New user looking for hardware and setup advice please

New user looking for hardware and setup advice please - Printable Version

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New user looking for hardware and setup advice please - Astaroth - 2025-08-17

Hi,

I'm thinking about setting up my first Jellyfin server/homelab and would like some advice please. I'm already planning on getting a NAS for file storage and thought maybe that could host the content for Jellyfin too. For the server I wanted to get something small with low power requirements but also want to run Home Assistant on it. The hardware I was thinking of is:

Storage:
UGREEN or Synology 4 bay NAS
3 x 4TB WD Red HDD in RAID 5

Server:
GMKTec G3 Plus Mini PC
CPU: N150
RAM: 16GB (Can be upgraded to 32GB if needed)
Storage: 256GB SSD or 1TB SSD

Requirements:

Small, low power device if possible
Max 2 local streams at once (no plans to set up remote access)
Playback devices include: LG TV, Samsung TV via Roku stick, PC (Chrome/Edge) and iPhone/iPad (App or Safari)
Media quality would be mostly DVD but probably some Blu-Ray too
Host Home Assistant with a few addons too

I would appreciate some help/advice with the following questions please:

Will the hardware above be capable of what I want to do?
What codec/quality etc. should I be using?
What installation method would you recommend? E.g:
- Proxmox with HAOS on a VM and Ubuntu LXCs for Docker and Jellyfin (saw this on YouTube)
- Ubuntu with Docker containers for HA and Jellyfin
- Something else?

I've seen mention of things like Portainer and CasaOS for easier management too, but I believe it's better to run HAOS instead of a container for addons and the supervisor. I'm not really sure what's best as I've never used any of this. I'm experienced with Windows Server and Hyper-V VMs as well as programming/scripting etc. so I'm not scared of anything technical, but I have very little experience with Linux or containers so I'll have a lot of learning to do lol.

Thanks

RE: New user looking for hardware and setup advice please - bitmap - 2025-08-19

Quote:Will the hardware above be capable of what I want to do?

Doesn't sound like there should be much transcoding and without 4K content, tonemapping shouldn't be a concern. It's a low-powered device, but could handle a bit more than you want to throw at it presently.

Quote:What codec/quality etc. should I be using?

Probably avoid 4K HDR unless you have devices that will play it back. The best advice is to match your library to the devices you plan to play it on. Generic recommendations are to use H264, main profile, 8-bit with AAC audio no more than 5.1 channels. That's not necessarily "the best" but it's likely the most compatible.

Quote:What installation method would you recommend?

I only have experience with Docker. It's my platform of choice. LXCs are interesting, but I try to keep things simple. Docker has two different image options and HA works great in a container as well. You miss out slightly on HACS, but you can get that working too. I would go Docker or bare metal, but I also hate extra overhead, which VMs suck up pretty quickly.