Hardware advice

[randomeyes227]

Background info - New forum member here and I just switched away from Emby for the past 5(iirc) yrs. When using Emby, I hosted it on my NAS (Synology DS418play, no containers, 2GHz Celeron proc, 6GB ram). Occasionally I would have an issue if there were too many re-encoding sessions happening. I decided to change to Jellyfin but apparently it needs to run in a Docker container. Docker isn’t supported on my NAS but it can be side-loaded. Since the NAS is rather weak in the processor dept, I decided to use my desktop (i7-3770 3.4GHz 4core, 16GB ram) to host Jellyfin as well. I host all of my media on the NAS shares (~12tb of space). I noticed that when my roku sticks would try to watch a mkv movie, it would have to recode and the CPU on my desktop would run at 100%. At this point, I looked into Handbrake and to recode my movie collection to h264 (mp4). With that encoding, Jellyfin can direct play without issue.

Tldr – Had Emby, Now Jellyfin, new config might warrant an upgrade.
 
I’m trying to use Handbrake to recode some of my media and it seems like a movie typically take about 1.5hr to recode. I’ve had this computer (HP 6300 SFF) for about 5yrs now and even then, I bought it from surplus. If I’m going to upgrade my desktop, what would be something I should consider? I’m not a “gamer” and while I suppose I could, I can’t justify spending 5k on a desktop to essentially only host Jellyfin, run Handbrake to transcode a movie in 15min (is that even realistic?), and just surf the internet? Any recommendations on models or even CPUs to look for? I’m sure there’s a lot of variables that could come into the equation. Ranging from what you’re encoding to the HW you’re using. I searched for hardware discussions but couldn’t find anything that covered the HW and what to expect for times.

Any thoughts or advice?

[TheDreadPirate]

You can't really put a specific time on certain hardware. Depending on the settings the same hardware could take a few minutes to transcode a movie or several hours.

You don't need a lot if you choose the right hardware. A mini PC with an Intel N100 with 8GB of RAM could run circles around the setup you're describing because the iGPU in modern Intel CPUs have fantastic media engines. Intel Arc GPUs even more so.

To give better advise I'd need to know your budget, whether you want your Jellyfin server to be separate from your gaming PC, how much hardware you have to recycle, etc.

If it doesn't need to be a gaming PC, and you only have a few users, you really don't need a lot if you choose wisely.

[TheDreadPirate]

Please don't double post. If you want me to move a thread you can ask.

[randomeyes227]

Please don't double post.  If you want me to move a thread you can ask.

I understand and I apologize. I attempted to delete the original thread in the General section but didn't see how to completely remove it. Thus, I asked that it be deleted and then I created a thread here. Maybe I accidentally posted this thread 2x?  Apologies if I did.

[randomeyes227]

You can't really put a specific time on certain hardware.  Depending on the settings the same hardware could take a few minutes to transcode a movie or several hours.

You don't need a lot if you choose the right hardware.  A mini PC with an Intel N100 with 8GB of RAM could run circles around the setup you're describing because the iGPU in modern Intel CPUs have fantastic media engines.  Intel Arc GPUs even more so.

To give better advise I'd need to know your budget, whether you want your Jellyfin server to be separate from your gaming PC, how much hardware you have to recycle, etc.

If it doesn't need to be a gaming PC, and you only have a few users, you really don't need a lot if you choose wisely.

Thanks for the suggestion. Budget is that I'm guessing under $300, maybe $500 if necessary. I don't mind Jellyfin running on my desktop in my office. All it gets used for is light surfing and email anyway. HW to recycle would likely only be the HP 6300 and the Synology NAS detailed in the previous post. 

You mention the Intel Arc GPUs and I saw in another thread I think someone specified the Intel Arc A310 (link here if allowed). Would that or any of those on that page be better than getting a NUC?

Thanks for your advice!

