lucasbuck 2 Posted January 5, 2023 Share Posted January 5, 2023 I had a complete dedicated media pc at home. WMC, Emby Theater, tons of storage, etc. I had a house fire and lost all of it. I'm using Youtube TV, so not worried about show recordings and things. But I would like to set up a laptop to just run Theater for home recordings and downloaded things. That way I don't have to stream from my personal laptop. Desktops, I build myself. Laptops, /I/ tend to get Dell (which is where I would like to purchase from). Can anyone suggest a model that isn't super expensive, but would be more than enough to run Theater? I use external drives, so that's no worry. Thanks for any help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrimReaper 3308 Posted January 5, 2023 Share Posted January 5, 2023 (edited) 16 minutes ago, lucasbuck said: I had a house fire and lost all of it. Sorry to hear that. 16 minutes ago, lucasbuck said: Can anyone suggest a model that isn't super expensive That's kinda vague terminology, as it surely depends of what one deems "expensive" (or not); in any case, I'm positive @RanmaCanada will have a suggestion or two. Generally, go with at least 8th gen QS enabled Intel, 10th or 11th would give some more headroom, 12th and 13th gen are beasts unto themselves. Edited January 5, 2023 by GrimReaper Typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucasbuck 2 Posted January 5, 2023 Author Share Posted January 5, 2023 Thank you about the fire.I kind of went overboard when I built the desktop I had. I didn't realize I didn't need a top of the line PC just for media playback. I want a good laptop for the purpose, but not go overboard, which is my tendency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 6 hours ago, lucasbuck said: Thank you about the fire.I kind of went overboard when I built the desktop I had. I didn't realize I didn't need a top of the line PC just for media playback. I want a good laptop for the purpose, but not go overboard, which is my tendency. Define good? Do you want to also use it as a game station, or just enough to do hardware decoding/HDR? If you don't want a laptop this is an HP Mini with an i5-8500T. It will do the job. If you want an inexpensive laptop, here it's a Ryzen 3 4300U with a cracked screen. Has HDMI out and will be able to do some light gaming as well. If these aren't powerful enough for what you want, you can always look for an older gaming laptop. If you want something fully functional, here's another option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucasbuck 2 Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 Thanks for the reply. I'm not interested in gaming. Just acting as the server and store movies (which can go on external drive). I have Fire TV's with the Empy app, so just to stream to that. Let me take a look at what you sent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucasbuck 2 Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 If I were going to go with something new, I was looking at 2. Not sure if I need the more expensive one. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-15-laptop/spd/inspiron-15-3521-laptop/nn3521fjuns https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-15-laptop/spd/inspiron-15-3511-laptop/nn3511eyxsh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q-Droid 652 Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 If you plan to run Emby server on it then #2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted January 18, 2023 Share Posted January 18, 2023 I have the i3 chip in my laptop server and it's fine. The i5 would be nice as it would give you more processing power for audio and subtitles encoding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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