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Choosing the right hardware is complicated. If you are transcoding 4K video on jellyfin you probably want a Nvidia 1080 or higher video card.
If you're running Intel, 10th gen and higher with internal graphics has some pretty good encoding efficiency so you consume less power for a lot more work done.
I'm still rocking a 7th gen i7 with a 2070 super. It still gets the job done for me.
If you're ok buying used, I'd go for a first Gen Ryzen 8 core. They're cheap as chips since they don't support Windows 11, but the cpu is upgradable so you can upgrade if you need more power or want to run Windows 11. Also it's a ddr4 platform so the ram is under $100 for 64gb.
A GTX 1050 would be fine for Plex, and discrete graphics would be required if you go with the Ryzen recommendation. I think rtx 3060 is probably the sweet spot for a 12gb vram card, but you won't need that much unless your streaming to 5+ Plex users simultaneously.
If I'm going for Ryzen 8 core first Gen, can I find that in a dell optiplex or Lenovo thinkstation? Or should I search something else?
It's not impossible, but first Gen Ryzen was surprisingly good after AMD shit the bed for a few years. Most major manufacturers weren't willing to take a chance, though you can find some 2nd Gen available on the used market.
If it were me, I'd look for a motherboard/CPU combo and assemble it into your case of choice. That way you aren't stuck with the weird form-factors of pre-built office computers.
If OP need compactness, maybe micro atx or mini itx could help.
Although I've been thinking about doing like that I haven't found a good cheap compact case for mass HDD storage, pcie expansion for network upgrades and GPU installs...
Jonsbo makes some decent compact nas cases with plenty of space for drives. Look at their N series N3/N4 etc.
matx would be more upgradable than itx, but nobody is making either of them with 10gb Ethernet. So I personally would be looking at full ATX boards so I could add in a nic.
If going m-atx, there'd be enough pcie slots to get a cheap SFP+ 10G nic or better, tho...
I'll look at the jonsbo stuff tho, thanks !
Couple years ago I wouldn't have argued, but with graphics cards ballooning to 3+ slots, you have to be more careful about which slots on the motherboard have full enough lanes to support your cards. And you have to make sure your motherboard has the full x16 slot in the highest position which is less common on boards with m.2. otherwise there isn't room for expansion cards
You're right, although I'd be considering narrower cards and maybe blowers. This is a server build, not a main rig. So I'd get a GPU that's as close as possible to a glorified encoder ad possible and pocket the power savings. I don't have ac where I live...
I would buy an i5 9400 PC off eBay. Dell or Lenovo. Should be less than 200$.
Two requirements stand out: Media streaming (jellyfin) and multiple hard drives.
In the video front, Jellyfin has documented what you want to look for if you're building "new" (that is, not just using what you have lying about). Discrete video card is very much recommended for tranacoding (which will invariably happen). Check their docs here. They also cover which processor to use and why.
Let's consider drives now: what's the reasoning for multiple drives? I had this requirement too, then had a Dell OptiPlex SFF (Small Form Factor) fall in my lap. Because it can only handle 2 drives (in addition to the M2 OS drive), it made me rethink things. At first I added a 4 port SATA card and four 2.5" drives I had lying around. It worked, but what I realized was my media server needed enough storage to hold my library, but it didn't need internal redundancy. So currently it has an 8TB drive for my library, and an M2 drive for the OS (which is how this machine comes anyway). That drive is duplicated to a NAS and two other drives on different machines (to protect against drive failure).
I run a monthly host OS backup to my NAS, just in case (but it's a simple rebuild as my services/tools run in VM's).
I had a cooling issue at first, then realized it was an old machine (2017), and the cooler paste was likely hard. Cleaned it off and put on new and the fan now runs quietly, even when converting. At idle it hardly makes any noise at all.
One nice thing is it has a relatively small power supply, so it peaks at 80w while converting, and idles about 15w.
It lacks a discrete video card, so when it does transcoding the quality suffers a little. I'll need to upgrade the power supply to add a video card.
I'm really impressed with this little box - I'd buy another in a heartbeat.
I could get by with 2 HD bays -- it is more because I would like to use RAID if possible, and have an easier time to upgrade to larger capabilities as time goes on.
I've also just appreciated larger cases with more room -- with small cases sometimes it's hard to work in there.
Internal redundancy would be nice to have with a file server, but probably not necessary if I can have redundancy with regular backups instead.
Thanks for the ideas!
Oh, I hear ya on the space issue - there's almost no space in this SFF, but I like it's form factor so I'm willing to compromise.
Anymore I don't find RAID very useful, except for mirroring a drive. As I say this, I do have a NAS with 5 drives, but it's used as one of my replicators as it's too slow for anything else. I did run Proxmox with RAID for a while, that was pretty cool, I just don't need all it's capability.
These days I can get a large enough single drive for a box - I considered getting a 12TB but the price on the 8 was hard to beat and I won't be filling it anytime soon.
transitioning away from raid but I do love zfs for flexibility. A lot of the data I have is important for someone or somebody, so zfs and a decent backup solution is in use just to make sure. I went bananas and picked up a used Supermicro 4-node server that takes dual E5 Zeons (V1 or V2) with 2xE5-2620s and 49 gig ram in each node for £80 (I'm in the UK). Plenty of power and next is to upgrade the cpus to slightly better cpus to reduce power as it currently uses 2 nodes and I am pulling around 300 watts most of the time. Backup solution is an old Ryzen 3200G with 32 gig ram that runs truenas and has 5x3tb spinny drives in it
If you end up going with a SFF build, I would recommend a dedicated GPU for Jellyfin. Nothing fancy, just a low profile GTX-1030 or RX 550 to handle the transcoding. Otherwise you'll probably run into high CPU spikes while watching content from browser or some smart TVs.
An Intel CPU with quicksync is the better and way more energy efficient solution for transcoding. A regular 8th gen+ i7 can handle multiple 4k transcodes
Also it's not as RAM limited because it uses system memory which can be upgraded.