Hello there, I would like to upgrade my setup from a Raspberry PI 5 to something more capable of running Jellyfin properly. I also plan to host stuff like Nextcloud and some other small services.
The problem is I don’t know anything about choosing hardware. I’ve tried reading online about this stuff and come across many recommendations to buy an NUC, not knowing I would have to purchase every component individually.
I would like your comments on the setup I currently have:
- NUC Type: ASUS NUC 14 Pro Kit (RNUC14RVKI300000I)
- Operating System - Still haven’t decided yet, probably something easy like Ubuntu server
- CPU - Intel® Core™ 3 100U Processor
- Chipset - Integrated
- Graphics - Integrated - Intel® Graphics (C3)
- Memory - Adata 8GB DDR5 4800MHz CL40 SO-DIMM
- Storage - Western Digital Green SN350 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe WDS100T3G0C
- LAN - Intel®, 2.5G LAN
Edit 1
Some clarifications: I still haven’t bought anything, this is just what I am currently planning to buy.
I don’t live in the US, and none of my local shops have a pre-built NUC available to purchase.
I will probably upgrade the RAM to a “Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR5 5200MHz CL44” after reading some comments.
I’m specifically looking into this at the moment as I have been gifted a pi 5.
Most websites say avoid trying to host jellyfin on a pi 5 (codec and hardware issues are frequently noted). Do you have experience that shows these are non-issues?
Any low power device is going to struggle with video playback unless you’re doing direct streaming. The exception being the new Intel N line of processors that have capable enough GPUs to do the transcoding. If all you’re after is decent transcoding performance for H264/H265 video, anything newer than Intel’s 7-8th gen CPUs will do the job. $100-$200 used optiplexes and thinkcentres can easily handle this type of workload.
For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding
I have to agree with such websites; every time I try to encode a movie in Jellyfin on my Pi 5, every service I host there freezes for a few moments.
Thanks for the response! Is it limited to encoding services then, so if I’m only dealing with streaming common media file types (e.g. MKV, MP4) is it still a problem? I’m not dealing with a ridiculous amount of media, so I could outsource the encoding process alone if needed…
All my media is MKV and it still does that, that’s one of the main reasons why I want to upgrade
Do you really need it? Have you tried disabling transcoding? Sometimes clients would be able to direct stream but for some reason it still transcodes.
I tried disabling encoding which work for some clients, but for clients that don’t support direct stream like the web interface or the official app that isn’t enough.