Budget 21-30k Upgrading the family PC used for various purposes including media server (Jellyfin)

Looking to upgrade the family PC which is used by everyone for light gaming and it also serves as a media hosting server using Jellyfin. It is now showing its age and needs frequent repairing. Don't have a lot of budget currently but purchasing a dedicated GPU can be postponed if having a decent CPU with graphics capability is possible. The peripherals, audio, and display are not of concern in this upgrade so the entire budget is possible to be used for the PC itself.

1. What is your budget?
   • 25K - 30K
     
2. What is your existing hardware configuration?
   • Motherboard - Intel DH87MC (it sucks)
   • CPU - i5 4440
   • GPU - GT1030 GDDR5
   • RAM - 8GBx2 1600MHz
   • PSU - It's a local brand
3. Which hardware will you be keeping?
   • None if possible in this budget.
     
4. Which hardware component are you looking to buy?
   Confused between switching to a Ryzen platform or keeping the Intel processor for a few years.
   Interested in buying a good PSU, better RAM & GPU. Also, the trash motherboard needs to go bruh, I have manually done many repairs on it because it keeps having issues.
   
   
5. Is this going to be your final configuration or you be adding/upgrading a component soon?
   GPU can be allocated to a future upgrade if the new processor's iGPU has enough capabilities to handle light gaming & media streaming (Jellyfin).
   
   
6. Where will you buy this hardware? (Online/City/TE Dealer)
   • Surat
   • Online
     
7. What is your intended use for this PC/hardware?
   • Gaming (Stardew Valley, Valorant, GTA V, Emulation [Mostly Wii U & 3DS titles])
   • Media Server (Jellyfin)
   • Desktop Processing
   • Watching HD movies (duh)
8. Do you have any brand preferences or dislikes? Please name them and the reason for your preference/dislike.
   • None
     
9. What is your preferred monitor resolution for gaming and normal usage
   1. 1080p
10. Are you looking to overclock?
    • Nah
11. Which operating system do you intend to use with this configuration?
    • This PC is currently daily driving a dual boot of Win 10 x64bit/Linux Mint
      
12. Do you need any other suggestions?
    
    • Looking for external SSD recommendations as well for keeping a local backup of my media. Otherwise, it is always hosted on a cloud drive.

StygianClaw said:

How about something like this? Intel iGPUs would be better for Jellyfin but it's hard to get a balanced build within your budget if we go that route.

• AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
• MSI B450M-A Pro Max II
• 32GB DDR4 3200MHz (2 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB) - (Can also use 3600MHz or other brands. You can drop to 16GB total but there are only two RAM slots on this board and Ryzen performance will drop significantly if you use only 1 slot)
• Crucial 500GB P3 NVMe PCIe 3.0 M.2 - (Placeholder, get any good budget NVMe SSD with TLC and also DRAM if possible)
• Cooler Master MWE 450 Bronze V2 - (Should be fine for midrange GPUs in the future)
• Deepcool Matrexx 30 SI (M-ATX) Cabinet - (Placeholder, up to you)

Prices in attached image are from PrimeABGB. You may be able to reduce the total by purchasing from different sites or offline.

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Thanks for the build suggestion.

I think I can make this one work because I will save some bucks on storage as I already have enough internal & cloud storage rn. Maybe I can get a used GTX1650 in the next 3-4 months to complete the build, following that with a good external SSD backup after like half a year to complete my requirements for a few years.

calvin1719 said:

I'd say buy a used thin client or mini pc instead.

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Have you got any recommendations?

vivek.krishnan said:

You mentioned that the media is on a cloud drive? Could you comment.

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The media hosted on my Jellyfin is stored locally and is backed up weekly to a cloud drive. It's around 2TB in total. Locally it is on a Crucial SATA SSD as that is the most my motherboard supports. Regardless of the build, I am looking to invest in a physical external SSD to keep a local backup of the media as well, as it contains a lot of personal media and good collections of entertainment media and ebooks.

aasimenator said:

how many drives do you have, or rather how much data have you collected?
I might have the perfect option for you depending on how you answer the above question:

Meanwhile, if you haven't please browse the marketplace here to see if there is something that you'd like.

