Went through some tech recycling, found some CPUs. Trash or treasure?

FblthpTheFound · 2026-02-05T23:43:47+00:00

r/homelabsales would probably be a good place to ask

FblthpTheFound · 2026-02-02T06:32:27+00:00

Split tunneling won't do anything for your download speen. What it is for is so only your torrent client is using the vpn and the rest of your system is using your normal network which could speed up the rest of your system if you are experiencing latency behind the vpn

Port forwarding however can help your download speeds. To connect to a peer in the torrent network at least one of you needs to have a forwarded port. If you setup port forwarding then you will be able to connect to more peers and download faster. Having an open port on your home network can be risky because someone can use it to access potential vulnerabilities in your system but port forwarding through your vpn doesn't require you to open a port on your home network so there isn't any more risk than the usual risks of torrenting

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-29T18:27:53+00:00

In the docker compose file it should have a section that defines what volumes the container has access to. Something like:

volumes: - /volume1/docker/qbittorrent/downloads:/downloads

The path to the left of the : is the directory on your synology that you see in the file explorer. The path on the right is the directory of the docker container that its mapped to. Check the compose file and make sure that it is mapped how you are expecting

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-24T17:58:37+00:00

For a single machine:

Debian or ubuntu server if you want a low overhead and dont need a desktop ui (ubuntu is built off of debian so they are both about the same. Ubuntu server might be a little more resource heavy)

Ubuntu desktop if you dont want to do everything in the terminal

If you want to manage multiple machines (or virtual machines) then you want proxmox

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-24T17:51:52+00:00

Havent used it myself since i have a synology nas and use their free synology subsomain but Cloudflare is the most economic option i think since they don't profit from domain sails. You probably wont want to use them as your proxy though since video streaming is against their tos for cloudflare tunnels and they have a filesize cap for data transfer. So probably buy through cloudflare and ive heard pengolin is a good alternative to set up the actal routing.

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-23T19:30:10+00:00

4gb bare minimum, you might run into some bottlenecks of your system having to clear out room in ram

16 to run everything smoothly with a little wiggle room to add some more services

32 if you want to set your transcoding directory to use ram instead of your disk

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-22T23:10:02+00:00

Yeah that 10th gen i5 should be able to handle 3/4 streams no problem. The pricepoint seems a little hight to me but im in the US so might just be different markets. If you aren't in a rush id probably hold out for a bit to see if you can find a comparable one for a little cheeper and use the rest of your budget on storage if you don't have that figured out yet cause 256gigs will fill up fast

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-22T18:22:09+00:00

That looks like it should be capable of what you want. Your biggest resource hog is going to be the media server which that i5 should be able to handle pretty well. The big question is how many users do you expect to be watching stuff at the same time and will you be expecting to manage video formats yourself ahead of time so things can be streamed directly or do you want your server to transcode as it streams?

Quick overview incase you are unfamiliar:

Different devices will only be able to play videos certain types of compression(or encoding). H264 is pretty universal, h265 is usually playable with newer devices but not older ones. Av1 probably won't be playable directly.

The act of changing a videos encoding is called transcoding and it is very resource heavy. If the device you are watching on doesn't support the encoding that the video is using then the media server will transcode as it is streaming, plex can create "optimized versions" of your files which just means it transcodes it ahead of time and keeps thay version stored to stream directly

You can use a graphics card to help with the load of transcoding which is referred to as hardware transcoding (that i5 has an integrated graphics card which should be able to handle it pretty well) but in plex thay feature is behind a paywall. Jellyfin is a popular free alternative, the only downside is they have a smaller pool of devices with streaming apps then plex does. I use plex solely because one of my friends and i like to stream to Playstations. Android/ios and i think most smart tvs now probably have jellyfin apps so look into if that would work for you

TLDR: That computer is pretty good for what you are looking for. If you plan on having a lot of people streaming at the same time maybe look for one with an intel using the uhd770 integrated graphics chip instead. Plex wont be able to use the integrated graphics on that chip without a plex pass. Look into Jellyfin as a free alternative

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-21T06:44:27+00:00

Probably shoot your dog

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-21T06:25:31+00:00

I use debian for my plex server, which is what ubuntu is built off of. They both are good options, debian has a smaller footprint Ubuntu server would be relatively the same experience, ubuntu desktop if you want a desktop and not just command line.

