G’day! I am looking to build a jellyfin server with the arrs through docker. Any advice is welcome.
I want to use quicksync and have expandable storage. An SSD cache would be nice too. Not fussed about back ups for this media as important files I have backed up 321. I can’t afford a Synology Nas. I already have a bunch of SATA HDD’s with media on them that I would like to utilise in this build.
I was thinking of some type of hard drive bay and an Optiplex/Thinkcentre?
Question is, how does the PC and the hard drive bay connect? Do I need any other hardware? Am I even on the right path here? Go easy on me, I’m new to this and on a budget. Thanking you all and here’s to cutting the cord!
Go for 12th Gen Intel cpus. You can get a simple atx cabinet wirh good airflow and install a few fans to cool the hard drives. SSD is useful for cache and OS but that’s it, so 512GB is fine for it but you can also get 1TB for future proofing.
What’s the benefit of 12th gen? Over say 9th or 10th? I need weigh up if It’s worth saving up for as it’s a little out of my budget right now. Most I’ll be running is 2-3 1080p streams at home.
Topton/CWWK/BKHD NAS motherboard from AliExpress - includes N5105 or J6412 processors, 2 M.2 slots and 2x ddr4 slots. They haven’t started rolling out N100 boards yet otherwise I would have gone for that.
32gb ddr4
EVGA supernova 450gm power supply. Overkill but they don’t make many sfx power supplies that are fully modular.
2x1tb nvme drives
Case has 5 hdd bays for a pretty decent amount of media storage.
Cost me less than $600 USD not including any HDD. Modifying this a little could probably put you under $500
Prior to this I used an old Optiplex 3040 sff ($100) with a 1tb HDD and core i3 6100 and replaced the cd drive with a SSD bay so I could boot the OS off of that. It worked for a budget but didn’t have any expandable storage.
If I was you I would go with a custom build. You will need a PC case, a motherboard, some ram, plug in your HDDs and SSDs, maybe throw in a Nvidia graphics card for transcoding.
On the OS side I would recommend to look into something like unraid, it would allow you to run the arrs in docker.
I just recently re-built my custom server and while it was the right choice for me, I always encourage my friends who are entering this hobby to think carefully about this decision.
tl;dr
Get a used PC off ebay if you’re wanting to save space or money in the short term/go custom otherwise. Sample Custom Build; see the hardware section for details.
#Custom Build Pros:
More flexible- you can pick the exact parts that make sense for you and your needs
‘Easy’ future upgrades- some components (think case and power supply) are a one time or decades long purchase, so future upgrades are cheaper.
#Custom Build Cons:
Potentially higher ‘start-up’ costs - If you’re getting a brand new NAS that’s probably going to be just as expensive, or at least have a higher price/performance cost. But you can get a cheap used optiplex/thinkcentre (like you said) off ebay for significantly less than you can build a new computer. If you’re just getting into this hobby and aren’t sure if it’s for you. just buy a used optiplex/thinkcentre/elitedesk PC off ebay and roll with that for now. Make sure it has at LEAST a 7th gen Intel CPU or newer (and really, emphasis on or newer. 12th Gen or newer is preferred if it’s not too much of a premium. Stop reading here.
“More flexible” can also mean more decisions to have to make an analysis-paralsysis.
You’re probably not going to be able to build as compact a device, so if space is a concern, take that into account.
#Recommendations:
You haven’t given tons of details on what you’re looking to do or a budget, but I think I’ve got a similar use case, so hopefully the below is helpful.
#Hardware:
Get the biggest damn case you can afford. I bought a Norco RPC-4220 and I love it. Tons of drive slots and hot swappable/externally accessible means as my storage needs grow I can very easily pop-in a new drive without having to access the internals of the case. This specific case can be very hard to find, so unless you get lucky I would suggest you just look for similar cases. If you’d prefer a more traditional ‘tower’ style case, the Fractal Define 7XL can hold up to 18 HDs.
Video Card- I think you’re smart to want to use QuickSync. I previously had an Nvidia GPU Geforce GPU and used the NVENC Patch to allow for unlimited transcodes, and even purchased a Quadro card later on. Now I have a 12th gen Intel CPU and use QuickSync and it’s just as good and significantly more power friendly.
CPU- Get the ‘best’ Intel CPU that you can afford that has Intel UHD 730, 750, or 770 integrated graphics. PCPartPicker Link. I say ‘best’ because without knowing what else (if anything) you’re going to do with this computer, it’s hard to say at what level of performance you’re ‘wasting’ your money. I personally went with a 12700k because it was on sale and cheaper than the 12500 I was originally planning on getting.
