is my hardware too much??

[Rogue Grinder]

Hi all.

I've been running dietpi on a pc with Jellyfin and other services on a HP t530 thin client (https://support.hp.com/id-en/document/c056, CPU 1.5 GHz, M.2 drive) I then got a hp Z240 sff PC (https://support.hp.com/za-en/document/c04892038, CPU 3.7 GHz, ssd) and haven't noticed a great improvement in Jellyfin performance.

I'm worried the Z240 is too high spec and when running isn't as energy efficient as the thin client. The thin client also appears to have a better igpu, but seems to crash every so often which I haven't been able to troubleshoot.

Anyhoo, just wondering if anyone would be kind enough to suggest which machine would be best to stick with with the mind to have a low power server on 24/7

Thanks

Hi mate, you will not notice much, if any difference between those two systems. Depending on the content you watch, e.g. HEVC, AVC, AV1, etc., a new CPU 8th Gen and above with iGPU decoding onboard would provide you better performance. For example, I have Jellyfin installed on Proxmox on a Broadwell based server Xeon E5 2680v4 which the CPU architecture is a generation prior to your Z240 and is also clocked much lower. I have allocated 4 cores, 8GB RAM, 160GB NVMe storage (enough for OS, applications and 2 concurrent streams of my biggest file size) and have passed through an nVIDIA Quadro P620 and it works perfectly. The CPU is only ever under full load when scanning the library. The more cores, the faster the scan. But no one really scans their full library everyday do they?

The P620 will get 2 4K streams concurrently, a P1000 will get 3 streams. The nVIDIA T400 will get 3 streams and VP8 support and full HEVC support along with faster decoding. The nVIDIA A400 will get 4 streams and AV1 support along with fantastic decoding speed but can only be bought new at the moment. The number of streams is based on the content I watch which about 70% of it is AVC, 25% HEVC (4K) and the rest is MPEG (DVD). 

So in terms of the Z240, yes it is enough but as long as you get a dGPU. HEVC support on Skylake is spotty at best. If you want better performance with an iGPU, then Coffee Lake 8th Gen or better will give you that. If you need AV1 support in an iGPU, then I believe 11th Gen and higher has it. The P620 can be bought off eBay in Australia for $60-$70 AUD or $39-$45 USD. The P1000 is about $130-$149 AUD or $85-$97 USD.

If your direct playing, then you will be limited to your network and WiFi speeds. But even at Gigabit speeds on a 4K remux, you won't be limited unless your copying something to your library.