Your intel core7 has an iGPU which is what QuickSync is. Its one of the best for transcoding. Even without hardware acceleration the Intel CPU will handle this workload just fine but most of these Chinese mini PCs have ARM chips which won’t come with these benefits.
Edit: I see these Miniforum PCs do have Intel and AMD chips so I was making an incorrect assumption here.
That might really limit your options as Quicksync is pretty much the gold standard for efficiency and performance. A discrete GPU works too but you might have trouble finding them in a Chinese mini PC.
I used AMD for years (RX580) but it wasn’t always the best quality and having a separate GPU really sapped a lot more power. I don’t believe ARM processors are really optimized for transcoding either. Under the hood, Jellyfin, Emby, and Plex all use ffmpeg to do their transcoding so maybe you can research more about its performance with each platform.
Again, used is always an option. You’re not giving money to any of these companies by buying used parts and it sounds like this would get you more ‘horsepower’ from your budget than buying a bunch of new stuff.
For Frigate you can just add a Coral TPU to offload the heavy lifting but with Jellyfin you’ll likely need a GPU/iGPU (Intel) that can handle transcoding. I don’t know what specific models you’re looking at but you might try to determine their passmark score. I think it’s recommended at least 2000 score for a single 1080p transcode. Alternatively you can stick to specific file formats that won’t need transcoding but this might be some work.
You could get a used Dell Optiplex micro. They have i3/i5 processors and can be found for around $100. This will at least get you going and you can always build something later.
Z1 is just single parity.
AFAIK expanding a ZFS pool is a new feature. Its used in Proxmox but their version hasn’t been updated yet, so I don’t have the ability to try it out yet. It t should be available to you otherwise.
Sweet build! I have all these parts laying around so this would be a fun project. Please share your enclosure design if you’d like!
I think the Define 5 is a good option as well. I bought the 6 in 2018 because it was new, was white, and only like $99 at the time and it’s served me well. Every couple of years I’d buy some more drive trays as my pool filled up and I needed more space.
I just rebuilt my whole system a couple of months ago but kept the case because it works so well and there isn’t much on the market like it without getting into fullsize cases. It’s nearly silent even with 5 fans and 9 HDDs inside. It sits about 2 feet from me on my desk and I only hear a tiny hum from the fans.
PC Part Picker has filters that will let you set all your requirements and show you what’s available. Since you want ECC and low cost, you might be better off finding options on PCPartPicker and then looking for those items used on ebay.
If you don’t have a case already, you might check out Fractal Design. They have several cases for lots of 3.5" drives. I have a Define 6 and it holds like 12 3.5" and 4 2.5" in a midtower format and it’s constructed really well. You will need to buy additional drive trays though as they only come with 4 I think.
How big are these ZFS snapshots compared to the stored data size? 1:1?
It’s “powerful” in the sense that it has 48 PCI lanes and can use almost 800GB of memory (ECC included). This is just way overkill on most homelabs so the extra power draw isn’t worth it.
I have file management software on my Proxmox server called Cockpit