Motherboard- Get one that has the features you’re looking for at a price point you can afford, but don’t worry too much about the count of SATA ports. Assuming your motherboard has enough available PCI-E slots, you can just buy addin cards (see Faceman’s comments. Newegg and Microcenter frequently have bundle deals on CPU/Motherboards that can be a lot cheaper than buying them separate. Not all bundles are good deals though, so make sure to do the math!
Memory- If you’re doing just the basic Arrs and Jellyfin in some kind of Linux distro, you can probably get by with as little as 8GB of RAM. But you mentioned Docker, so I assume there’s the potential adding additional services down the line and if that’s the case you’ll have to do the math on how much RAM you need. It sounds like you already have some kind of setup, so I would encourage you to monitor your current RAM usage and figure this out. I personally went with 32GB since my budget allowed for it. DDR4/DDR5 will largely be controlled by which mobo you decide on getting, but if you can afford it DDR5 prices have fallen off of a cliff lately and would be the most ‘future proof’ choice if you think you’ll be upgrading anytime in the next ~decade.
Power Supply- Refer to the Cultist PSU Tier list to ensure you’re getting a ‘good’ PSU and use PCPartPicker to estimate how large of a power supply you’ll need. Keep in mind, PCP is estimating the power load, and that you probably don’t want to push your PSU to 100% of it’s power limit. I usually target power supply that can do 20% higher than the estimated load in PCP.
Storage- Try to find CMR drives- SMR drives are cheaper but frequent writes can cause them to suffer from performance issues or premature death.
#Software:
Go with the OS that you feel comfortable with and can effectively support. Don’t feel pressured to use an OS you’re unfamiliar with because some sweaty internet nerd told you it was ‘the best’. Having said that, this sweaty internet nerd recommends either Unraid (simple, easy to use and add storage to, supports docker) or OpenMediaVault which isn’t as ‘slick’ as Unraid, but still very beginner friendly and offers a nice graphical web interface to manage things and also has easy plugin based support for Docker (among a ton of other things). I personally went for OMV at first, and once I got more comfortable with Linux and administering my server, switched to Proxmox (Host Hypervisor) and Ubuntu Server (Guest VM).___
Thank you for all of this. You are right, I do have a set up currently. It’s an old repurposed amd PC which is fine for direct play but it stuggles to transcode. I want to use ErsatzTV which needs transcodng and it can’t handle it. It’s all set up through docker-compose on Linux Mint which has been fine so far (first Linux distro). You’ve gotten me quite interested in Unraid/OMV though.
Other containers I run are Immich, Mealie, Dozzle, Tubesync as well as the arr stack. Likely to run more containers (you know how it is). Current PC sits on about 10-12 GB ram.
I’m in Australia if that helps, little more pricey than US, harder to get parts and I definitely have had decision paralysis. in saying that though, all your comments have given me clarity for a plan.
IMO, the hardware can be easily swapped as needed and upgraded where need.
For the OS its a little “easier” to use and providers a little more “flexibility” as you have more choices in what to install. There are some great videos on YouTube that I recommend to get you started. Have a look at spaceinvaders videos for pretty much everything if you go this route.
I just use old gaming MBO with intel G3930 and no GPU, its amazing. I use 1080p only and it can run multiple streams at once. Havent tried 4k tho. I have it in a custom built case with sata drives, running debian.
basically any PC with a recent (intel 10th gen and newer quad cores) CPU will work great for any normal media server build.
You will just need enough space for your disks and some room to grow, the motherboard, cpu, ram and psu.
since you already have disks with media on them moving to a dedicated NAS OS will be a bit of a pain if you want some form of data protection. I’d definitely allow in the budget for at least 2 new large disks to start with.
Personally I went down the unraid path as it allowed the most flexible disk mixing and matching, I could just throw whatever HDDs I had into it and all data was parity protected. it’s not free but it makes for a good home NAS. moving existing data and re-using the disks is a pain as you need to start with enough space to dump a whole disk to, then wipe that disk then add it to the array, then repeat for all of your disks, this can take days but it works and gets your data loaded and parity protected with a minimum number of new disks required.
Freenas, now called Truenas is an excellent option but it will be less flexible in adding disks that arent the same capacity. you cant just buy one HDD and drop it in to expand in the future, you tend to need to plan it out a bit more, but it is extremely fast and very reliable. so it’s free but can cost more in the long run.
