this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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Help with home server plan (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Danitos@reddthat.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi :)

I'm planning on setting up my home server, and I'm feeling a bit lost.

I currently have a Jellyfin, SSH and Backrest server running on my PC, but want to get some dedicated hardware for it, and increase the services hosted to VPN, Immich, maybe Nextcloud, etc.

The problem is that I have no idea for what kind of hardware to aim for. I don't know whether I should aim for Rasperri, or MiniPC, or a dedicated rag, or any other thing. My country doesn't have a big second-hand market for server stuff, but I that's also a possibility.

Some context on my needs:

  • I run 1440p videos on Jellifyn, so my guess is I need H.265 support. Other than that, I think any CPU will do, and don't need a very fast one. Same goes for RAM, maybe 8 GB is enough

  • I feel like I do need at least 2 hard drives (1 for my files, another for backups)

  • The ability of upgrade with better hardware would be appreciated, maybe another hard drive or some extra ram.

  • Preferably, a rather low-energy consumption drive. Maybe 10 W idle? No idea on this front neither.

  • Budget is around $200 USD, excluding hard drives. I can pay extra for drives, or get them later on as I start playing around and scale up.

  • What Linux distro should I use? For security, I want to run everything with Dockers, so I guess it doesn't matter? I'm mildly fluent in Linux, experience with Arch and Debian based.

Thanks in advance :)

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[–] henfredemars 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The h265 hardware support is a lot less exciting than you might think. Most hardware that has support to encode it doesn't even use the hardware encoders anyway because a software encoder produces a significantly better result. I would make sure you have CPU power to handle your transcoding, and I haven't has any issues transcoding that resolution on my quite old Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz.

A Raspi is probably not going to be enough for reliable video transcoding at high resolutions, but I haven't tried it myself. You certainly have more upgrade path options with a mini-PC while still keeping a low power target.

I agree that distro is not very important if you're running your services in Docker containers anyway. It's mostly whatever you find comfortable. My personal recommendation is don't get too creative unless you enjoy setting up servers. I tend to be conservative in my server OSs.