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?

all 17 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 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.

[+] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the great info. It helped correct a lot of things I had wrong in my head. One odd thing occurred to me. Should I be using a NAS? If the NAS is for storing media, and all the clients will be going through jellyfin on the server, shouldn't I just put the storage in the server? Seems like everything I read talks about having a NAS for a media server though, so I assume I am missing something.

My plan was to run linux and use docker to run the actual software. I have a decades of experience "using" linux, but while I technically administer linux boxes for work, I've never had to really dig deep. They are all in the cloud, so if things go wonky, you just setup a new instance. We use kubernetes and docker also. So linux and docker seem like they should be very doable for me, and even a great learning opportunity. I really should understand docker better in my line of work. :) So no need for a fancy UI on the box. Other than initial setup, I will probably just be SSH'ing into it.

[+] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks. I don't have anything leftover lieing around. I have two kids and used up all my old stuff to make computers for them during the pandemic. So right now I am seeing things on the internet saying to buy a NUC as the server. At least that should be pretty quite. And then add on a NAS. I will have to consider just building a PC and giving it a ton of storage though. Might not be much cheaper though, and certainly would be more work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can, but you'll be limited to USB drives for expansion after the internal drive is full.

Do you know if your current media requires transcoding?

I'm running my server off the Synology NAS, but this is really the most expensive way to run JUST jellyfin.

I would recommend picking up from Dell outlet or similar a desktop that has spacw for additional drives so you can put some larger drives for all your media needs.

For external access, I use tailscale.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't really understand the transcoding thing 100%. Like I get that something has to convert it from what is on disk to what you can see. But it isn't clear to me if things like my roku streaming stick or tivo streaming stick are doing the transcoding or if my current server is. And I am not really sure which I would want either.
On the running out of storage situation... if I get like a 2 bay NAS. And I run out of storage, what are my expansion options there? I assume I would have to get a bigger NAS. And would I just be able to transfer the hard drives? Couldn't I do the same with the PC, as long as I have a separate boot drive. (Just move the storage drives to a NAS?) And overall, I guess I probably want the easiest way. Seems like a NUC and a NAS isn't too expensive, and I am assuming it is easiest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

There is a chart on the jellyfin page about when transcoding happens. The server will video ranscode when you are attempting to play content the the client does not support or you are hitting the bandwidth cap or you enable subtitles for a client that doesn't support the subtitle's format. It will audio transcode when the audio format of the content is not supported by the client.

There are a few days to see if it's transcoding. You can check the logs or you can disable transcoding for the user account. When you attempt to play something the client will grow an error.

I have mine setup to only do audio transcoding. This is easy for any vou to do. For all my content I do my best to ensure morning requires video transcode.

With two bay NAS, I believe it depends on how you configure the file system. You should be able to upgrade to larger storage taking one drive out at a time.

I setup my NAS this year and just went with 4 bays and 18tb drives. I didn't want to think about my storage and I was committed to having a hands off solution that I should have to touch except to upgrade packages on.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Go at least 8th gen. The computing improvement is insane vs 6th gen. My server runs in an 8th gen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I set my server to power cycle each day and be off for a few hours to prevent my self from any issues with the mono runtime that jellyfin is using.

I wonder if .net is on the roadmap....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Odd, I only have to reboot mine for updates. Other than that it seems fine running on a Linux VM with 2GB RAM, after the initial setup.

And it uses the dotNet runtime 6 so I'm unclear on what roadmap you refer to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

On Linux is Jellyfin updated to use .NEt or is it still on mono.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As far as I can tell, it has always used the dotNet 6 framework.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I just check the git page, it's now using .net 8. Which is great. Maybe I can turn off the rebooting then. I did this to protect my self from mono lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Oh nice, I better check to make sure my server isn't running some weird version, thanks 👍