so like ram, storage and like cpu in intel terms (basically the only one i could find and understand)
i will be using plasma bigscreen, running my jellyfin server, maybe play some steam games (decently light ones), maybe run a minecraft server, watch youtube, stream like netflix etc.
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You are making a mistake.
Do not build one big computer to do everything.
The system requirements are wildly different for the different things you’re asking. That means your computer can’t make compromises to be cheap.
Jellyfin and the piracy stack will want a potato with middling amounts of ram and a cheap discrete gpu from six years ago. And whatever storage you plan on using.
Minecraft will want ram and fast cpu.
Streaming will want a recent cpu with all the bells and whistles and a remote.
Playing games needs a okay gpu.
When you combine all that you need an okay gpu, a recent fast processor, a good amount of ram and the rest of the stuff to make it a computer. Plus your time. That’s approaching $800 now.
If you split it up you can do jellyfin, the arrs and Minecraft server on a ten year old gaming pc of yore that someone thinks they screwed you on when you pay them $100 for at a yard sale and hook your tv to a dedicated streaming set top box that can talk to your jellyfin for $100.
fair enough
i already have a jellyfin server on my familys old ass laptop, but its kinda meh so i thought hosting it on this streaming box would be a good idea AND im always connected to the server (in my room where the box is of course). The minecraft server thingo isn’t really needed and the same applies to the steam games
What problems did you run into with your existing jellyfin server?
can’t connect for some reason
Dealing with multiple computers is a pain (slow boot time and/or more power consumption and multiplied effort) and more expensive in most cases (you still need the minimum requirements of each part, but now there’s the rest of the each PC to get too).
I did it for power consumption; one small low power computer that’s on 24/7 for NAS + providing some services like home assistant, and a powerful computer for gaming, photo development, etc. I ended up being too lazy to boot up the powerful computer most of the time so I was doing less of what I like to do with it and my time spent on the computer was slower. I switched back to one do-it-all computer and I’m much happier.
The only reason I would want a multi-systems setup is if I need to run some things in the background that would make the computer unresponsive or unusable for some interactive tasks (e.g. local AI inference or training, video transcoding, heavy data transfers, …).
You can run several low power systems with lots of capabilities for less total power than one general purpose system. Now- at some point there are applications the low power systems are either annoyingly sluggish at, or altogether incapable of, but if you’re not getting into that kind of stuff, then a handful of small systems can be the ticket.
I built a wooden box with a filter and a big (200mm) fan and put 4 raspberry pis + a network switch in the filtered airflow, the pi that serves stream analysis on frigate has a co-processing hat, the rest lighter weight stuff like homeassistant, libre elec, and so on. Definitely more work to setup than a single Intel Core NUC - but also about the same or lower power under load, has been rock solid for years, and the filtered air setup has kept dust out much better than my series of dust strangled NUCs over the years have.
any recent-ish intel machine should do, i’d suggest around kaby lake or newer for the igpu’s hw decoding capabilities. beware that netflix streaming may not work so well with linux and stuff because of shitty drm.
I’ve been streaming Netflix on Chrome on Ubuntu without trouble for years and years - maybe 10-12 years ago there was a bump in that road, but it has been smooth since.
that’s great! i’ve personally never done it, but have heard people struggling with widevine binary blob from chromeos(?) and being stuck in low resolution, etc
Caveat - I’ve never subscribed to “super Netflix” with HD and all that - we display on 4K monitors, but the Netflix feed is their basic resolution - I don’t know if there’s any problems going up-market.
As of late, I install generic Chrome (yes, I believe free Chromium did - maybe still does - have issues), on generic Ubuntu or Debian + XFCE.
Plasma Bigscreen is kind of a mess still, so maybe run it on something first to understand what you’re getting into. That being said, any distro that runs KDE can run KBS, but will probably not be tuned for the least amount of resources to be used.
Something like OpenELEC/LibreELEC or OSMC are very well tuned for this, and require very little in the way of resources though. I’m not saying DON’T use KBS, but if you’re lacking in resources, the others are probably a better choice.
I guess you might want to ask this question in one of the self-hosting communities (there’s a bunch that are active, so I’m not linking one)
But getting back to the topic:
- jellyfin needs very little
I’m running mine on a laptop with 4 threads at 2.6GHz and on 8GB of RAM it was fine with a bunch of other stuff running - OwnCast
IDK but for personal use I’d expect to also have low requirements - Minecraft server
That part I’m not sure about. I’d expect it to be a bit more demanding - play some steam games
I understand you’ll be running those on another computer and only streaming via OwnCast, so that goes back to earlier point
The requirements for a Minecraft server are pretty minimal if it’s not modded and just for a couple players. If you’re running a couple hundred mods, it will need a fast CPU and lots of RAM.
- jellyfin needs very little
You’ll want a GPU with hardware encoding and decoding for popular codecs. Most GPUs these days do that, even the budget ones, but you do need one.
Minecraft servers want fast single core CPU performance and a decent amount of RAM.
The rest of it could be RAM hungry too.
Minecraft server on Java implementation super hungry for ram
Bigscreen only just came back around, I wouldn’t go too heavy there yet (and I’m testing it out already myself)
Get flex launcher instead. Simple config, does the job.
In terms of specs, there is a lot in your list that can vary, and make those specs jump. Where to start, IMO, would be a 7th gen Intel. If an 11th gen is an option, there and up transcoded av1.
For storage you’re going to have to do the math yourself in terms of what you’ll have. I have 40tb of media. I used to have a 1tb drive for everything. Storage is how much you want to allocate, nothing more or less.
Ram is similar. Find the worst case game, most overloaded with plugins Minecraft server or whatever, and start there on memory use. JF won’t take much, your game choice might.
