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The upgrade time has come

crashkelly

By crashkelly
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crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Posted (edited)

Good day all,

Well unfortunately one of the machines in my rack has decided it is time to finally R.I.P.. I had two machines, one dedicated for Emby and one dedicated for media "organization", it is the later that died after about 15 years of use. Although it does suck, it does present the opportunity to build a newer, still dedicated, Emby server and take advantage of tech upgrades over the past 6ish years, the age of my current Emby server, and move the current Emby hardware into the "organization" role.

Although likely overkill, I have specced out the following:

Wanting to do a sanity check to make sure I am not missing anything obvious.

System will be/is feed media from a 45-bay Supermicro storage JBOD and has multiple, say 10, external users as well as 2 internal users.

Emby is currently running on Win11 Pro and will be again after the upgrade.

Anyway, thanks for any input

Cheers

Edited by crashkelly
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RanmaCanada

RanmaCanada 588

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Posted

it's a little overkill. If you want to save money, just do what I did and grab a laptop off eBay with a smashed screen. 12th gen or higher is all that's really needed.

I have mine being fed by a 24 bay UNRAID server.

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crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Thanks for the reply.

New hardware is going in the existing rack mounted case so want to go with a new mobo and whatnot.

Chers and thanks again

TMCsw

TMCsw 299

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I would avoid a ‘K’ model processor (no cooler included), as it will require a significant 3rd-party cooler (many will not even fit in a rack mount) to take advantage of any performance benefits; they are also power-hungry. And definitely don’t get an ‘F’ model.

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yocker

yocker 1889

Posted
Posted

Way overkill just for an Emby server.
The machine i have dedicated to Emby is just a small dell workstation i bought for around 50$ and it handles everything that has been thrown at it so far, multiple transcodes, end credit detection and much more.

If all the machine has to do is run pure Emby and nothing else i would:
Buy some small computer with an Intel CPU for the iGPU (not older than the 8xxx generation), stay at 8-16GB of memory and then use the saved money on some storage or something else you want. :) 
You can pretty much get old Dell computers thrown at you that can do the job without trouble. Replace the fans for some low noise, install Linux and you're off!

If you still insist on buying an overkill computer you might change your mind when you see the price of memory and SSD storage. ;) 

  • Like 1
crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Thanks all for the tips/advice.

Pretty committed to reusing existing rack case, 2U, and just putting in a "new" mobo/cpu/RAM into that.

RAM and SSD prices are insane right now but thankfully, other than storage, have not had to spend on the system for a few years so that helps.

I will look through things again and stay away from the K and F CPU's.

Will post again once I have respecced.

Cheers

  • 2 weeks later...
crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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  • Author
Posted (edited)

Alright, back on this now.

Am looking at swapping the CPU from the previous post for a:

Obviously budget is a consideration but preference is to go with new as have not had much luck with buying used gear. I do share with a number of family members, external, so transcoding is important as well.

Next concern is on the CPU Cooler side. System runs in a 2U rack case so vertical space is a big consideration and most fan/heatsink combos won't fit. Will the cooler included with the CPU suffice or do I need to dig for something else.

Thanks

EDIT: Also thinking about dropping the M.2 SSD as the current system has a good one and that would save a few bucks and save my copying the OS to the new one

Edited by crashkelly
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crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Thank you.

Was just actually looking a the top one when your reply came in.

Cheers

marriedman

marriedman 107

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I was goin to say it was overkill like the rest, HOWEVER - when you said   

On 8/30/2026 at 12:02 AM, crashkelly said:

15 years of use.

Then I don't think that is overkill at all. That is future proofing! However, I would reconsider using Windows as a server OS. I know it can be done and I know plenty of people do it, but if you are starting over on a new machine, it would be a very good time to dip your toes into Ubuntu server. You'll find it very performant. Only time I ever reboot it is for the kernel updates. 

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crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Thanks for the reply.