If you like to tinker you can just run something like ubuntu and set it all up from scratch, or there is one called Xpenology, which is a clone of the synology software, it is very easy to use and reasonably flexible.
You can just plug the HDDs into the motherboard if it has enough ports, but I’d recommend getting onto eBay and getting yourself a SAS HBA card and sas-sata breakouts, there are sellers that have them as combo kits just for this purpose.
My first couple of server builds used the motherboard ports and the SATA controllers died pretty quickly, then I got a LSI 9211-8i, than added a sas expander for more ports, and more recently a newer 9300-16i card that will do me forever.
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Go for 12th Gen Intel cpus. You can get a simple atx cabinet wirh good airflow and install a few fans to cool the hard drives. SSD is useful for cache and OS but that’s it, so 512GB is fine for it but you can also get 1TB for future proofing.
What’s the benefit of 12th gen? Over say 9th or 10th? I need weigh up if It’s worth saving up for as it’s a little out of my budget right now. Most I’ll be running is 2-3 1080p streams at home.
Newer socket, better performance especially in iGPU
Just built one myself. Here’s what I used:
Cost me less than $600 USD not including any HDD. Modifying this a little could probably put you under $500
Prior to this I used an old Optiplex 3040 sff ($100) with a 1tb HDD and core i3 6100 and replaced the cd drive with a SSD bay so I could boot the OS off of that. It worked for a budget but didn’t have any expandable storage.
Nice build. That is a lovely case by the way! Not too exxy either.
If I was you I would go with a custom build. You will need a PC case, a motherboard, some ram, plug in your HDDs and SSDs, maybe throw in a Nvidia graphics card for transcoding.
On the OS side I would recommend to look into something like unraid, it would allow you to run the arrs in docker.
Thanks for that, have also considered this. What would be the benefit of going this way?
I just recently re-built my custom server and while it was the right choice for me, I always encourage my friends who are entering this hobby to think carefully about this decision.
tl;dr Get a used PC off ebay if you’re wanting to save space or money in the short term/go custom otherwise. Sample Custom Build; see the hardware section for details.
#Custom Build Pros:
More flexible- you can pick the exact parts that make sense for you and your needs
‘Easy’ future upgrades- some components (think case and power supply) are a one time or decades long purchase, so future upgrades are cheaper.
#Custom Build Cons:
Potentially higher ‘start-up’ costs - If you’re getting a brand new NAS that’s probably going to be just as expensive, or at least have a higher price/performance cost. But you can get a cheap used optiplex/thinkcentre (like you said) off ebay for significantly less than you can build a new computer. If you’re just getting into this hobby and aren’t sure if it’s for you. just buy a used optiplex/thinkcentre/elitedesk PC off ebay and roll with that for now. Make sure it has at LEAST a 7th gen Intel CPU or newer (and really, emphasis on or newer. 12th Gen or newer is preferred if it’s not too much of a premium. Stop reading here.
“More flexible” can also mean more decisions to have to make an analysis-paralsysis.
You’re probably not going to be able to build as compact a device, so if space is a concern, take that into account.
#Recommendations: You haven’t given tons of details on what you’re looking to do or a budget, but I think I’ve got a similar use case, so hopefully the below is helpful.
#Hardware:
Get the biggest damn case you can afford. I bought a Norco RPC-4220 and I love it. Tons of drive slots and hot swappable/externally accessible means as my storage needs grow I can very easily pop-in a new drive without having to access the internals of the case. This specific case can be very hard to find, so unless you get lucky I would suggest you just look for similar cases. If you’d prefer a more traditional ‘tower’ style case, the Fractal Define 7XL can hold up to 18 HDs.
Video Card- I think you’re smart to want to use QuickSync. I previously had an Nvidia GPU Geforce GPU and used the NVENC Patch to allow for unlimited transcodes, and even purchased a Quadro card later on. Now I have a 12th gen Intel CPU and use QuickSync and it’s just as good and significantly more power friendly.
CPU- Get the ‘best’ Intel CPU that you can afford that has Intel UHD 730, 750, or 770 integrated graphics. PCPartPicker Link. I say ‘best’ because without knowing what else (if anything) you’re going to do with this computer, it’s hard to say at what level of performance you’re ‘wasting’ your money. I personally went with a 12700k because it was on sale and cheaper than the 12500 I was originally planning on getting.
