I am looking to self host my own media server (Jellyfin), a personal page and something more in the future and I need to choose my server hardware. I have decided on buying a single board computer to save on energy, space and, perhaps, cost.
Jellyfin docs recommend a computer with a Rockchip RK3588 / RK3588S processor. I would also need ethernet, USB for external storage, at least 4GB of RAM and maybe a M.2 slot for the OS and more space.
I know about Armsom and OrangePi, are they any good?
My budget would be up to 150 euros and I live in the Netherlands. Any suggestions?
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Buy refurbished / used Mini PC with at least 16GB RAM and 1Gbit network card. Don’t bother with M.2, SSD is enough.
I have right now refurbished hp g4 ryzen 5 mini pc. There is 12 docker containers running there and couple applications in screen, I just add things. Don’t do ARM, as far as I remember running on ARM is compilation hell. Stick with x86. You want it to ease your life and not to make it harder.You’d be miles better off with a mini pc with an intel processor than an RK3588 SoC. Drivers are sketchy at best whilst an N100 or similar will just work, plus they will easily take an ssd and other hardware much easier. Yes more power hungry but way easier to work with unless you want to tear your hair out with silly things. OrangePi are decent boards, for example, but they are way behind even a Pi for software support. If you must go ARM I wouldn’t look past a Pi5, a decent one with a HAT for nvme/m.2 should do the job
most N100/150 mini pc only consume 6-8w on idle (check reviews on YouTube), I wont say it is “power hungry”
RK3588 consumes less at idle and full power. I said more power hungry and it is exactly that. The n100/150 can be twice as power hungry when on load, you can spin anything if you want but they consume a lot more. Add in extras and it can add up to quite a lot more hungry, I have seen certain n150 setups use 4 times a similar setup on an RK3588 board for example - that is a significant difference
Honestly with 150€ you could get a second hand intel NUC which will have all the things you want. Of course this means x86_64 and not ARM but for jellyfin I would say it’s a plus.
I found a second hand box near me with Intel Celeron J4025 for 50eur. No disk and RAM (will buy myself). Would the processor be good enough? How is the price?
J4025 is good, I actually bought this exact model last year for 75€ with 120GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Prices have went up since and I don’t live in the Netherlands which can be expensive. So all in all not a bad deal I would say.
Hate to be the guy that says “why don’t you just do <different setup>?” But unless you are on solar, I wouldn’t worry about power consumption. Jellyfin is a resource-intensive program and you’ll have a better experience with a dedicated graphics card (as recommended in the docs). I also recommend SATA or PCIe storage I/O instead of USB.
if you need to buy it, for that budget i’d choose something like an used Lenovo m910q tiny that banks and offices are throwing to the landfill because Microsoft said that everyone needs to buy a new PC. Half the price, similar power consumption (in idle, otherwise much more), much more powerful, comes with nvme and sata slots, hdmi and usb 3
I just built a mini rack with 3 Thinkcentre tiny PCs I bought for $175 (USD) on eBay. All work great.
Agreed, this is good advice. At one time I had three of these, they’re great, small, versatile, well built. All around a great machine.
GMKtec sells solid mini x86 computers. I have one with an Intel N150, which can do hardware encoding with Intel QSV. https://www.amazon.com/GMKtec-mini-pc-computer-n150/dp/B0CH81C4K3
$137 rn on Amazon for 8gb/256gb N150
You can also go on eBay and look for older mini PCs. I got an HP Elite desk Mini G5 for like $70. Didn’t come with storage (usually the case), but an NVME/2.5 SATA drive is cheap.
It has an Intel 9500T and 16GB DDR4 RAM. The N series chips are more efficient (I have one of those N100 mini PCs, too), but the full chips offer more power (if you need it). Of course both of them will be significantly lower in power usage to an old desktop/server, by far.
Whatever you end up using, you can install Proxmox and call it a day. From there, install whatever you want, running side by side.
I was fiddeling with my Raspberry Pi 4 but decided to buy a refurbished Dell Wyse Thin Cient 5070. It cost like 70€, I put DietPi on it because I love it, plugged an external drive and I’m very happy with the experience.
+1 Dietpi on an old SFF office computer runs extremely smooth. Fiddled with Rpi too first… The few Watts lower energy use aren’t worth the hassle, old SFF’s offer so many (future) options while still getting really low idle power usage
I’ve been hosting Jellyfin on my Radxa Rock-5C for a year or so, and it’s done a very good job at it.
The only difficulties that I’ve faced (mostly in the beginning) were:
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It was a pain to install the drivers for hardware transcoding on armbian. I solved it by switching to some other distribution that’s maintained by a single guy. Ubuntu-Rockchip or something. That might have changed since then, but if it didn’t you’ll probably face it with any RK3588-based SBC.
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It’s a bit temperamental in terms of power delivery. Make sure to use a charger with the right USB PD spec to power it, and use a USB hub with its own charger to plug your storage. That’s probably specific to the Radxa boards though.
So it takes a bit of work to make it work properly. If you don’t want to deal with that, I second some other comment that I saw: get an Intel NUC, the setup should be much simpler. If you don’t mind using AliExpress, you can find a brand new one for less than 100€.
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The Radxa Rock 5 series use RK3588s and have USB, ethernet and 4-32 GB RAM.
