I’m ready to graduate from my Raspberry Pi era of selfhosting and buy hardware specifically for use as a server.

I’ve been recommended in the past to look for used Lenovo Thinkstations and/or Dell Optiplex, but it has been so many years since I’ve shopped for a computer, I don’t know what kind of specs to look for. What are the types of specs I should look for to get the best value for money?

I’m hoping to spend around $300-400, get something that can be upgraded in the future to last 10+ years, and do the following things:

  • YUNoHost / reverse proxy
  • Nextcloud with a custom domain for email addresses, cloud drive, photos
  • Music Streaming with something like Navidrome
  • Serve static websites
  • pi-Hole
  • Maybe pi-VPN

And someday maybe:

  • Host game servers like minecraft
  • Jellyfin for videos
  • Kodi and output to TV?

So far based on my selfhosted journey, I expect to want the following:

  • Room for 3+ Hard Drives
  • External UPS (probably will go with the cheap APC at Microcenter that’s always on sale).
  • Solid Power Supply / Cooling
  • probably 1000 gigabit Networking (?)

The types of questions I have for Thinkstations / Optiplex:

  • How is the Power Supply / Cooling?
  • Processor? Do I need i5? i7? Generations? AMD? Clock Speed? I’m completely lost here.
  • How much RAM do I need?
  • Do I need a discrete graphics card? Can Thinkstations / Optiplex have a graphics card added to them later?
  • Anything else I’m missing?

Thanks!

  • Mordikan@kbin.earth
    0·
    13 days ago

    If you end up going with a SFF build, I would recommend a dedicated GPU for Jellyfin. Nothing fancy, just a low profile GTX-1030 or RX 550 to handle the transcoding. Otherwise you’ll probably run into high CPU spikes while watching content from browser or some smart TVs.

    • MaggiWuerze@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      An Intel CPU with quicksync is the better and way more energy efficient solution for transcoding. A regular 8th gen+ i7 can handle multiple 4k transcodes

    • kevincox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      21·
      13 days ago

      IMHO this isn’t really worth it.

      1. x264 is very fast at lower profiles. Especially if you aren’t streaming across the internet often the size hit from the fast profiles is fine. Even if you are streaming over the internet it is probably fine. Getting a slightly faster CPU will also get you super far and is more useful to have lying around than a GPU as it will benefit most things that you do on the server. And worst-worst case a bit of CPU usage isn’t going to hurt much of the things that he is running (except maybe a game server if people are playing at the same time and you are really maxing out all of your cores).
      2. Integrated GPUs are fine for a handful of concurrent streams. Especially the Intel ones which have amazing media engines.
      3. Even if you are going for a dedicated GPU I would go with an Intel ARC. They are way better at media encoding and cost less.
      4. You can always add a GPU later. Wait until you have a need and are seeing problems without.
      • hietsu@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        Someone should explain me why transcoding is even needed (other than in case bandwidth is an issue)? My ”media server” at the moment is a custom ffmpeg script to edit all x264 mp4 files it finds by moving the moov atom to the beginning of the file (and what ever the similar thing for x265 was), and then lighttpd to serve them via dir listing. No file has yet had playback issues even over the internet…