Mini PC for Jellyfin

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨theorangeninja@lemmy.today⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Hello all, I recently setup jellyfin on my RPi 4 with an external HDD attached and after a few tests I decided to move on. On ebay I found a refurbished Fujitsu Mini PC with a Pentium G4560. It is way cheaper than the Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q (with a G5400T) which I saw being recommended a lot.

My question is:

how does the higher TDP of the former 54 W with a base frequency of 3.50 GHz compare to the latter with a TDP of 35 W for 3.10 GHz in a real world scenario running jellyfin?

For now I will continue using my external HDD because the prices for new drives is too high for me.

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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Someone linked a list of Mini-PCs here: https://lemmy.world/post/19837516

I think the N100 sounds good.

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- Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I bought a “cheap chinesium” one a couple of months back and have not regretted it (yet). It does what it claimed it would.
  
  The one I bought: Aoostar R1
  
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  - Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    How much did you end up paying? Did you have to pay tax, customs fees etc? $200 sounds almost too good to be true. Do you run Linux on it? Any driver issues? I’m looking for a replacement for my NAS right now. On paper this one looks pretty good.
    
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  - LiveLM@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Holy shit! This is the first one of these things I’ve seen with SATA slots
    
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Uuhh, that's a cute little trash can. Now fit that with the maximum of RAM it supports and two 12TB harddrives... And it'll do more media center and NAS than the average person needs.
    
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- Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’d go with a corporate hand me down just for sustainability. Those tend to be in decent shape and can be had for reasonable prices. Buying second hand is always a bit of a lottery but so is buying chinesium.
  
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure. I usually do the same thing. The laptop on which I'm typing right now is a refurbished Dell one and I really prefer a bit older enterprise hardware to new consumer hardware. Nice build quality, no nonsense and Linux runs great on that device. And it cost me a fraction of a new device. However with the intended use-case of a media center I'm not sure. Intel always adds hardware acceleration in their iGPUs and the modern codecs are quite demanding. I wouldn't buy an older generation that doesn't really support AV1. I'm not sure if hardware from 2 years ago can do that. And if someone buys a new TV set which supports HDR or something and then the recently bought, refurbished media center is out of date again... that also doesn't help. Maybe I'd buy a new one in this case and just use it for the next 10 years. That's also sustainable.
    
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- theorangeninja@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So back to beelink on amazon?
  
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  - myersguy@lemmy.simpl.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    FWIW: I’m running jellyfin and a whole host of other services on a Beelink with an Intel n95 and 8gb of ram. Runs like a champ.
    
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Mazoku@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The thing that matters more than the TDP is how much power they draw at idle. It’ll likely be idling or turned off more than it will be on. And even when on, it probably wont be hitting its max TDP just playing some media unless you’re transcoding to 4k or something.

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- theorangeninja@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is there a percentage of the TDP which is usually the idle power draw?
  
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  - stuner@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, they’re almost entirely unrelated. Almost all CPUs will idle close to 0 W (with correctly working drivers). The main idle power contribution comes from the mainboard and other devices (e.g. disks). The Mini PCs you mentioned should have a very low total idle power, probably below 10W.
    
    Check out Wolfgang on YouTube, he has some great videos on the topic: youtu.be/Ppo6C_JhDHM
    
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  - Mazoku@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Gamers Nexus reports 44W at idle with the G4560 which is already more than the G5400T’s MAX TDP of 35W, so it’s a pretty significant difference.
    
    Assuming the RAM and other components are similar, I’d go with the G5400T system.
    
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  - Mazoku@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Unfortunately no, which can make it a pain to figure out. You’d have to research the CPU itself.
    
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JASN_DE@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It really depends on if you need transcoding or not. If no, it doesn’t matter. If yes, check for integrated GPUs on both models and check that it will work as a transcoder for jellyfin.

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- theorangeninja@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What do you think about a i5-7
  
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  - Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    People generally recommend 8th gen or higher Intel chips for transcoding so I’d look at alternatives. I have a Dell with an 8th gen i5 and that works very well.
    
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  - eskuero@lemmy.fromshado.ws ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    i5-7200U
    
    That is Kaby Lake and seems to support up to HEVC for decoding which might be enough for you
    
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hard…
    
    For a bit of future proof you might want to check out something Tiger Lake or newer since it seems like they support AV1 decoding in hardware.
    
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xylogx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I run Emby and MythTV on a Beelink Mini PC. It is a little pricey compared to some of the options you mentions but not by too much. It works really well and is very quiet:

www.amazon.com/…/B0B3WYVB2D

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Im_old@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
the question is: why do you want to move on from the Rpi4? Also, how do you plan to handle video decoding 0f x265/av1 streams? Do those miniPCs have a video card with hardware transcoding capabilities? If you plan to do it on software (i.e. CPU transcoding) the CPUs will run hot most of the time.

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- theorangeninja@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Alright so I checked the docs but I’m not fluent with video codecs. For av1 you need basically a new integrated gpu, right? But for x265 (is that the same as H.265 in the docs?) a kaby lake should be fine if I read that correctly.
  
  So maybe a i5-7200U should be capable enough?
  
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helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Whats your budget?

My go-to recommendation is the barebones CWWK N100 development board. Then you can add as much RAM and storage as you want. Up to 4xNVMe and 2x SATA drives are supported.

It also uses a normal PC fan jnstead of those whiny-ass laptop fans.

Thats what I use.

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interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Can’t answer your question but I got a refurb corporate m715 for 60 bucks, I haven’t bothered upgrading the 8Gb ram^* and it runs a full dockerized arr stack, vpn and jellyfin without any issue. I don’t reencode and I don’t use 4k media, so I can’t talk about that either.

But if you’re looking for cheap that works, it’s not a bad little machine.

^* The system actually run on 6Gb since 2 are reserved for video and by the time I realized that everything has been up and running fine for a while, so I didn’t even bother rebooting in the bios to change it, I just added a bigger swap 🙄

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czardestructo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Most folks ignore laptops, but if you’re OK with USB storage or getting the special caddy to install the internal 2.5" drive you can get great deals on laptops with dedicated GPUs. This one idles around 4W witb the screen off.

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mhz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
For Jellyfin, dont get any lower than 8th gen if you want to transcod using quick sync. And if i correctly remember, you will nee 10th gen or higher for 10bit transcoding.

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PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
NUC is good for transcoding if you really need it. NUC11 i3 i think has 30w tdp and draws sub 10w at idle and does transcoding fine. Check specific HW codex support for your needs but stick to Intel beacsue they will generally be the best in this space.

Also can confirm Jellyfin doesnt run well on a rpi4. No problem on a NUC.

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- theorangeninja@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is a NUC better or similar to a N100?
  
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  - PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Check the CPU, every NUC has a different one. An 11th gen i3 will generally offer better performance than a N100 but a N100 may offer slightly better power efficiency.
    
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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers

RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC

SBC Single-Board Computer

[Thread #979 for this sub, first seen 18th Sep 2024, 08:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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Fewer Letters	More Letters
NUC	Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
RPi	Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
SBC	Single-Board Computer