Bingie 99 Posted July 9, 2021 Share Posted July 9, 2021 Hi all, I am pleased with this new Emby server I just built for home use: Inexpensive $183 mini-pc: 1.8/2.5GHz (burst) Celeron J4125 8GB DDR4, NVMe M.2 128GB SSD, Intel UHD 600 GPU, comes w/ Windows 10 Home https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087MB58VR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 For storage, I added a $30 external aluminum HDD enclosure, connects via USB 3.0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UAA4J6G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and installed a $300 10GB 7200 rpm HDD in it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08TZPS4QQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I have to admit, I was concerned the mini-pc would be under-powered, but I've been doing testing, and even with throttled hardware transcoding on while streaming to our 2 tv's, the mini-pc is holding up just fine. CPU utilization, GPU utilization, SSD utilization, HDD utilization and even memory utilization are all minimal. The only bottleneck will be the one gigabit Ethernet port, if we decide to add more tv's, but for now, it's not peaking over 200Mbps. Attached are are two pics, one shows GPU utilization, the other Ethernet. As you can see, resource utilization is minimal. This little setup can easily handle streaming to our 2 tv's even while hardware transcoding, and possibly more. I can also stream direct to computers, but those streams don't seem to add hardly any utilization at all. I was concerned that the mini-pc got a little hot when Windows was first setting up, downloading/installing updates, etc, but after all done, it runs pretty cool now while just streaming. Same with the hard disk, when I was copying movies over from another USB 3.0 storage device to this one, it got fairly hot, but after all done, it runs mildly warm while streaming, and cool when idle. I did tweak the Windows 10 Home install, disabled Cortana (don't bother uninstalling, the next update will just re-install it), disabled OneCloud (ditto), and forced Defender to perform it's scan at 3am. Also adjusted power settings, so it doesn't go to SLEEP after 30 minutes DOH! Had to wake it up a few times before realizing this LOL! The Intel GPU drivers come already installed on Windows 10 Home, so hardware transcoding works out of the box, just switch on the Emby setting, and get Emby Premiere, of course. Hope this helps someone! Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37050 Posted July 9, 2021 Share Posted July 9, 2021 Hi, this is great, thanks for sharing your experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 9, 2021 Share Posted July 9, 2021 I'd expect good things from this setup as well as it's basically very similar to my Synology 920+ which also handles things quite well. Wait till you play 4K HDR media and let it tone map for you. That little box will become even more impressive! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bingie 99 Posted July 9, 2021 Author Share Posted July 9, 2021 I'm avoiding 4k for now, no need for it. Our tv's are 1k HD. Besides, 1k movies are big enough, I don't feel like paying to store 4k movies. Maybe next decade Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bingie 99 Posted July 22, 2021 Author Share Posted July 22, 2021 I enabled remote connectivity, and added a trans-coding stream to my phone, as well as trans-code to one tv, and direct play to another tv. As you can see, this little server is still pretty much idle, handling the work load easily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bingie 99 Posted August 26, 2021 Author Share Posted August 26, 2021 Just wanted to say... After a few months of use, my 10 TB drive is only a third full so far, currently has over 250 movies, a couple hundred tv show episodes, and a couple hundred music videos. Almost have everything I want at this point, hard to imagine actually filling this drive, unless I put a bunch of crap on it, which I don't plan to do. Currently backing up nightly to a cheap 4TB drive, which still has almost 1 TB free. Pretty happy with this setup so far, it transcodes to 2 tv's and my cell phone easily, without breaking a sweat, all on a tight budget. Frugal wins. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jang430 10 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 (edited) Hi. I wonder how many 4K Hevc streams did you get to transcode? I am using the Intel NUC Pentium with same Gemini lake gen Pentium Silver J5005, and I barely got away with 1 stream. @cayars, how many can your Synology do with HDR set to on? Please help check my setting. Emby is running on Linux Mint. Will OS matter? My media is 4K. It also always default to VAAPI. If I put QuickSync on top, it will use Software transcode. Edited August 28, 2021 by jang430 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 I'll do some testing in a couple of days. Right now my NAS is doing a repair after a drive upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jang430 10 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 Sure. In the meantime, you think the OS matters? Transcoding temporary path matters? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 Windows 10 should be fine. If you had an SSD that's used for transcoding that would be ideal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jang430 10 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 I will give Windows a try. Maybe this time, Quicksync will work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 I thought you were already running Windows 10 home? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jang430 10 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 No. I'm on Linux Mint 20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 Oh sorry I was thinking you were the op post. You should be fine on Linux Mint and I doubt the OS is going to make a lot of difference as long as you have drivers to get hardware transcoding working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bingie 99 Posted August 28, 2021 Author Share Posted August 28, 2021 (edited) hijacked my documentary thread for tech support Edited August 28, 2021 by Bingyyyy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jang430 10 Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 Sorry, no intention to. Maybe Cayars can tell me if I should just create a new thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 5 hours ago, jang430 said: Sorry, no intention to. Maybe Cayars can tell me if I should just create a new thread. Yea, create a new thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomnjerry74 93 Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 On 8/26/2021 at 11:46 AM, Bingyyyy said: Almost have everything I want at this point, hard to imagine actually filling this drive Ahh, you poor, poor naive thing In all seriousness, congrats on the setup; sounds like you’ve really found a nice set of hardware that gets the job done! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bingie 99 Posted August 29, 2021 Author Share Posted August 29, 2021 (edited) 3 hours ago, tomnjerry74 said: Ahh, you poor, poor naive thing In all seriousness, congrats on the setup; sounds like you’ve really found a nice set of hardware that gets the job done! Thanks, yeah I know, I'm starting to add more and more tv shows, the old classics, and the ones with a lot of seasons do eat a lot of disk space. That will probably fill the drive. For beginners like me with modest requirements, yeah, this hardware setup seems perfect. A great starter media center with a 10 TB drive. It also has 4 UBS 3.0 ports, so "technically" I can connect 4x 10 TB drives, for 40TB storage, then backup over LAN to my desktop. We'll see how long it takes me to outgrow it. Cheers Edited August 29, 2021 by Bingie 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clarkss12 295 Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 53 minutes ago, Bingie said: Thanks, yeah I know, I'm starting to add more and more tv shows, the old classics, and the ones with a lot of seasons do eat a lot of disk space. That will probably fill the drive. For beginners like me with modest requirements, yeah, this hardware setup seems perfect. A great starter media center with a 10 TB drive. It also has 4 UBS 3.0 ports, so "technically" I can connect 4x 10 TB drives, for 40TB storage, then backup over LAN to my desktop. We'll see how long it takes me to outgrow it. Cheers Haha, not long............ Recording all the old classics becomes very addictive. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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