New to Homelab - Advice appreciated!

[RPMATT93]

Hi all!

Have been investigating homelabbing for a little while and wanted to sense check my ideas with this lovely community.

Long story short, I'd like to set up a homelab with a Jellyfin server to allow access for myself (predominantly via mobile/laptop) to access my media library. Two major goals are:

1) Streaming music service for access on the go to replace my Spotify subscription.
2) Access to my movie/TV library - a mixture of codecs, with a few 4k

Looking into devices that would be suitable to host the server/be a homelab, I've been reading a lot about hardware acceleration. I've been thinking to use an Intel NUC with ubuntu, and the one that I am looking it has an i3-7100U processor. From what I have read, this should be suitable to utilise QuickSync and therefore handle any 1080 or 4k files I throw at it. Would this assumption be correct?

Keen to learn from other's advice or any alternative devices - with this being my first homelab i'm not looking to necessarily break the bank at the moment with any hardware purchases!

Cheers,

RPMATT93

[bitmap]

That processor will work, but it's nine years old....something newer would be more effective. I know the recommended used to be 8th gen+ but I think recent changes mean 10+ is a better bet. I know lots of folks use a mini PCs with an N-series processor to great success.

If you want to future-proof a little bit, grab an old office computer with a 4-yo processor and a case large enough for a GPU. Those are pretty cheap and you can expand with an Arc A- or B-series card to super power your transcoding later.

[RPMATT93]

Hi there,

Thank you for your advice, much appreciated! I’m very much leaning towards a mini pc with an N processor as this is a first go/proof of concept server and also space is a bit of a premium - as much as I’d like to get an old office pc with a gpu for future proofing.

I think at the outset, I’ll be looking to utilise one of these mini pcs (probably a GEK or Beelink) with my existing USB external storage drive to practice the theory of setting up etc.

Would you have any advice on routes to take software and OS wise? As much as I’d like to go full command line, it’s a long time since I’ve used Linux to that degree - I was thinking Ubuntu server with something over the top (probably Casa OS) to deploy Jellyfin. The added benefit for this for my use case would the the easy install of Wireguard so I can get into my media using my phone when out and about.

Does my logic track? Appreciate the help so far - very new to all of this!

[bitmap]

I run Ubuntu server. Haven't had any issues and you can get Ubuntu Pro free for up to five machines. You could also just grab a desktop environment to go over top of Ubuntu server or try out Ubuntu desktop.

The fewer resources you deploy for a GUI, the better. Not that Jellyfin will strain a capable machine. If you're familiar with docker at all, that's a good way to manage software and you can deploy containers like Wireguard to provide VPN into your home network. At this point, my choice is Ubuntu server + docker compose. Second would be Ubuntu server + bare metal, next would be Ubuntu server w/ desktop environment and whatever install.