfortunately, you’ll probably have to buy separate hardware if you want to control the Kodi interface using your normal TV remote, but there are smartphone apps that let you use your phone as a network remote if you want to try it without buying an HDMI CEC decoder.
Lastly, I recommend you experiment with setting up Jellyfin on Linux(or Windows, I guess) inside of a virtual machine (use VirtualBox or Hyper-V or VMWare Player). That way you can experiment a little, maybe find a Linux flavour that suits your needs, before purchasing the actual hardware. You could also use this to learn how to set up things like automatic updates, remote management, a firewall, and all that, without having to deal with the mess of reinstalling a physical server.
I have a Beelink Celeron N100 box with 16GB RAM and the thing transcodes like a beast with Quicksync. An i5 or i7 is overkill IMO and will just give you higher power draw
