2025-02-16, 02:59 PM
Hi all,
I understand that it may not be the most popular set of hardware for most Homelab enthuiasts but has anyone had experience or has an opinions on the following setup for Jellyfin and otherwise:
I am thinking about buying an M4 Mac Mini - partly as a low power server for Jellyfin - but I have some other uses for it including Handbrake, Logic Pro for music and basically to create a more manageable office, workstation and server than my current PC is. I can then relagate that to purely gaming purposes. I would have a DAS attached to Mac Mini to store my media. I understand that a DAS is sub-optimal but I do eventually intend on building a NAS when I can do it properly with ECC-RAM, high level of redundancy etc.
My questions are the following:
1. Is a Mac Mini even going to work properly? I note that in the documentation it reckons Apple Silicon's transcoding ability is up there with Intel and Nvidia so partly one of the reasons I am going with this but will it be a relatively stable experience?
2. Any advice on specs for M4 Mac Mini? Will I need 10Gbps network upgrade or will 1Gbps suffice? Should I get more RAM than the 16GB base spec? Storage I am not too fussed about given my DAS.
3. What low-power small PCs would potentially be an alternative (given I am UK based)? Or any advice on a custom build - I am very familiar with putting computers together?
As a side note - my current PC is specs are a AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, Radeon RX 6800 hence not suitable to run a Jellyfin Server economically.
I understand that it may not be the most popular set of hardware for most Homelab enthuiasts but has anyone had experience or has an opinions on the following setup for Jellyfin and otherwise:
I am thinking about buying an M4 Mac Mini - partly as a low power server for Jellyfin - but I have some other uses for it including Handbrake, Logic Pro for music and basically to create a more manageable office, workstation and server than my current PC is. I can then relagate that to purely gaming purposes. I would have a DAS attached to Mac Mini to store my media. I understand that a DAS is sub-optimal but I do eventually intend on building a NAS when I can do it properly with ECC-RAM, high level of redundancy etc.
My questions are the following:
1. Is a Mac Mini even going to work properly? I note that in the documentation it reckons Apple Silicon's transcoding ability is up there with Intel and Nvidia so partly one of the reasons I am going with this but will it be a relatively stable experience?
2. Any advice on specs for M4 Mac Mini? Will I need 10Gbps network upgrade or will 1Gbps suffice? Should I get more RAM than the 16GB base spec? Storage I am not too fussed about given my DAS.
3. What low-power small PCs would potentially be an alternative (given I am UK based)? Or any advice on a custom build - I am very familiar with putting computers together?
As a side note - my current PC is specs are a AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, Radeon RX 6800 hence not suitable to run a Jellyfin Server economically.