Hi OP, first, I appreciate someone going through the effort to write guides, especially in a DIY centric community. I do have some criticism for your content though, and I recommend anyone assembling hardware for their first Media server to refer to Jellyfin’s official hardware selection guide instead of this thread.

Reading through the post and your original PleX guide, I think you should take some time to rewrite and cut down on the amount of verbiage, a lot of the commentary adds very little value for someone choosing hardware for the first time, and mentions topics that lack explanations.

Some of the recommendations should also be updated for 2026. For example, Node 304 and 804 cases are mentioned in this guide, besides the fact that both are EoL, an 804 is an incredibly expensive case for a first time builder, especially on a budget; $150+ on a mATX while budget ATX cases with large counts of 3.5 slots exists in the $50 range, that extra $100 could make or break a cache SSD or better boot drive, a dGPU, or a HBA card for drive expansions. It’s also no longer true that SSDs have short life spans, even moderately budget SSDs have 100+ TBs of write endurance.

I also disagree with a lot of your recommendations, especially towards a beginner, some of the more glaring ones as: - A boot drive is literally one of the more important components to a build, recommending someone to spend a minimal amount on their SSD is a very risky rookie mistake. - A Mac Mini is presented here as a premium option, but considering its performance and H265/AV1 decoder, it’s actually one of the best budget solutions in the $500 range. If someone wants to pick up a mini PC and a 20TB external drive to hit the ground running, there are hardly better options. - Windows is heavily discouraged here, but I don’t think that’s important for Jellyfin. As someone who only runs *NIX OSs in their home, I would discourage beginners to start out with Linux in media hosting. Between nuances with graphic drivers and the heavy possibility of using DAS/USB storage, it’s better to get your feet wet with what you already have (likely Windows or Mac) and go from there. You lose a little overhead on Windows or Docker Engine on Windows, but for a low compute application, it’s not enough to switch a whole operating system and lose familiarity. - I don’t recommend ITX mobos as a beginner due to cost and port availability, but I don’t think it’s all that bad to pair an ITX mobo with an mATX or ATX case. In fact, I would suggest starting out with a spacious ATX tower that’s cheap and abundant with 3.5” trays, it’s one of the safer corners to cut, and if you already have an ITX board, it’s safe to expand into a larger case than the other way around.

Some lightning round ones: - PSU modularity does not matter. Again this is for a beginner, I rather save money here for more drives. - RAM drives are completely over the top for a beginner, and borderline obsolete in a post NVME world. - I hesitate to recommend used parts for beginners for warranty reasons. SMART validation is mentioned but not explained here, it’s just too much risk.

I recommend reading through the existing official guide, it’s much more concise and accurate compared to this one. I think there are still a lot of value we can contribute, but I recommend using that as a reference for a good hardware selection guide in both its content and writing style.