Need help selecting the hardware

[jellyuser123]

Hello,

I am a beginner to this. Please be kind.

I want to make a home media setup that works offline and online. I intend to buy a refurbished mini tower PC. From what is available in my local market, I have picked two options (these were the two best in terms of configuration):

1) Refurbished Dell OptiPlex 5040 Intel i7 6th GEN 256GB SSD 8GB RAM

2) Refurbished Dell OptiPlex 3060 Core i5 8th Gen 16GB RAM 512GB SSD

I am getting these models for around 240 USD (in India). i5 variant is 12 USD more expensive as compared to the other one. My Plan is to buy one of these and add a HDD for media storage. I will keep adding more hard drives in the future (is this a good idea, or should I add 2-3 HDD in the beginning and do a RAID setup?). Is it a good idea to buy one of these PCs or am I making a mistake?

I tried to find the exact CPU being used in these models but it was difficult to conclude. Dell website gives options and since I am buying a refurbished system, I am not sure what's actually inside. I can check this before I buy (using system properties, cpu details etc). Do I need to confirm some detail regarding the CPU when I am buying the PC?

I read somewhere that 8th gen CPUs are better for transcoding (frankly speaking, I do not understand the need of transcoding. However, I'd like to pick a system that works fine for next 3-5 years without needing an upgrade).

[Efficient_Good_5784]

I would go with the 8th gen Intel CPU because it has support for hardware accelerating HEVC 10bit video (while the 6th gen does not).

Without knowing the exact CPUs being used in both machines, I'm going to say that both will be equally as good for what Jellyfin needs to do.
The exception being transcoding in certain cases.

To explain, transcoding is the process of converting a video from one format to another. This needs to be done because a client device may not be able to read a video due to the video being in an incompatible format for the client.
The Jellyfin server will use either the CPU (slower) or the GPU (faster) to accomplish the transcode.

In the case of transcoding with an Intel CPU, we're talking about using their iGPU unit (built into the CPU) to use QSV (Intel's Quick Sync Video).
You can see what codecs each generation of their CPUs can handle here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quic...d_encoding

Whatever media you get for Jellyfin, it will have a certain codec. Currently the most popular video codecs are H264 and HEVC (8-bit & 10-bit).
Depending on what your media is composed of, the difference between the 6th & 8th gen Intel CPUs may not matter, but if you have (or will ever have) any 10-bit HEVC video, it's probably a better choice to get the 8th gen CPU due to the iGPU being able to accelerate that codec.