Getting 15 years out of the system that just died was awesome so I really don't mind spending a bit of money on a new one.

I do/did have two systems in the rack, The current Emby, still running just fine on Win11 Pro, and the one that was the *arr stack, now dead, that was running kubuntu. I will shift the current Emby system to be the *arr stack and reinstall kubuntu, and then use the new parts to build a new, more powerful, Emby system that will still be on Win11 Pro.

Fingers crossed there will not be too much issue when I fire up the new system with the exiting OS drive with Win11 Pro installed.

I am not sure why I went with kubuntu a bunch of years ago, it has been great for sure, but I might look at just ubuntu for this round.

Thanks again

marriedman

marriedman 107

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11 minutes ago, crashkelly said:

ingers crossed there will not be too much issue when I fire up the new system with the exiting OS drive with Win11 Pro installed.

lol, BigBrother Microsoft won't allow that to work. If you change enough in your PC while running Windows they will make the assumption you are violating the terms of your license by installing Windows on another PC. Then there is the drivers mess just booting into a new hardware. Windows doesn't have the monolithic kernel like Linux, so it will complain a lot. But it can be done. You just might have to call Microsoft to activate the license on the new hardware. And yes, I literally mean call. It is a soul sucking call too. 

I am not trying to convince you to switch to Linux, obviously you have already dipped your toes into it since you have Kubuntu. But instead of setting aside a couple hours, you might want to set aside a couple days.

  • Like 1
crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Ya, I never thought it would easy :)

Have read a bit about the swap and OS reactivation so I do expect some pain for sure.

Current Emby system was built by me, is not an OEM Win11 Pro license, and is registered to my Microsoft account so hopefully that will make it a bit easier, hopefully.

No pain, no gain as they say 😃

Cheers

RanmaCanada

RanmaCanada 588

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, marriedman said:

lol, BigBrother Microsoft won't allow that to work. If you change enough in your PC while running Windows they will make the assumption you are violating the terms of your license by installing Windows on another PC. Then there is the drivers mess just booting into a new hardware. Windows doesn't have the monolithic kernel like Linux, so it will complain a lot. But it can be done. You just might have to call Microsoft to activate the license on the new hardware. And yes, I literally mean call. It is a soul sucking call too. 

I am not trying to convince you to switch to Linux, obviously you have already dipped your toes into it since you have Kubuntu. But instead of setting aside a couple hours, you might want to set aside a couple days.

It will actually be pretty ok. The newer versions of Windows do detect hardware changes before booting into the main OS and will load the required drivers. If OP is really worried, they could attempt to load into safe mode and remove all hardware. In my experience, it's no longer the headache it once was to do a system transplant. I've swapped out many older machines with very little headaches. The largest change was from a Haswell system to a Ryzen 7 5800G.

  • Like 1
crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Thanks for the reply.

Not really too worried about it. It either works or it doesn't and if it is doesn't then I will deal with that if it happens. :)

Cheers

Eigeplackter

Eigeplackter 111

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Posted

Are all your Users able to Direct Play all your media files ?

No transcoding needed ? 

 

I know getting a gpu in a 2U case can be a pain ….

I build myself a new Emby server in 12/25 and went with:

Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 5 225F

32GB RAM

500GB NVME for Fedora

1TB NVME vor transcode cache

ARC 580 GPU 

This way I was able to reencode all H264 files to AV1, on the same machine, while parallel emby and some dockers are running.

And everytime I forget to set the Diagnostic Options, after reboot, I see the CPU is hardly handling one AV1 transcode.

 

  • Like 1
crashkelly

crashkelly 62

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Hi and thanks for the reply.

Actually, most users are external and most media is transcoded.

I will take some measurements of the 2U case for possibilities, but it is pretty tight in there.

Having a dedicated NVME for transcoding cache might be a goods idea. I am currently using a standard SSD as the existing mobo only has one slot for NVME but the newer mobo I am looking at supports 2.

Cheers

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