Hardware server

[Celerte 2]

Hello, I would like to set up a new Emby server with good CPU resources and 16GB of RAM (is that enough?). I tell myself that a good graphics card is not useful... what decodes the videos? the server or the client? Thank you in advance for your suggestions

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

My server is set up on a "used" computer with nothing special in its abilities or power and its graphic card (which Emby can use for transcoding) is nothing really special either.

I have multiple USB drives connected and I use DrivePool to combine them all into one large drive. 

I do not have any problems but I do not 'stress" the server much at all. 

I keep all my media in formats (containers) that Emby direct plays or at least direct streams (audio transcoding only) and that helps quite a bit.

My general recommendation is to simply set up the server and see how it works, all it takes is a bit of time. If you do not plan to use features that require a license then do not buy one but, if you do want to use those features (like live TV) then do not buy a lifetime sub but rather get monthly to test and upgrade to yearly or lifetime if everything works correctly for you.

Emby has some rather stringent naming and structure requirements so read about and follow those pretty much exactly.

You can receive lots of help here but, mostly, it is not needed for getting started as Emby's online documentation is quite good and if you follow the recommendations.

The Emby server does almost all the work but can stream most any format to clients and will only transcode when needed by the client.

Good luck. Emby is not a "plug and play" system at all but it also does not require an engineering doctorate but, if you rush too much, there are issues that can rear up and then become hard to fix after the fact.

One more thing: In general the more users you plan to have the greater the power needed in your server and, if many users are "remote," then you need good upload ability through your ISP.

[RanmaCanada 345]

Do you want it all in one, or do you want a file server and then a transcoding server?  For starters, you want to ensure that you use a recent Intel processor with an iGPU as it will use quicksync, which is THE KING in transcoding.  The server itself checks to see what the client can play and if the files selected do not match what the client can play, the server will do the work to ensure that the client can play the file by transcoding it to a compatible format.  As for ram, 16GB is "enough"  I've had success with 8GB while using a laptop as the transcode server.  My current transcode server has 20GB of ram and is on an i5-1235u laptop that has a smashed screen while the movies are stored on a dumb UNRAID box that is in my basement.  Laptop uses 25 watts at peak as it's bios locked (typically idles around 3-5 watts), and the array with 16 drives uses about 100 watts (remember incandescent light bulbs?)

I've done it this way as it's easier for me to manage a system on windows than it is in a container.  It also allows me to use older hardware for my file server without having to spend big bucks on new hardware (e5-2670 from when Facebook upgraded their servers).  The laptop was bought for about $130ish USD and is only limited in transcodes by my network and array speeds.  You could even get a NUC as your transcoding server.  It all comes down to how many systems you want to manage, and your computer knowledge.