You may have seen my post trying to troubleshoot my server. It seems either the motherboard or CPU is dead, so hey, why not do an upgrade?
I use this server for a lot. It’s used for a Jellyfin server, sometimes multiple streams at once. I think I’d like hardware transcoding, I want it to be really good at streaming Jellyfin, and preferably multiple streams at once without issue.
It’s also going to be used for hosting Zusam, a kind of private forum for friends/family - a key thing is that this will also be transcoding videos and photos to downscale them (uses FFmpeg).
I also host Photoprism, which will be generating thumbnails and indexing photos.
In addition to this, I also host a bunch of other stuff, I think the key ones are Nextcloud AIO and PaperlessNGX (which does OCR) as these would be more demanding. Then another 10 or so services that aren’t too demanding and have low usage so are unlikely to be an issue outside of making sure I have enough RAM.
I use it as a backup server as well. It receives borg backups from other devices and backs up itself to a backup HDD, and does cloud backups, but has a fast LAN connection and decent internet speed (300Mbps) and this is scheduled overnight so probably doesn’t affect anything.
I also use it for playing games with the kids! Normally Stardew Valley but sometimes more demanding games.
Many of the hosted services have family members also using them. I want to make sure I can do things like the Photoprism indexing and Zusam video downscaling while not affecting the experience using Jellyfin or other services. It’s all good if this happens by limiting cores for transcoding. It would be nice to be able to use it for more demanding gaming as well, but I understand if it’s a bit hard to keep everything going nicely with a demanding game running that doesn’t limit its multithreading.
Possibly related for compatibility purposes:
- all my hard drives are 3.5" HDD or 2.5" SSD SATA connections. I have 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs.
- I also have a Radeon rx5700xt graphics card. Would be nice to be able to keep using this.
- I’m currently running a full desktop environment (Linux Mint - Cinnamon) on it, for the purposes of playing the games. So needs to work well with Linux and also play nicely with wireless Xbone controllers.
- Case is Mid sized. Specifically this one.
And the current CPU is an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, in case you want to tell me what I have is fine and I don’t need an upgrade 🥲
What are some good options for an upgrade?
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions. Lots of people showing me how I wasn’t taking full advantage of the hardware I had, so I ended up going back to trouble shooting and in the end it was the motherboard that was the issue. I replaced that and it’s now up and running again! Now to go back to all the info about hardware transcoding in Jellyfin that people have linked for me. Thanks for everything!
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in case you want to tell me what I have is fine and I don’t need an upgrade
What you have is fine and you don’t need an upgrade 😁
But we’re not looking for fine, are we? :)
I would keep the gpu and get as many cpu cores and ram as my budget allows. Once you cross into “stupid amount of RAM” territory you can start utilising tmpfs for transient things such as jellyfin transcode directory to:
- preserve those precious ssd writes (not really relevant anymore)
- make it more efficient (feels-good kind of relevant)
- running a filesystem in ram is really cool (most relevant, naturally :D)
Ive heard the intel gpus are very good at transcoding and are reletivly cheap compared to other manufacturers.
Is that onboard graphics or does intel do dedicated graphics cards?
They do dedicated graphics cards (arc) but depending on ur workload u might not need sonthing that powerfull. Btw dont take my word for it do ur own research and consult with dr gpt.
