Old pc into media server advice
16 minutes ago, J___ said:Hi everyone! so I'm in the process of transforming an old pc of mine and setting it up to be a media server. I have a few questions I'm hoping you all could answer.
First, I don't know if I should go for a nvme or sata ssd for the os. I'm leaning towards the nvme drive because the motherboard only has four sata ports but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Second, the server is not going to be next to the router and I was wondering if a powerline powerline ethernet adapter would be alright or if I should try and wire a ethernet cable across the house. I know ethernet would be the best speed wise but I'm also hesitant to drill a few holes in the wall.
Third, the server only has about 8gb of ram. Should I swap it out for 16 or is 8gb sufficient?
Fourth, I was wondering if anyone here has used plex and jellyfin and if they could recommend one of them. I cant decide between the two. I like how jellyfin is open source and has no paywalls but from what I have read plex seems to be more mature and has more features.
Here is the old pc/server specs if you are curious:
Cpu: Ryzen 3 1200
Gpu: gtx 1050
Ram: 8gb
MotherBoard: Msi b350m gaming pro
Thanks in advance for the help!
I use Plex and have for MANY years. It’s fantastic software. The paywall is more or less irrelevant as most of the paid features are not needed by most folks.
What OS will you be using for this? Nvme is fine to save on sata ports, but the speed of NVMe is relatively meaningless since the boot drive of a server for this type of use has 0 affect on performance. But seeing as nvme isn’t very expensive anymore, and you don’t have many sata ports, that’s a fine option.
Ethernet is definitely preferred…. Can you drill holes down into a basement, run the cables through there and then up to where the router is? Run the cable along mounding? Go out through a wall, run it outside, and back into where the router is? Plenty of ways to get creative with wire runs.
RAM depends on OS… for reference, my homelab in my sig runs many things, one Ubuntu VM for my Plex server which I only give 2GB of ram and it’s plenty happy. My file server is Freenas (truenas) and that needs more RAM… it gets 16GB. I have many things virtualized on an older i3 and 28GB RAM system and everything is happy. So 8GB may be fine depending on OS and how you plan to deploy this.
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