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I have a total of 3TB in storage rn. A 2TB SSD & a 1TB one. Both are SATA SSDs. 2TB of the data is also backed up weekly on a cloud.
I plan to expand a terabyte of storage internally in the supposed new system & also invest in an external portable storage solution for local backup of personal media.

Thanks. I will check your listings out tomorrow.

nullpc said:

Curious: is there a reason you're going for an external SSD instead of an HDD for backup?

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Why not opt for a faster storage medium if I am gonna invest in one?

I forgot to update y'all. I finally upgraded the system. Over the last few months, I kept purchasing the parts one by one whenever I had time from my job and stuff.

So I went with an AM4 system.

CPU: Ryzen 3400G (Purchased used from classifieds)
MOBO: AsRock B450M-HDV r4.0 (Online sale)
PSU: Deepcool PF650 (Online sale)
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GBx2 (Online sale)
Case: Ant Esports Si11 Micro-ATX
Case fans: Ant Esports Carbonflow 3x120mm
SSD: Crucial P3 1TB M.2 (Primary) (Bought used)
Storage: Migrated my old storage to the new system as well as increased the capacity by 1TB. Total storage currently is 4TB locally + 3TB on cloud as well.

Peripherals were carried over as they were not a priority:

Lenevo Legion KB
Logitech G402 Hyperion Fury
JBL Quantums 100
Maono USB Condenser Microphone


I didn't have a lot of budget for this common family PC due to my tough job conditions and loans, but what I did have were a lot of older systems and phones I used to hoard. So as I started buying stuff for upgrading this machine, I also started clearing out my old stuff here on TE and locally. It turned into a fun flipping challenge for me to see how much could I recuperate and save on this inevitable upgrade and it turned out way better than expected.

Total spent cost = ₹24000
Total recovered by flipping old parts and phones = ₹19000
Total spent out of pocket = ₹5000

The system is up and running quite well. The temps are great (35-40C idle/50-58 load) due to the fans I invested in and despite my skepticism, the case I cheaped out on is pretty good! It's compact, has space for good airflow, and looks quite nice on our common office desk with its sleek, no RGB look. I am yet to overclock the system as I am missing a RAM in my dual channel config.

I had to send one of the RAM modules back because it was faulty (failing boot) so it's currently managing in 16gigs but that will be up to 32gigs soon.



The things I want to upgrade next in this particular build:

- Monitor to something 1080p even though it's only used for Stardew Valley, managing Jellyfin, & Zoom.
- I would also like to get some desk speakers so everyone in the family doesn't have to carry their BT headphones whenever they are using the PC. The JBLs are exclusively used by me.
- Upgrade the microphone as Zoom meetings have gotten more frequent in everyone's business in the family.

calvin1719 said:

Congrats on having a neat new machine!
May I ask where you sourced the RAM from btw?

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Bought it from MDComputers during their sale a month ago I think. One of the RAM module was faulty and failed boot so I have sent it for RMA just a week ago (didn't get time before lol)

I have been running the system on a single stick until the replacement arrives.

KaifTaufiq said:

3TB Cloud Storage?

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Yup. All in total, seperated across MEGA, GDrive & OneDrive accounts of family members.

KaifTaufiq said:

How do you guys manage or used it combined
I know about Rclone & mounting
But any improved way or some Rclone Trick

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The cloud drive acts as a backup of important files, such as documents and Zoom meeting archives. Everyone manages their own files mostly.

My drive is on MEGA which syncs up personal media such as pics and videos from phones (which amounts to most of the storage) on a regular basis. Everyone uses Jellyfin to access any files over the network. Simple.

Entertainment (except ebooks and comics) is almost never backed up unless it's some obscure show/movie that is hard to re-obtain.

It is not an efficient system by any means but keeping it simple and manual allows my parents to use and maintain their files which would be considerably harder if I tried to centralise the backups using something like Rclone as it has a slight learning curve.

Native apps for all three of the cloud storage options are used. I've taught them how to basically add new things they want to preserve in their cloud drives and such. I take care of the rest whenever I get the time (cleaning up file structures, merging duplicates, etc)