Advice on computer hardware when building a dedicated Emby server from scratch.

[simmisj 0]

Hi.

I am planning to buy all new hardware and build a dedicated Emby server from scratch. I am pretty tech savvy and build all my computers myself. I still would like to know things that I might have overseen or maybe someone has experience and can guide me down the right path. My main criteria are physical size (smaller better) and energy efficiency without compromising on performance. I am only concerned with the energy usage while idle. When I am actually streaming and using the server then I do not care how much energy is being used. This server will only be used by my household so maximum two users at a time. I will be running Windows 64bit professional on the server. The storage media will only be 3.5 inch HDDs.

I was thinking of buying some mATX case, mATX motherboard, cheap-ish cpu, 16GB fast RAM, 500W power supply (GOLD or better), 128GB ssd or M.2 for OS, and then some GPU for hardware acceleration.

I have two main questions as follows:

1. Is there something I am overseeing or could potentially become a bottleneck for the server? 

2. Is there any part that you would change to some specific part because it will increase performance of an Emby server?

3. How can I know what is the minimum required part for an Emby server to not cause a bottleneck for maximum two simultaneous 4k streams at a time?

Regards

[Abobader 3463]

Hello simmisj,

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[tedfroop21 86]

1 hour ago, simmisj said:

1. Is there something I am overseeing or could potentially become a bottleneck for the server? 

2. Is there any part that you would change to some specific part because it will increase performance of an Emby server?

3. How can I know what is the minimum required part for an Emby server to not cause a bottleneck for maximum two simultaneous 4k streams at a time?

1. The biggest bottleneck with newer hardware is usually your network.

2. Depends on how many streams you will be serving at a time and how much transcoding you will be doing.  For the most part, I am running on an i5 with 530 graphics using Quicksync for incidental transcoding I have no issues.  Note also that I re-encode media to avoid transcoding when possible.

3. Your network.  Moving that data to and from is usually the biggest bottleneck.  You need to figure out the stream bandwidth you need for a single 4k stream, and double it to find how much bandwidth all that uses.  Don't forget to throw in a little extra bandwidth for incidental computing that goes on as well.

[RanmaCanada 494]

Your biggest bottleneck is your hard drives, period. Spinning rust can only get so fast, and will never be faster than your network can be (solid state of course can, but no one is buying 128TB SSD's for Emby). If you want to keep things low power, then you want to use an Intel based system as quicksync is king and there is no need for a dedicated graphics card. I personally use an i5-1235u laptop with a dedicated diskshelf for my movies and stuff, and have no problems with multiple 4k trancsodes. Jason at bytemybits on youtube tested out the max 4k transcodes a 13900k could do via quicksync, and it was 19 when bandwidth was not an issue. He did everything from an nvme drive. As 4k movies typically don't go over 100mbit/s, which is a mere 12.5MB a second (give or take with some overhead), a gigabit network is more than enough for 2 4k streams. I run with a 2.5gbit network as 10g gear is till too expensive. 

A dedicated disk shelf goes a lot farther than putting stuff into a case, as you will run out of room and have to upgrade your hardware, and it can be expensive. If I could do it all over again, I would have bought a Norco 4220 back in the day instead of a Fractal XL as it cost me lots of money to upgrade the case to keep fitting drives, until I ran out of room and had to buy a disk shelf anyways. I went from hosting Emby in my main rig, to having the media in a separate system and and server software on my main rig to finally having a dedicated system for both. You say you want to buy an m-ATX case, and throw your stuff in there, let me warn you, getting media can be addicting, and you will run out of space quickly, not to mention you want to have some sort of parity for when drives fail so you do not lose media (it's not a matter of if drives fail, it's when). Buying super large drives and not having redundancy for them is a lesson waiting to be learned.

If it was me in your situation, I would buy a disc shelf or NAS style case, and build a system in it using either older gear for free, or i3/i5 from Intel (12th gen or better), that way I would have the option to install a VM for windows or a docker for Emby. If this is too complicated,  you could just leave it as a dumb NAS, and then get a dedicated system for the server, like an N100/N150 mini system and have it on the network (like I stated I use a laptop, and it makes life easier as it has it's own screen and keyboard and can be placed anywhere in the house on the network). Operating system for the NAS would be either TRUENAS, or Unraid, with Unraid having the upper hand to make it easier to get more space, but TRUENAS has the upper hand for data redundancy. Both can run VM's or dockers if a second, dedicated server machine was out of the question. You state you do want to go the windows route on one machine, and that has problems as you'd have to have the drives in software raid, or use Microsoft storage spaces or drive pool, which can fail and when they do, data recovery is pretty difficult.

Don't think about what you want to build now, think of what your end game is in regards to content. Do you want to replace all your TV and movie viewing, or do you just want convenience. Do you want things like home assistant, pi-hole, tailscale, security cameras, own cloud, etc. You're about to make a big change, and you can do so much more than just Emby.

I hope this helps.

[simmisj 0]

Thank you both for your replies @RanmaCanadaand @tedfroop21. Both of your answers have valuable insight. 

I decided to delay investing in a dedicated server for now and just continue using my main rig. It is completely full now using 6 out of 6 sata ports but this decision means I will have plenty of time to investigate what is needed for a dedicated server. Your answers helps a lot with that. So thanks.

[RanmaCanada 494]

This is the disk shelf I bought. I got the one with the 6G backplane as it's more than enough. I am running UNRAID, and if I wanted to I could have it all contained in the unit with a VM or docker, but I personally like having it on a laptop as it makes it easier to manage when things go wrong. Yes I bought direct from China. It is also available on Amazon USA, but at twice the price.

[simmisj 0]

18 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said:

This is the disk shelf I bought. I got the one with the 6G backplane as it's more than enough. I am running UNRAID, and if I wanted to I could have it all contained in the unit with a VM or docker, but I personally like having it on a laptop as it makes it easier to manage when things go wrong. Yes I bought direct from China. It is also available on Amazon USA, but at twice the price.

That is interesting. The sending cost is astronomical and it is huge. I understand your point about going big in this regards right from the beginning but I am not sure it suits me right now. I was thinking of buying a simple Fractal Design Node 304 ITX case that can hold 6 3.5 inch hdd's. With a motherboard that supports intel 1700 and buy some cheap processor like the Intel 1700 i3-14100 4C/8T UHD730. The processor has Quick Sync so I should not need a graphics card. Then I would buy Windows 11 Pro and run everything from that case, but reading your post again then maybe I should look into Unraid or TRUENAS. I would like it to be a completely self hosting machine, without some other machine having the server software.
I don't think I will run out of space any time soon so if this setup would last me a few years then I could expand it later and go for something like you mention.

[RanmaCanada 494]

It cost me just over $400 CDN for the case to have it shipped to the border, as the USA at the time had a better de minimis maximum than Canada. That price is pretty good as used diskshelfs can go for much more, specially the ones that have 32-36 bays. If you want the ability to upgrade drives, you should go with UNRAID as TrueNAS does not make it easy as your drive pools are set and can't be expanded, at this time.