[TheDreadPirate]

A search for "HP 6300" is returning a pretty wide list of possible configurations. It really depends on what the actual specs are. You said you bought it surplus several years ago, which means it was old back then, so its even older now. It may not be suitable, or even able to, accept an Intel Arc GPU. Even if it could accept an Arc GPU, the CPU would hold it back (audio transcodes on the CPU).

If you don't need AV1 encoding, a lot of people have gotten Beelink Intel N100 equipped mini PCs and have praised the performance and performance per watt.

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-S12-Pro-G...B0BW8JSQCH

Since you have a NAS already, you don't have to worry about about directly attaching hard drives to the mini PC.

Honestly, the price for that is pretty amazing considering it already has RAM and a SSD. I had to do a double take when I noticed it already had those. I thought it was a bare bones system.

[randomeyes227]

A search for "HP 6300" is returning a pretty wide list of possible configurations.  It really depends on what the actual specs are.  You said you bought it surplus several years ago, which means it was old back then, so its even older now.  It may not be suitable, or even able to, accept an Intel Arc GPU.  Even if it could accept an Arc GPU, the CPU would hold it back (audio transcodes on the CPU).

If you don't need AV1 encoding, a lot of people have gotten Beelink Intel N100 equipped mini PCs and have praised the performance and performance per watt.

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-S12-Pro-G...B0BW8JSQCH

Since you have a NAS already, you don't have to worry about about directly attaching hard drives to the mini PC.

Honestly, the price for that is pretty amazing considering it already has RAM and a SSD.  I had to do a double take when I noticed it already had those.  I thought it was a bare bones system.

Thanks for the advice and link. I'll look into that for sure!

[randomeyes227]

UPDATE:
Sticking with the original thread for history. I purchased an Intel ARC A310 video card and installed it. It seems to be working fine BUT when I run Handbrake, my main CPU usage still maxes at 100%. @TheDreadPirate had mentioned that my audio would still fall back to my main CPU. Just out of curiosity, I set up an encode with no audio included and still, it maxed the CPU and didn't raise the usage on my new video card at all.

This could be just a holdover that the computer is too old but I wanted to check here first. Shouldn't the video card be handling all of the Handbrake load now?

(Yes this might a Handbrake question but I'm hoping that the people here might be more familiar with it. lmk if this is not allowed)

[Efficient_Good_5784]

UPDATE:
Sticking with the original thread for history.  I purchased an Intel ARC A310 video card and installed it. It seems to be working fine BUT when I run Handbrake, my main CPU usage still maxes at 100%.  @TheDreadPirate had mentioned that my audio would still fall back to my main CPU. Just out of curiosity, I set up an encode with no audio included and still, it maxed the CPU and didn't raise the usage on my new video card at all.

This could be just a holdover that the computer is too old but I wanted to check here first. Shouldn't the video card be handling all of the Handbrake load now?

(Yes this might a Handbrake question but I'm hoping that the people here might be more familiar with it. lmk if this is not allowed)

You need to enable QSV support in the Handbrake settings.
You also need to select one of the QSV GPU encoder options in the video tab.

[randomeyes227]

UPDATE:
Sticking with the original thread for history.  I purchased an Intel ARC A310 video card and installed it. It seems to be working fine BUT when I run Handbrake, my main CPU usage still maxes at 100%.  @TheDreadPirate had mentioned that my audio would still fall back to my main CPU. Just out of curiosity, I set up an encode with no audio included and still, it maxed the CPU and didn't raise the usage on my new video card at all.

This could be just a holdover that the computer is too old but I wanted to check here first. Shouldn't the video card be handling all of the Handbrake load now?

(Yes this might a Handbrake question but I'm hoping that the people here might be more familiar with it. lmk if this is not allowed)

You need to enable QSV support in the Handbrake settings.
You also need to select one of the QSV GPU encoder options in the video tab.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....... got it!  I was missing the selection of the different encoder in the video tab. It looks like its running the main CPU now at about 70% (better than the 99%) and its definitely pushing on to the cards GPU now at about 38%. 

Thanks!