[NEED ADVICE] Jellyfin Hardware advice for 10 users

[mordax]

Hi all,

I’m looking for some advice on upgrading my current Jellyfin setup. I’m running Jellyfin on a QNAP TVS-872XT-i5-16G, and it’s worked fine for just me. However, now that I’m planning to host Jellyfin for around 10 family members, the system just can’t keep up with the demand, particularly when it comes to transcoding 4K to 1080p.

With one user transcoding, the system already struggles with buffering and high CPU usage, so I’m looking for a way to improve the performance to handle multiple users at once. I’ve narrowed it down to two potential solutions, but I’m unsure about the hard requirements and what would be enough to meet them. Here’s what I’m considering:

* Option A: Buy a low-powered GPU (something that doesn’t require extra electricity since the QNAP can’t externally power a GPU) and install it in the extra PCIe slot in the QNAP. Would this be enough to handle transcoding for 10+ users?
* Option B: Build a completely separate machine dedicated to running Jellyfin. If this is the better route, what kind of hardware would you recommend to handle my requirements, especially with transcoding 4K content for multiple users?

I’d really appreciate any advice on what would work best, including specific GPUs for Option A or hardware suggestions for Option B. I want to make sure whichever route I take is capable of handling 10+ users reliably, without major performance issues.

TL;DR: My Jellyfin on QNAP TVS-872XT-i5-16G worked well for just me, but it’s struggling to transcode 4K content now that I want to host for 10+ users. Should I add a low-powered GPU to the QNAP, or would I be better off building a separate server? Need help figuring out the hardware requirements!
Thanks in advance for your help!

[Venson]

10 concurrent transcodes is a lot but you say that the CPU is at its limits. I have had the same nas and it should also have a Igpu have you enabled that?

4K transcoding for 10 users will be a struggle even for non-low power gpus i think you are exceeding what most consumer GPUs can handle with their build in media pipelines. You are getting into the field of workstation cards like an RTX A4000 here.

[toytown]

In an old test i did about 18 months ago, i was able to get transcode the following using an Asrock A380 6GB using the "slow" preset, so you may get more if you use a faster preset.

10 concurrent streams from 2160p HDR H265 > 1080p SDR H264 (approx 46fps per stream)
16 concurrent streams from 2160p SDR H265 > 1080p SDR H264 (approx 30fps per stream)

Unfortunately i'm led to believe 10 is probably the max for 2160pHDR->SDR due to the ram/memory bandwidth on the card for tonemapping.
Results - https://imgur.com/gallery/intel-a380-jellyfin-jwVVujj

[mordax]

10 concurrent transcodes is a lot but you say that the CPU is at its limits. I have had the same nas and it should also have a Igpu have you enabled that?

4K transcoding for 10 users will be a struggle even for non-low power gpus i think you are exceeding what most consumer GPUs can handle with their build in media pipelines. You are getting into the field of workstation cards like an RTX A4000 here.

You know how they say, you can pick your friends but you can not pick your family. 🙂 I originally wanted to set this up only for the closer family, but the word spread out and now everyone is asking me for it.

I’ve already enabled the iGPU using VA-API for hardware acceleration, but even with that, the CPU is still being pushed to its limits. What’s your experience with the iGPU? Have you found it to be sufficient for handling multiple transcodes, or did you run into similar limitations?

Also, I’m curious—how would a potential setup with an RTX A4000 look like? What would you recommend for configuring the system to handle such high demand for 4K transcoding?

Thanks for the input!

[mordax]

In an old test i did about 18 months ago, i was able to get transcode the following using an Asrock A380 6GB using the "slow" preset, so you may get more if you use a faster preset.

10 concurrent streams from 2160p HDR H265 > 1080p SDR H264 (approx 46fps per stream)
16 concurrent streams from 2160p SDR H265 > 1080p SDR H264 (approx 30fps per stream)

Unfortunately i'm led to believe 10 is probably the max for 2160pHDR->SDR due to the ram/memory bandwidth on the card for tonemapping.
Results - https://imgur.com/gallery/intel-a380-jellyfin-jwVVujj

Thanks for sharing your results!

Have you experimented with faster presets to see how much more you could squeeze out of the card?
Also, do you think upgrading to something like the RTX A4000 would help overcome these bandwidth limitations?

[Venson]

@toytown you have to keep in mind that this widely varies on real live scenarios because JF needs to add filters and the input codecs may vary a lot. But thats actually a very nice comparison.

@mordax i know but fortunatly i only have like 3 family members watching at the same time, potato internet xD
I have never used that nas for jellyfin as i have a dedicated server for that but i know from other users with similar hardware that you will get into limits with that may streams.

For the potential setup, any modern-ish cpus are fine with Jellyfin, the CPU load is not that heigh although there might be considerations to be made for subtitle burn in as that involes CPU quite a lot. If you are power constrained i would carfully go for a N100 that _could_ do the trick but any 11th gen Intel CPU or comparable AMD will do the trick. Otherwise 10GB ram and just chuck the GPU in there plus some drivers and you are ready to go. You could also try going with the lower tier A2000 12GB which i actually have but you are flying close to the sun with that one.

[mordax]

@Venson Thanks for the insight! It seems like I’ll need to build a whole new tower for this setup, and from the prices I’ve checked so far, I don’t think I’d be able to get it under 2000€. With the cost of the GPU and other components, it’s definitely adding up quickly.

Given that, do you think going with the lower-tier A2000 12GB would still be worth it, or should I just aim higher to avoid running into performance limits?

[Venson]

how certain are you that you will have all 10 people watching 4K streams at the same time?

[mordax]

@Venson Probably will not be the case. Let us say there will be a maximum of 5 people watching at the same time.

[Venson]

an A2000 or really any ARC card even will be sufficent then. I would go with the Intel ARC card, its cheap, powerful and low power enough for your usecase really. Does not matter which version you pick, they all have the same media engine. Just go with something atleast 6gb VRAM. It would also suffice to just chuck that into the QNAP nas given you dont use the Thunderbold card thats in it. There are plenty ARC SFF cards out there for around 100€.