PC Upgrade for Jellyfin

[grobleschmomble]

Hi there! I recently found a small PC for free that I would like to use for Jellyfin, as my current NAS setup is getting older and slower. However, this new PC is a bit underpowered going off of the recommended hardware here. The PC has the following:

• CPU: Intel Pentium J3710 @1.60 GHz (4 core)
  
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics
  
• RAM: 4.0 GB DDR3 (and is fairly laggy, even after a clean install of windows)
  
• Storage: 1 TB HDD (which i can expand easily enough, got some spare drives)
  
• OS: Windows 10 Home 64bit
  

The server is never used by more than four people, usually just 1080p but 4k at times, would like to transcode.


It's an ACER Aspire XC-704 with its stock motherboard which looks like it's got room for SOME expansion. I've attached a picture to this thread.
My question is this: if you had this PC, what would you upgrade in order to make it JF worthy? Would you bother with this PC or would you look elsewhere? I got this for free so that's why I'm trying to make it work out, can look elsewhere if needed.

Thank you <3

[Host-in-the-Shell]

There's a few things to consider.


From my brief internet research, it mentions that the Acer Aspire XC-704 features a BGA 1170 processor socket; from what I understand, this means that the CPU is soldered. Unless you have the required soldering skills, any upgrade path for a nice CPU with an integrated video chip requires essentially upgrading everything else too. IF you would like to use that same device anyway, here are some ideas:

- Windows has dropped support for HDDs since I believe Windows 8. It requires an SSD since then. A lot of performance issues on Windows can happen due to that, so getting an SSD for the OS if you haven't one is a must.
- I'd upgrade for the minimum amount of 8GB ram recommended (which I also believe it's the maximum supported for that machine), as it will benefit the OS greatly, as well as Jellyfin.
- Consider Linux instead: Windows is definitely more taxing on this hardware. I have no idea what the compatibility of this device is with Linux, but if it does support something like Ubuntu or Debian, I think it would be worth switching over for the performance benefits that you need to squeeze out of this older hardware.

If it is imperative that you require better transcoding, then I would consider a different system. Some mini PCs out there are around an affordable price, with decent integrated chips that could handle transcoding much better. Or you could try and put together a cost effective build from the ground up according to your needs. What you probably want to target in this case is an Intel CPU for Quick Sync, for best bang for buck and the excellent transcoding capabilities of Intel.

[TheDreadPirate]

If you MUST use this hardware, with the specs listed you need to be using Linux without a GUI. It just doesn't have enough RAM to run well with modern Windows. In addition to the 4 old, low power cores.

Having said that, it also has a pretty old iGPU/Quick Sync with limited codec support.

If your media is all H264/AAC then that shouldn't be a problem, though.

[mildlyjelly]

That CPU cooler is so adorable!

I'm running a headless install of Ubuntu server on a KVM instance.

• 4 virtual cores of an AMD Ryzen 7 2700x @ 3.7ghz
  
• 3 GB of RAM
  
• 4 GB of SWAP space
  
• Pass through GeForce GTX 1650
  

When transcoding a single 4k stream, my CPU load gets up to about 2.
RAM usage goes up to 2 GB.
SWAP sticks at 800 MB pretty much always.

The key here is the headless Linux, and the pass through GPU.
Linux uses far less CPU and RAM.
The CPU is barely touched during transcodes because the GPU is handling the heavy lifting.

So, I think if you can run Linux, and throw in a dedicated GPU, you will be fine with a single 4k transcode. You might even get away with two 1080 transcodes.
It looks like you have an extra RAM slot, if you can get another 4 GB stick, I would do that too.

[grobleschmomble]

Thanks everyone! I'll try out the Linux way and if not look elsewhere :)