Recommendations for Jellyfin Media Server?

bioha7ard · February 13

I'm looking to create a Jellyfin media server that's not overly expensive while still being able to add additional drives in the future for more storage. I have watched a ton of videos recommending older HP prebuilts as a starting point and was thinking of starting there. Any recommendations on what models are worth grabbing? They don't have to be HP specific, any repurposed prebuilts are fine. I'm based in the US and I don't mind having to buy a few spare parts if need be, as long as the overall build doesn't go too far over $200 (not including drives).

BoomerDutch · February 13

If you want more drives in future try look for a good motherboards having many sata connectors which you can add more drives easier before you need PCI adaptors for more drives.

unijab · February 13

My jellyfin server only has two (18TB) drives at the moment (in a zfs mirror)

BoomerDutch · February 14

11 hours ago, unijab said:

My jellyfin server only has two (18TB) drives at the moment (in a zfs mirror)

Yes however usually you can try old drives and grind them till they are done and not everyone can suddenly buy a drive and slap it in.

And more slots more options to choose cheap or expensive.

Bersella AI · February 14

Used commercial PCs from HP, Dell and Lenovo has become pretty affordable nowadays, especially those originally released over 5 years ago. I have a server built from a used HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF PC, which came with two 3.5' drive bays, plenty of DDR4 RAM & PCIe slots, support for 7th gen Core processors, and even two fancy M.2 ports. Equipped with a Pentium G4600 processor, 8 GB of RAM and 20TB of storage, the server is able to make transcoding in Jellyfin without any hassle.