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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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"Recommended System Requirements" for buying a used PC for selfhosting (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm ready to graduate from my Raspberry Pi era of selfhosting and buy hardware specifically for use as a server.

I've been recommended in the past to look for used Lenovo Thinkstations and/or Dell Optiplex, but it has been so many years since I've shopped for a computer, I don't know what kind of specs to look for. What are the types of specs I should look for to get the best value for money?

I'm hoping to spend around $300-400, get something that can be upgraded in the future to last 10+ years, and do the following things:

YUNoHost / reverse proxy
Nextcloud with a custom domain for email addresses, cloud drive, photos
Music Streaming with something like Navidrome
Serve static websites
pi-Hole
Maybe pi-VPN

And someday maybe:

Host game servers like minecraft
Jellyfin for videos
Kodi and output to TV?

So far based on my selfhosted journey, I expect to want the following:

Room for 3+ Hard Drives
External UPS (probably will go with the cheap APC at Microcenter that's always on sale).
Solid Power Supply / Cooling
probably 1000 gigabit Networking (?)

The types of questions I have for Thinkstations / Optiplex:

How is the Power Supply / Cooling?
Processor? Do I need i5? i7? Generations? AMD? Clock Speed? I'm completely lost here.
How much RAM do I need?
Do I need a discrete graphics card? Can Thinkstations / Optiplex have a graphics card added to them later?
Anything else I'm missing?

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Jellyfin and others transcode some videos to a more streamable format. Not important if it's already a good streamable format, but if it's some older file, it might not even be streamable (like AVI, and WMV). Those situations are where transcoding is necessary. It also comes in to play when the bitrate needs to change, like trying to watch a high bitrate video on old hardware that cannot handle it (like an old chromecast). It's nice when the server can just transcode the video and send a less heavy or more compatible stream.

Hardware acceleration for the transcoding is simply more efficient these days. Most CPUs for the last decade can do software transcoding of 1080p without much issue (if that's all it's doing), but get multiple people watching older videos or some really high bitrate ones and hardware acceleration will become a tangible benefit, too.

Your situation only works for video formats that are streaming-friendly, meaning all the browser has to do is feed the stream of data to a video player, and it Just Works. The media player doesn't need significant chunks of the file to start playing it, so as long as the connection is fast enough, it's fine.