Hey everyone, I’m pretty new to this, I’ve only been running Jellyfin on my laptop for media but nothing 24/7. Honestly, it’s not bad and I like it better than paying a thousand different streaming services. I also have some experience with Linux so this seems like a pretty fun hobby I’d say :)
I want to get more into self hosting some other stuff, but I don’t have a very big budget, I want the bare minimum to get things working without too much trouble. Also I’d rather not have a big setup since space is pretty limited where I am. This is what I’d like to host:
- Jellyfin (with *Arr optional)
- PiHole or some other ad blocker/privacy
- Magic Mirror or other way to display weather, public transit schedules etc… (I actually just found out about this on another thread so I’d say its optional too. I’m planning on connecting it to a small display rather than a mirror)
- And whatever else you might recommend :)
As far as data storage goes, I’m not a very “materialistic” person, so I’m sorted out with my backup hard drives and devices that go everywhere with me. This wouldn’t be necessary, but if I have the capacity I’d say why not. I don’t necessarily want to have my network exposed to the public Internet, I don’t want to do networking and having everything run on a local network is more than enough for me.
I know about RaspberryPis but the shortage and inflated prices are not ideal, so I’ve been looking into Libre Computer’s lineup (LE Potato specifically). Mini PCs and old laptops seem like a viable option but is there anything in particular spec-wise I should look for?
Thanks in advance :)
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If you go old PC and use it for Jellyfin, you probably want hardware that can do accelerated video transcoding so you probably want to aim for 8th gen or newer Intel CPUs (with integrated graphics), because that gets you 10bit h265 transcoding, which I’d say is probably the bare minimum you should aim for these days.
Granted that’s 5 or 6-year-old hardware, so it’s hardly new, but it took me a bit to figure out why in the world the transcoding performance and quality sucked and what’s supported where and at what gen of hardware is… hilariously unclear.
Oh nice for the heads up, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for transcoding capabilities. I don’t understand transcoding that well yet, so I know what I’ll be reading up on next.
Get an laptop made in the last 5 years or so and put in a 2 tb ssd and you’re off to the races. Install pop os or Ubuntu Linux on it and use a low memory windows ux like LXQt or run it headless
I am running my home server on a Dell 3050 from shopgoodwill.com and it was ~$40 without hard drives. It has room for an m2 drive and SSD so I have Ubuntu/Docker on the m2 and all my data on an SSD.
That looks interesting, I’ve got one question though, how noisy would you say that machine is? Is it louder than a small box fan on a hot summer day, or more like a blender in the next room?
It has a laptop style fan for the cpu. I’ve never noticed any noise but I have it off in a corner and near some noisy af parakeets so it’s silent to me.
SBC’s like Raspberry Pi’s are ok, but tend to suck for fileserving tasks like Jellyfin. Their CPU’s are poor IPC and will choke on transcoding video, and they’re pretty I/O limited too. They’ll work but they’re not scalable if you’re expecting more than one or two users. And straight up forget using the onboard SD cards for storage, they’re slow and will commit suicide as fast as you can replace them.
Some SBC’s with better I/O and CPU’s exist, such as the Orange Pi 5 I just bought which supports a NVME M.2 2242 drive and has a CPU roughly 4x the overall performance of a RPI. However, they’re also not cheap- a decent specced OPI5 with 8gb of memory will still run you $100. And they require the addition of aftermarket cooling to not thermal throttle constantly, which will take some tinkering. Given how bloody cheap flash memory has gotten though- you can get lower end 1TB M.2 drives for like $60- they’re a half decent option for a very power efficient and compact little set-and-forget self host board that can hold a respectable amount of media.
Next best thing would be to shop around Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist and find a SFF office PC like an Optiplex 9020. Try to get a i5 CPU for 4 cores, and a minimum of 4gb of RAM although 8 would be ideal. They’re small enough, although they will use significantly more power than a SBC (typical low-load idle for my 9020 is around 30W from the wall- under load it’s 110-120)
Laptops are more power efficient than SFF’s but you have to be careful that they have removable batteries. Li-ion cells can and will start to puff up when run fully charged at high temperatures, such in a closed laptop doing server duty.
I didn’t know SD cards would be so bad, I’ll definitely get an external drive then.
The orange seems like a good option too, sure it’s a bit pricier, but I could make it work if its worth it. And also, I’m not planning on having more than one concurrent user (just me on one device at a time) I don’t need to scale it, so I guess I’ll be fine with an orange or even a bit less?
Now that you mention it, I’d rather not start an impromptu BBQ so maybe laptops are not my first option, unless I can somehow limit the battery charge or completely bypass the battery. I’ll do some more research on that. As far as electricity goes, its very cheap where I am so I don’t think the less efficient mini PCs would hurt.
Thanks for the advice :)
