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Jar-man

Jar-man

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Need advice so bare with me if you think the budget is unrealistic. I don't NEED a new pc, I'd like to upgrade.

Currently I'm running a RPI 4 with 4gb. I've installed CasaOS with Deluge, Radarr, Sonarr, Plex and Jackett. I'm able to watch a movie on Plex and use Deluge.
No problem with the setup.

Is the Intel N100 mini pc worth it? (https://www.gmktec.com/products/intel-12th-alder-lake-n100-mini-pc-nucbox-g2)
 
The N100 Alder Lake PC's are very popular for mini servers. Wootware is a distributor of them in SA, and have decent warranties, or you could order from the vendor and save maybe 5-10% and risk something going wrong.

I have no affiliation with Wootware, but I also went down this path a while back and found that buying local for peace of mind would be worth the small premium.

 
PhireSide said:
The N100 Alder Lake PC's are very popular for mini servers. Wootware is a distributor of them in SA, and have decent warranties, or you could order from the vendor and save maybe 5-10% and risk something going wrong.

I have no affiliation with Wootware, but I also went down this path a while back and found that buying local for peace of mind would be worth the small premium.

Click to expand...
Thanks for the honest information. Do you have a mini pc?

Your honest opinion of the device?

A bonus would be to remote into Windows to do some development.
 
Jar-man said:
Thanks for the honest information. Do you have a mini pc?

Your honest opinion of the device?

A bonus would be to remote into Windows to do some development.
Click to expand...
I have two Optiplex 3000 Thin Clients, both running as Proxmox nodes. On there are various containers, VM’s, etc but all of this used to run on a Pi and a Microserver before that.

The N100/N150/N300’s are a lot more performant than the Celeron N5105’s that I have though.

I would have gotten a GMKtec unit but I wanted something passively cooled so in the end the Optiplex units were more suited to my usecase.
 
The hardware decoding on the Intel chips will be especially useful for Plex when you start doing transcoding to stream remotely and that kind of thing.

Main reason my Plex server lives on an old Chromebox.
 
I have a nucbox with an n150. It runs proxmox with sonarr, nzbget, qbittorrent and home assistant.

If proxmox stats are to be believed, what I run is seriously lightweight and the n150 is more than enough.

Plex is handled by my My Cloud Home. I would have switched to jelly fin if Samsung had a native app for my TV.

I am impressed with the little nucbox. Would definitely recommend one. I do wonder when I will hit it's limits though.
 
This would be my pick: R4100 for 16GB RAM and a 512GB NVME. The value proposition is really hard to beat.

1748760852112.png
 
SauRoNZA said:
The hardware decoding on the Intel chips will be especially useful for Plex when you start doing transcoding to stream remotely and that kind of thing.

Main reason my Plex server lives on an old Chromebox.
Click to expand...
Real question, Why do you need hardware transcoding?
I recently built my setup, using aan old 7th gen I7 laptop, proxmox with LXC for various things including Plex.
I do not have plex pass.

My use case is very simple though, I watch on the TV (APP) and on the bedroom laptop (Browser).
Always using direct passthrough. With some old media passthrough hadd issues so i set transcoding and it works, small delay to buffer.

My point is, on my super simple setup, transcoding is almost never used, recently upgraded my main machine so gave my ryzen 3600 cpu setup to my server and now everything is golden. Don't even have a gpu in that box and the 3600 is not an APU.
 
Zuner said:
Real question, Why do you need hardware transcoding?
I recently built my setup, using aan old 7th gen I7 laptop, proxmox with LXC for various things including Plex.
I do not have plex pass.

My use case is very simple though, I watch on the TV (APP) and on the bedroom laptop (Browser).
Always using direct passthrough. With some old media passthrough hadd issues so i set transcoding and it works, small delay to buffer.

My point is, on my super simple setup, transcoding is almost never used, recently upgraded my main machine so gave my ryzen 3600 cpu setup to my server and now everything is golden. Don't even have a gpu in that box and the 3600 is not an APU.
Click to expand...

Note I said remotely.

Absolutely not necessary in home with Direct Play as you say, but mostly everything I have is 4K and that just doesn’t stream well especially not to multiple parties, outside the house.

Worth mentioning the system before this that Plex lived on was an ancient N36L Microserver with zero horsepower.
 
Last edited:
SauRoNZA said:
Note I said remotely.

Absolutely not necessary in home with Direct Play as you say, but mostly everything I have is 4K and that just doesn’t stream well especially not to multiple parties, outside the house.

Worth mentioning the system before this that Plex lived on was an ancient N36L Microserver with zero horsepower.
Click to expand...
Ah I missed that 1 word. Makes sense.
I don't have mine setup for any type of external streaming.
 
Zuner said:
Ah I missed that 1 word. Makes sense.
I don't have mine setup for any type of external streaming.
Click to expand...

Yeah I didn’t really use it for anyone but myself, but lately my mom, sister and sister in law have been using it as well as some friends and I’m actually astounded I haven’t heard of any issues even once.
 
PhireSide said:
The N100 Alder Lake PC's are very popular for mini servers. Wootware is a distributor of them in SA, and have decent warranties, or you could order from the vendor and save maybe 5-10% and risk something going wrong.

I have no affiliation with Wootware, but I also went down this path a while back and found that buying local for peace of mind would be worth the small premium.

Click to expand...
Grabbed one of these a year or so ago for £100 (shipped and taxes inc) off Ali express.

16gb ram & 512gb ssd a real bargain if you ask me.

Currently using it for the following:

1. Plex server
2. Pi hole
3. Realtime backup server for all mobile phones, pc's etc.

Been running 24/7 no issues to report what so ever.
 
Just a note you can order those GMktec directly from them and they ship it wiith yunexpress that is tax free.
I have the k11
 
bar1 said:
Just a note you can order those GMktec directly from them and they ship it wiith yunexpress that is tax free.
I have the k11
Click to expand...
Any extra you had to pay for customs etc?
 
Quick update.

I got myself a Lenovo Think Centre. i7 5th gen, 16 gig RAM, 128gb M2 for R2200. Got it from Bob shop.

I added a 256gb internal SSD and bought an additional 256gb external SSD
 
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