Great news! I started my selfhost journey over a year ago, and I’m finding myself needing better hardware. There’s so many services I want that my NAS can’t handle. And I unfortunately need to add GPU transcoding to my Jellyfin setup.
What’s the best OS for a machine focused on containers and (getting started with) VMs? I’ve heard Proxmox
What CPU specs should I be concerned about?
I’m willing to buy a pre-built as long as its hardware has sufficient longevity.
In hindsight, I didn’t explain myself well enough. My plan is to use my current NAS as a NAS and little more; I’d like a machine with respectable hardware to handle what my NAS is currently running plus more.
My NAS has Jellyfin, arrs, all the stuff that goes with that, Pi-hole, and Homarr. And that’s pushing its limits: everything has been slow, streams freeze, I’ve had containers quit, etc.
I’d like to get into other projects like Radicale, Mealie, ErsatzTV (old PC could handle it, NAS can’t), CCTV, and more. But according to my resources, the NAS can’t handle it
GPU (for the sake of transcoding) isn’t worth it?
This makes sense
No sense in getting rid of hardware that is working. I’m not familiar with ersatztv but for all the other stuff I am able to handily run it on a 10th gen intel build that is also handling nas duties fwiw. And some stuff is not ideal (cctv is handled via blue iris, which runs in windows VM, everything else is docker)
for the gpu it really depends on your needs. How many users is the big one. If you have at most 2-4 concurrent users and that is an uncommon scenario the gpu is a waste of power, money, and thermal management. Igpu will sip power and transcode (depending on library content, again av1/vp9 on a 10th gen isn’t happening) with that user load assuming you have a decent amount of ram (I have 32gb so you don’t need absurd amounts).
However if you have a lot of users hitting you, 5-6+ or more concurrent streams that all transcode, then you need to start evaluating a discrete gpu (and maybe a significant internet connection bc damn). Alternatively you can suggest your users get something like a ugoos am6b+ flashed with coreelec or a similar setup that can just direct play basically anything but that’s a bit challenging to setup
So then it may be as simple as buying some e waste pc to use a server and using the nas as its intended purpose. Frankly this is probably better, it’s worse power wise but having the storage separate from services has advantages
So I’m expecting a max of 5 concurrent users, but most wouldn’t need transcoding. The real hiccup (brace yourself) is a 720p CRT and (assuming I get transcoding to work well) a 480p CRT. I’m pretty novice to PC specs outside of the “buy whatever you can afford for gaming” mindset, so any suggestions there are welcome. My budget is…whatever it takes to not regret the hardware years from now. My last build was $2k for reference