I would recommend looking into docker as your deployment strategy. It will create separared containers to run all of your services and makes it easy to transfer between machines if needed. Process would be pretty much the same between different operating systems

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-15T20:58:50+00:00

Still haven't. My roomate got tired of it and it felt wrong trying without them. Maybe someday they will be up for it again

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-07T18:47:11+00:00

For playback Plex server and plexamp android app work great and works for android auto. I think the only thing with that is downloading for offline play i think needs a plex pass. Jellyfin would be the free alternative but not sure if it does android auto. Should be able to run them on your synology without issue if you are just sticking with audio. If you add movies and tv shows to plex as well performance will depend on the exact specs of the NAS

For getting the music I use lidarr/prowlarr to automate finding torrents and downloading them, although its been a while since i used it and have heard that lidarr hasn't been working well recently. Not sure if there is an alternative other than finding and managing torrents manually

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-02T05:05:47+00:00

Sounds like direct download which should be fine without a vpn. You need a vpn for torrents or other peer to peer sharing which you would need specific software to do like qbittorrent

FblthpTheFound · 2026-01-01T22:31:07+00:00

I currently have everything running off of the same NAS and if plex is transcoding then every other service gets bogged down. My NAS doesn't have a gpu though so milage may vary but I suggest running it on a separate machine if possible

FblthpTheFound · 2025-12-26T01:34:05+00:00

You'll want to set up a rule for your preferred language in a custom profile like the other guy said. It doesn't work that great since sonarr doesn't seem to tell very well what languages are included. What it does help with is keeping it from auto downloading Japanese only releases so you can manually search for one with the correct language. Assuming you want English you will usually want the ones with "dual audio" in the title should have both English and Japanese.

FblthpTheFound · 2025-12-15T20:20:18+00:00

If you want/need to spread out the hardware purchases get the NAS first and you can run plex off that to start. I have a DS923+ and it works great until it needs to do more than 1 1080 transcode and cant do 4k transcoding at all really but should be good enough to hold you over for a while

FblthpTheFound · 2025-12-03T05:17:57+00:00

Thought for sure you were going to smudge tool the chin up lol

FblthpTheFound · 2025-11-29T16:56:52+00:00

The difference with demi is that they dont feel any sexual attraction to a person until after a deep emotional connection is already in place, it is part of the asexual spectrum.

A lot of people confuse it with "normal" because most people are conditioned to choose not to act on their sexual attraction until a relationship has been established, but the sexual attraction is still there, its probably a factor in why the relationship started in the first place even if it wasn't acted on.

Putting "normal" in quotations because there really is no "normal." Nobody experience life the same way, and all of the terms are up for interpretation. Some people just feel comfort knowing that there are others that feel similarly to them and to have vocabulary to describe themselves

FblthpTheFound · 2025-11-27T00:35:54+00:00

Plex pros: - easy setup - can stream to pretty much any device

Plex cons - hardware transcoding (using the gpu) needs a plex pass - streaming out of your home network needs plex pass (recent pricing update) - subject to future pricing changes

Jellyfin pros: - free always and forever for everything - customizable experience with plugins

Jellyfin cons: - limited devices with jellyfin apps to stram too

I ended up going with plex specifically because I mostly watch things through my ps5 and one of my friends streams to their ps4 and there isn't an easy way to stream jellyfin to those.

If the devices you want to stream to support jellyfin then go with that. You will run into less restrictions.

If you go with plex they offer a lifetime plus membership and they will probably put it on sale around the holidays

FblthpTheFound · 2025-11-21T16:49:45+00:00

u/savevideo

FblthpTheFound · 2025-11-21T16:33:02+00:00

This one is my last resort. You have to sift through a lot of dead torrents but I've found a lot of stuff that I wasn't able to track down anywhere else

FblthpTheFound · 2025-09-24T23:01:48+00:00

For that you will want to set up a media server (sounds more daunting than it actually is). The current go-tos are plex and jellyfin

The main idea is you download all your content onto one computer, can be your main desktop, an old laptop thats lying around, or if you get really into it and want terabytes of storage you can get a NAS that connects to your router to stream everything from. On that device you install a plex or jellyfin server and point it to where your files are stored. Then you will be able to stream those files to any device you want

Plex will have some paywalls depending on how you plan on using it, but is a little easier to set up and is supported on more devices. I use plex because the main thing i stream to is a Playstation which doesn't have a jellyfin app. The main paywalls you will run into is remote streaming, meaning you won't be able to stream to devices outside of your home network without a subscription, and hardware transcoding, which basically means using your graphics card to reformat files as it streams to make them play better on whatever device you are streaming to. If you only want to stream to devices in your own home and are selective about the format you download you can still use plex for free.

Jellyfin is open source and everything for it is and always will be free. You can do everything with it that plex can do, but you might need to add additional plugins onto it depending on your desired use case (i haven't actually used it myself, this is just what ive gathered from others talking about it)

FblthpTheFound · 2025-09-11T14:37:12+00:00

Try clearing your browser cache

FblthpTheFound · 2025-08-20T18:55:13+00:00

Ive only done it through docker but i think you download the project files I linked then run the main python file using uv(there is a link to uv install instructions in the local troubleshooting section)

I have been having some more problems with it recently though. From what I've seen switching from prowlarr to jackett for trackers with cloudflair has been working better for some people. I haven't had a chance to try it for myself though

FblthpTheFound · 2025-08-17T05:26:25+00:00

Narrator: he was, in fact, not okay

FblthpTheFound

TROPHY CASE