I am looking to self host my own media server (Jellyfin), a personal page and something more in the future and I need to choose my server hardware. I have decided on buying a single board computer to save on energy, space and, perhaps, cost.
Jellyfin docs recommend a computer with a Rockchip RK3588 / RK3588S processor. I would also need ethernet, USB for external storage, at least 4GB of RAM and maybe a M.2 slot for the OS and more space.
I know about Armsom and OrangePi, are they any good?
My budget would be up to 150 euros and I live in the Netherlands. Any suggestions?
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if you need to buy it, for that budget i’d choose something like an used Lenovo m910q tiny that banks and offices are throwing to the landfill because Microsoft said that everyone needs to buy a new PC. Half the price, similar power consumption (in idle, otherwise much more), much more powerful, comes with nvme and sata slots, hdmi and usb 3
Agreed, this is good advice. At one time I had three of these, they’re great, small, versatile, well built. All around a great machine.
I was fiddeling with my Raspberry Pi 4 but decided to buy a refurbished Dell Wyse Thin Client 5070. It cost like 70€, I put DietPi on it because I love it, plugged an external drive and I’m very happy with the experience.
+1 Dietpi on an old SFF office computer runs extremely smooth. Fiddled with Rpi too first… The few Watts lower energy use aren’t worth the hassle, old SFF’s offer so many (future) options while still getting really low idle power usage
I’ve been hosting Jellyfin on my Radxa Rock-5C for a year or so, and it’s done a very good job at it.
The only difficulties that I’ve faced (mostly in the beginning) were:
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It was a pain to install the drivers for hardware transcoding on armbian. I solved it by switching to some other distribution that’s maintained by a single guy. Ubuntu-Rockchip or something. That might have changed since then, but if it didn’t you’ll probably face it with any RK3588-based SBC.
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It’s a bit temperamental in terms of power delivery. Make sure to use a charger with the right USB PD spec to power it, and use a USB hub with its own charger to plug your storage. That’s probably specific to the Radxa boards though.
So it takes a bit of work to make it work properly. If you don’t want to deal with that, I second some other comment that I saw: get an Intel NUC, the setup should be much simpler. If you don’t mind using AliExpress, you can find a brand new one for less than 100€.
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GMKtec sells solid mini x86 computers. I have one with an Intel N150, which can do hardware encoding with Intel QSV. https://www.amazon.com/GMKtec-mini-pc-computer-n150/dp/B0CH81C4K3
$137 rn on Amazon for 8gb/256gb N150
The Radxa Rock 5 series use RK3588s and have USB, ethernet and 4-32 GB RAM.
Buy refurbished / used Mini PC with at least 16GB RAM and 1Gbit network card. Don’t bother with M.2, SSD is enough.
I have right now refurbished hp g4 ryzen 5 mini pc. There is 12 docker containers running there and couple applications in screen, I just add things. Don’t do ARM, as far as I remember running on ARM is compilation hell. Stick with x86. You want it to ease your life and not to make it harder.