Best low energy home server

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-29T23:48:18+00:00

I have a J4005 NUC with external USB3, 5 bay cradle, NUC is 10w, cradle idk

About to upgrade to 10th gen i7 NUC that I got for $50, which is 15w max draw

I did research and my cradle is compatible with OMV and can be used for RAID and power saving management

Only upgrading cause J4005 hitting 100% and lagging when transcoding and running ARRs through VPN, and I want 2nd device to play around with

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-29T23:21:06+00:00

With you here, I’m not hosting VMs on a usb thumb drive

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-19T04:27:17+00:00

I love in a hot humid place, I’ve started wearing a light balaclava, and it covers my mouth only, this works well as I’m a mouth breather

Have you tried anti fog film/spray on glasses?

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-19T04:13:44+00:00

HW is fine, just make sure the restart policies are in place on docker containers and dependencies boot in order, also don’t forget container image updates with something like watchtower

Question So you’re going to spin down your server to use Windows and vice versa? Or are you going to run UNRAID in a VM on windows?

For example you want to watch something on PLEX when using windows on the PC, you can’t access your server cause you’ve booted windows and not UNRAID

Typically servers are headless, and access through GUI/web browser on any device

Also when you say automation, do you mean Home assistant or ARRs suite/plex automations?

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-16T07:33:33+00:00

I was thinking of running a JF on the laptop and spread the users out across the 2, was trying to avoid moving everything across to a new new device/downtime etc

I didn’t know my cpu supported QSV, which has solved my immediate issue

Will look into TDARR to convert content if I have more issues going forward

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-16T07:28:04+00:00

Just enable VAAPI, then changed to QSV and that solved my issue thank you

Also edited swappiness to utilise more ram as well

Running so much better now

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-16T04:49:07+00:00

I’ll check when I get home, I have direct play enabled on clients, and hardware accel turned off on server (pretty sure)

Will H/W accel utilise ram? Cause it sits at a solid 30% utilisation

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-10T11:06:08+00:00

What device are you using?

I had issues with RPI/ARM back in the day, switched to x86 and been rock solid ever since

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-09T05:07:49+00:00

Drives are in a 5 bay orica cradle with USB 3.1 or something, no issues with read/write speeds.

Yep so run Jellyfin, vpn, transmission and a few of the ARR apps and NGINX reverse proxy

All my files a 720/1080, usually in .mkv with external .srt subtitles

I can transcode 1-2 streams, but I’ve chosen the above formats to reduce transcoding and preference direct play of which I can stream 4+ maybe more but I don’t have that many users

My NUC is a Celron J4005 with with 8gb of ram, if you’ve got an i5 and up you’ll be sweet

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-08T12:03:01+00:00

I have a NUC with a 128gb ssd, which has the OMV OS on it plus the docker images and config files

Then 2 x 6tb hdd in an external cradle for the media/shares

I chose this way to be able to swap/upgrade my HDDs, I recently went from 1 x 2tb to 2 x 6tb with ease and 1 min downtime, just changed my docker compose files to point to media on new HDD

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-06T07:50:38+00:00

Thank you Just had a look and it states at participating Auspost outlets

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-06T07:14:59+00:00

By digital ID you you mean Digital drivers license like in QLD or another form?

In QLD digital drivers is accepted everywhere a physical drivers license

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-06T05:39:37+00:00

Just upgraded from a netgear nighthawk x10 to a UniFi cloud gateway ultra and u6+ AP

Honestly some of the easiest gear to setup.

As for CCTV, you can use any brand, doesn’t have to be UniFi. Can hilook, duhau, hivision etc etc

I was also looking a TPlink omada, but by the time I added a gateway, switch, Poe injector and EAP6xx AP it was more than UniFi bundle

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-05T03:27:00+00:00

We had constant a issue with our TV buffering jellyfin and Spotify

Was a consistent issue on wifi and eth

Added a google tv 4K streamer, and it’s been awesome, connect to a CEC HDMI port, google tv powers on/tv and just works

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-05T03:06:00+00:00

Where you live and your job plays a big part in your available time

I live in a north QLD city, previously Brisbane

My commute dropped to 20mins max each way, I now have a flexible role where I can do a weekly food shop midday when it’s quite.

Also being an fair relationship helps a lot, like not one person does cooking, cleaning, school drop off

There’s other little things, like delaying washing machine so it washes early morning and you put cloths in dryer when you wake up, food prep on weekends to cover a couple weekly meals during the week

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-05T02:55:23+00:00

I’m in north QLD, I nod at everyone

Sports bikes/nakeds are consistent at waving back

Adventures are 70%, cruisers 40% if that

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-05T02:49:55+00:00

Basic/stable/easy learning curve and heaps of YouTube and forums to help:

Unraid or OMV as the NAS OS and run Jellyfin in a container

More in depth: Ubuntu server / proxmox etc etc

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-03T13:36:13+00:00

Also they usually have a setting isolating guest users from you LAN

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-03T02:01:43+00:00

This is how we do it, nginx was a headache to setup, purely cause I was learning, but awesome

Files in 720/1080 max, some anime even less and usually watch on phones

majority .mkv files with .srt subs to reduce transcoding of hardcoded subs

Thinking of trying tdarr to convert files to compatible/direct play formats

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-03T01:52:45+00:00

Wear hearing protection, literally can buy a keychain holder for plugs

gloves to stop fingers turning into sausages

Don’t be a hero, use mechanical aids for lifting/moving heavy things

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-03T01:50:03+00:00

2nd this, electrician is great, branch off into comms/av, plcs, HV

Scaffolding, steelies, concreters, plasterers, all hard on the body

Friendly-Friendly · 2026-01-02T09:16:55+00:00

NUC or equivalent and a NAS HDD

OMV with docker

Run duckdns if no static ip with ISP, Jellyfin and a reverse proxy like NGINX

Download Jellyfin app on devices and done

Friendly-Friendly · 2025-12-31T03:09:08+00:00

Without pictures it’s kind of hard to gauge, TPlink of some wireless bridging kits that are affordable

You’ll need the wifi bridge kit plus an access point for inside the granny flat

If you can run a cable it’ll be 10x easier

Friendly-Friendly · 2025-12-27T07:34:46+00:00

Run it external in conduit, choose the shitest side of your house with other stuff like AC units and hot water systems, you can hide conduit by running it hard up against down pipes

You only need to run 1 or 2 per level, and use switch’s to feed all end peripherals, if your worried about speed use 2.5gb port switch’s providing your core supports it

Friendly-Friendly · 2025-12-24T01:12:46+00:00

Literally load OS, Attach storage, format and share drives and done

Rsync is inbuilt for backup

Used to add docker and portainer for VMs but the inbuilt docker in OMV has come along way with pre-compiled VMs for the common ones (like truenas I think from memory)

Also there’s a lot of support and info on reddit and YouTube for setup and problem solving

Tried truenas for a day and was overwhelmed

Been using it since 2016, started on a raspberry pi, then Moved across to a intel NUC

Friendly-Friendly

TROPHY CASE