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

TheNawab

TheNawab

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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.
 
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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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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
Have you got any recommendations?
 
Last edited:
TheNawab said:
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.

Have you got any recommendations?
Click to expand...
No sorry, I'm not familiar with the pricing on those things.
 
That amount is pretty good, you should be able to snag an entry i3 which will do the job.

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

Also, any 6th gen and above Intel should do the job for your media stuff, ideally 7th gen above, you should be able to snag it for about less than 10K

In fact, I would suggest you to fill out your details completely with storage etc so a more informed decision can be made.

I personally am using an RPI4, with usb hdds, with plex & qbt in docker, with transcoding turned off for my content. Works absolutely bonkers.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
You mentioned that the media is on a cloud drive? Could you comment.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Thanks @guest_999

@TheNawab 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.
here are some of my listings that might help you decide.
HP 800 G4 SFF: https://techenclave.com/threads/hp-sff-and-tiny-pcs.217792/
Lenovo P330 Tiny : https://techenclave.com/threads/ext...es-dual-nvme-ssd-slot-with-pcie-riser.215002/
12th Gen System: https://techenclave.com/threads/10th-12th-gen-tiny-pcs-intel-i5-12400-cpus.217317/post-2503801
 
TheNawab said:
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.
Click to expand...

In that case, would suggest you to do the following

pickup a used NUC or Tiny PC - with U series, not the desktop variants. You should be able to snag a used 6th gen i5 for around 9K - dont go below this for HEVC support. This will have a slot for a NVME SSD (put a 256GB for like 1K for the OS) and the existing 2TB laptop ssd for the media. This machine will run 24x7 and can do your media streaming/downloading etc everything. USB3.0 for external drives for future.

spend the remaining amount on the desktop as you see fit.
 
TheNawab said:
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.
Click to expand...
Curious: is there a reason you're going for an external SSD instead of an HDD for backup?
 
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.
Click to expand...
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?
Click to expand...
Why not opt for a faster storage medium if I am gonna invest in one?
 
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