Motherboard- Get one that has the features you’re looking for at a price point you can afford, but don’t worry too much about the count of SATA ports. Assuming your motherboard has enough available PCI-E slots, you can just buy addin cards (see Faceman’s comments. Newegg and Microcenter frequently have bundle deals on CPU/Motherboards that can be a lot cheaper than buying them separate. Not all bundles are good deals though, so make sure to do the math!
Memory- If you’re doing just the basic Arrs and Jellyfin in some kind of Linux distro, you can probably get by with as little as 8GB of RAM. But you mentioned Docker, so I assume there’s the potential adding additional services down the line and if that’s the case you’ll have to do the math on how much RAM you need. It sounds like you already have some kind of setup, so I would encourage you to monitor your current RAM usage and figure this out. I personally went with 32GB since my budget allowed for it. DDR4/DDR5 will largely be controlled by which mobo you decide on getting, but if you can afford it DDR5 prices have fallen off of a cliff lately and would be the most ‘future proof’ choice if you think you’ll be upgrading anytime in the next ~decade.
Power Supply- Refer to the Cultist PSU Tier list to ensure you’re getting a ‘good’ PSU and use PCPartPicker to estimate how large of a power supply you’ll need. Keep in mind, PCP is estimating the power load, and that you probably don’t want to push your PSU to 100% of it’s power limit. I usually target power supply that can do 20% higher than the estimated load in PCP.
Storage- Try to find CMR drives- SMR drives are cheaper but frequent writes can cause them to suffer from performance issues or premature death.
#Software:
Thank you for all of this. You are right, I do have a set up currently. It’s an old repurposed amd PC which is fine for direct play but it stuggles to transcode. I want to use ErsatzTV which needs transcodng and it can’t handle it. It’s all set up through docker-compose on Linux Mint which has been fine so far (first Linux distro). You’ve gotten me quite interested in Unraid/OMV though.
Other containers I run are Immich, Mealie, Dozzle, Tubesync as well as the arr stack. Likely to run more containers (you know how it is). Current PC sits on about 10-12 GB ram.
I’m in Australia if that helps, little more pricey than US, harder to get parts and I definitely have had decision paralysis. in saying that though, all your comments have given me clarity for a plan.
Nice! Glad to hear I could help! We’ve got pretty similar use case scenarios (Mealie is awesome!) and I wish you luck on your adventure! You got this!
IMO, the hardware can be easily swapped as needed and upgraded where need.
For the OS its a little “easier” to use and providers a little more “flexibility” as you have more choices in what to install. There are some great videos on YouTube that I recommend to get you started. Have a look at spaceinvaders videos for pretty much everything if you go this route.
I just use old gaming MBO with intel G3930 and no GPU, its amazing. I use 1080p only and it can run multiple streams at once. Havent tried 4k tho. I have it in a custom built case with sata drives, running debian.
basically any PC with a recent (intel 10th gen and newer quad cores) CPU will work great for any normal media server build. You will just need enough space for your disks and some room to grow, the motherboard, cpu, ram and psu.
since you already have disks with media on them moving to a dedicated NAS OS will be a bit of a pain if you want some form of data protection. I’d definitely allow in the budget for at least 2 new large disks to start with. Personally I went down the unraid path as it allowed the most flexible disk mixing and matching, I could just throw whatever HDDs I had into it and all data was parity protected. it’s not free but it makes for a good home NAS. moving existing data and re-using the disks is a pain as you need to start with enough space to dump a whole disk to, then wipe that disk then add it to the array, then repeat for all of your disks, this can take days but it works and gets your data loaded and parity protected with a minimum number of new disks required.
Freenas, now called Truenas is an excellent option but it will be less flexible in adding disks that arent the same capacity. you cant just buy one HDD and drop it in to expand in the future, you tend to need to plan it out a bit more, but it is extremely fast and very reliable. so it’s free but can cost more in the long run.
If you like to tinker you can just run something like ubuntu and set it all up from scratch, or there is one called Xpenology, which is a clone of the synology software, it is very easy to use and reasonably flexible.
You can just plug the HDDs into the motherboard if it has enough ports, but I’d recommend getting onto eBay and getting yourself a SAS HBA card and sas-sata breakouts, there are sellers that have them as combo kits just for this purpose.
My first couple of server builds used the motherboard ports and the SATA controllers died pretty quickly, then I got a LSI 9211-8i, than added a sas expander for more ports, and more recently a newer 9300-16i card that will do me forever.
Thank you for your very thorough reply. I will read up on all this now!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
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