Selfhosted

If you really want Intel, just get an N100 or N300. Low power, Intel HW transcoding on iGPU on Linux kernels 6.3+, and can handle Jellyfin no problem. You can get a minipc with everything you for $175 for a no name brand, or maybe $250 for a more well-known brand.

intel gpu = any integrated graphics from any intel cpu made in the last 8 years. This includes those crusty $10 celerons, don't need a dedicated intel arc gpu (unless you're streaming to dozens users at the same time)

detail of supported formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

As it seems nobody's linked it yet, have you read Jellyfin's hardware selection page? They go into great details about which HW features are required/desired.

In my case I'm running it on a NUC with an i3 8109U + 16GB RAM, it runs great with 2 or 3 transcoding jobs at once. Media are stored on 5400-RPM HDDs.

Why NVME for storage? Why not NVME for OS and Hard Drives for storage?

If all you’re looking to do is setup a Jellyfin server that won’t do any transcoding, you could very easily use a raspberry pi with an external Hard Drive.

https://xyproblem.info/

Don't do this

Install a stable Linux distro and then setup Jellyfin. I would recommend a minipc with an Intel CPU for hardware acceleration. If you are feeling spicy you could use Podman

Basically anything will work if you pop an Intel A380 in there and set up hardware encoding.

Honestly, a decently fast CPU with QuickSync will work just fine without a GPU. Something like a mini PC with an Intel N100 would work great.

There’s also no reason to use an NVMe RAID. Either just buy a big NVMe or use a HDD raid. Either way, have a backup solution if that’s what you’re going for, cause RAID is not backup.

As far as BSD, I have no idea if that will work. I guess if it runs Docker, you can use the Jellyfin Docker image. What makes you want to use it over Linux?

Hardware support can be a bit of an issue with bsd in my experience. But if you're asking for hardware it doesn't take as much as you may think for jellyfin.

It can transcode just fine with Intel quic sync.

So basically any moden Intel CPU or slightly older.

What you need to consider more is storage space for your system and if your system will do more than just Jellyfin.

I would recommend a bare bones server from super micro. Something you could throw in a few SSDs.

If you are not too stuck on bsd maybe have a look at Debian or proxmox. Either way I would recommend docker-ce. Mostly because this particular jellyfin instance is very well maintained.

https://fleet.linuxserver.io/image?name=linuxserver/jellyfin

• Lenovo ThinkCentre / Dell OptiPlex USFF machine like the M710q.
• Secondary NVMe or SATA SSD for a RAID1 mirror
  • Use LVMRAID for this. It uses mdraid underneath but it's easier to manage
• External USB disks for storage
  • WD Elements generally work well when well ventilated
  • OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad has a very well implemented USB path and has been problem-free in my testing
• Debian / Ubuntu LTS
• ZFS for the disk storage
• Backups may require a second copy or similar of this setup so keep that in mind when thinking about the storage space and cost

Here's a visual inspiration:

Feels like some of that stuff, like the SSD's are a bit overkill for a media server. Most of them still use spinning disks to maximize size vs. cost.

Additionally, the CPU/GPU needs of a media server are pretty minor, unless you need to transcode on the fly, and even then, single streams aren't very intensive either.

So unless you're capping the outgoing bandwidth to multiple external sources, you're most likely just streaming the video source as-is to the destination, which just needs a stable network stream. If you don't need to transcode at all, you don't really even need a GPU on the hardware.

Aoostar n100 2 Bay nas is what I'm currently thinking about. Or the same device but rebadged.

Pros: n100 for quicksync. 2 bays of HDD for media storage. Low power at idle. Cheap for a box with all relevant codecs + sata storage. High WAF compared to other HTPCs

Cons: Unknown brand for build quality and bios updates. General Chinese security anxieties. Idle power, while low, is higher than other n100 options. Fan isn't pwm. Personally don't like the aesthetics.

nvme for videos seems expensive for nothing, unless you are serving 4k videos over a 10gbit connection to multiple users

I don't think anyone here would recommend BSD, but since your requirements are low you could run that on pretty much anything, including a relatively recent surplus PC.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

[Thread #732 for this sub, first seen 1st May 2024, 16:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Im no expert, but will share my experience. I used to host (2 years) on rpi4 4GB and can't recommend because it was painfull with USB drives. It works fine for many peeps, but I ended up using it as 2nd DNS server.

Eventually I built DIY desktop PC (a year ago) with celeron G3930 (with quick sync) and no GPU. Runs perfectly fine for multiple 1080p streams, but I never tried 4k. Its dirt cheap hardware and its much better than rpi (imo) because it has sata ports. It runs 30-40 services ans drains around 30W (with 2 SSDs and 1 HDD) from the wall

What I personally use and what I plan to do. Maybe it's worth something for you:

Currently in production:

• Intel Nuc 11th gen i5-1135G7 wirh 8gb single Sodimm
• Storage: 8TB external hdd via USB 3.0
• OS: Debian with OMV6
• Jellyfin running in docker. Media is organized with the *arr suite

HW transcoding is fine for single 4K HDR -> 1080p but I probably misconfigured something and it could be better or the linuxserver container is bad.
Don't care enough to fix it :p

Planned in the future:

• Ugreen DX4800+ NAS as NFS or iSCSI storage with 8-10TB of Raid1 (for now) storage.

Btw: This is my hardware (literal) stack :)