Server Hardware Feedback

[Disentomb]

Good evening yall

Recently built a gaming PC so I decided to use my old laptop as a JF server it does the job well enough but I'm wanting something more discrete, it's just unappealing having my laptop open on a desk adjacent to my Tv and without a cooler the fans add noticeable noise. The only other thing I use the laptop for is the various arr's.
All I'm really looking to do is stream various bitrates and codecs seamlessly in a relatively small package that I could fit either in the Tv stand or behind it, budget not really being a huge concern for me but cheaper is better of course. The only other thing would be possibly streaming from the gaming PC to the Tv? Not sure how that would work though not a priority.

I'd love to hear any anecdotes, recommendations, or useful info you might have including other services you host or use as I might desire to host something like a Minecraft server or other services to block ads on Youtube, etc.

Below are the specs I've picked out just spitballing trying to get an idea of price and based off other recommendations I've seen on here.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Disentomb/saved/rCCgP6

CPU/Mobo: Ryzen 5 4500/Asus Prime B450M-A II
Memory: Crucial 32GB DDR4-3200 CL22
GPU: ASrock Challenger OC Arc A770 ASrock A380 Challenger 6GB
PSU: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 750W 80+ Gold  EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G7 650W 80+ Gold
Storage: Crucial 1TB SSD + 2 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5" 5400
Case: ??? Fractal Design Node 304

I'm not very knowledgeable about transcoding demands but I figure the GPU is kind of overkill for my wants, additionally I just had a hard time trying to narrow down on a case, silverstone seems the go-to but they're fairly pricey so I was hoping to gather some info about cases from the community, ideally for the media center it'd be something no larger than 10 inches (254mm) vertically, width and depth not a concern.

Thanks for reading and thanks to the JF team for their work.
Let me know if you got any questions.

Edit: Updated List

[TheDreadPirate]

The GPU is definitely overkill. The entire Arc lineup has the same media engine. The only thing that the additional VRAM gets you is a few more tone mapped HDR streams since tone mapping is very VRAM heavy. The 6GB Arc A380 can handle about 6 tone mapped HDR transcodes. If that is sufficient for your use case, definitely get a lower end Arc GPU. The 750W PSU is also overkill. ~500W is probably a better choice for this PC.

For the case, I like Fractal Design. Well built, have a lot of quality of life features that make building in them easy, etc.

For the rest of your specs, this should work fine. 6 cores is enough to host quite a few other services.

[conor]

Reckon I'll upgrade to a Meteor lake NUC when they become available. Asus have one on their website but not shipping yet.

https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/n...uc-14-pro/

Very low power consumption and with an Arc GPU should have good transcoding ability.

Really, anything fairly modern will work fine for you.

[TheDreadPirate]

Reckon I'll upgrade to a Meteor lake NUC when they become available. Asus have one on their website but not shipping yet.

https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/n...uc-14-pro/

Very low power consumption and with an Arc GPU should have good transcoding ability.

Really, anything fairly modern will work fine for you.

There are a few short comings with NUCs.

You have limited, and slow, VRAM. Which is important for HDR tone mapping.
All hard drives have to be external USB or on a NAS.
No upgradability.
Expensive for the specs.

If you don't need the super small form factor, they are not very appealing.

[Disentomb]

The GPU is definitely overkill.  The entire Arc lineup has the same media engine. The only thing that the additional VRAM gets you is a few more tone mapped HDR streams since tone mapping is very VRAM heavy.  The 6GB Arc A380 can handle about 6 tone mapped HDR transcodes.  If that is sufficient for your use case, definitely get a lower end Arc GPU.  The 750W PSU is also overkill.  ~500W is probably a better choice for this PC.

For the case, I like Fractal Design.  Well built, have a lot of quality of life features that make building in them easy, etc.

For the rest of your specs, this should work fine.  6 cores is enough to host quite a few other services.

Thanks for the feedback, many of the choices I made were based off replies you made to others asking similar questions. Unfortunately 650W is the best I can find for something modular, try to avoid extra cables if I can.
I am curious as to what case you run as I don't recall seeing you mention it elsewhere.

Reckon I'll upgrade to a Meteor lake NUC when they become available. Asus have one on their website but not shipping yet.

https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/n...uc-14-pro/

Very low power consumption and with an Arc GPU should have good transcoding ability.

Really, anything fairly modern will work fine for you.

There are a few short comings with NUCs.

You have limited, and slow, VRAM. Which is important for HDR tone mapping.
All hard drives have to be external USB or on a NAS.
No upgradability.
Expensive for the specs.

If you don't need the super small form factor, they are not very appealing.

Agreed, if it weren't for the variable resolutions I transcode I'd probably build something really similar to a NUC but additionally one of the issues I have is my external hard drive sleeping even though I've set the headers on my laptop to not sleep which can cause play back issues occasionally which is a little extra fuel to the fire to build a dedicated rig.

I've updated the list with the recommended info and also pushed the motherboard down to ITX to fit in a smaller form factor,  I figure the node 304 should be sufficient and a lot of the reviews are good aside from some bemoaning old designs regarding some aspects about fans and drive trays.

Thanks again for the replies.

[TheDreadPirate]

I am curious as to what case you run as I don't recall seeing you mention it elsewhere.

For my Jellyfin server I am using a Corsair Carbide Air 240, simply because I had it on hand. But I plan on adding some additional hard drives soon and my Corsair case is out of drive bays. I plan to get a Fractal Meshify 2, which has loads of drive bays.

[Reflexiony]

Does it actually make a difference in terms of Jellyfin HW transcoding whether AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650G or AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G and has anything positive happened in terms of frame rate?

As we in DE have all noticed, the low price of Gigabyte motherboard MC12-LE0 Re1.0 AMD B550 I got two with your SLIM SILENCE AM4 cooler each, which is not loud even for 2U, for a very fair 100€ from one of the well-known stores.

Now I'm thinking about replacing my two motherboard C246 WSI (one with i3 8100 and one i3-9350k) with this one, the nice thing is that with the F14 BIOS my p400/Aspeed/APU is also passed through, depending on what you like. Plus iKVM and ECC support. Another alternative would be to take the offers and go for Ryzen 5600 and use an Intel A310/380 instead, you can get both together for about 200€ depending on the offer, has the advantage of also integrating 4xNVMe via a slot and AV1 for the future. I can see that I need to take things apart and test them.

[TheDreadPirate]

So whats the question? You asked about a couple Ryzen APUs and then mention you're an Arc GPU?

[Reflexiony]

So whats the question?  You asked about a couple Ryzen APUs and then mention you're an Arc GPU?

Sry, the question is whether you should switch to AMD or rather to an Intel ARC. Is the encoding quality of the VEGA still far behind the HD630?

[TheDreadPirate]

Intel > Nvidia > AMD. Intel is, and always has been, way ahead in terms of quality. If you have the option, use Intel for transcoding.