Going by a mix of price, iGPU and cores, the i13500 seems to be the most capable for the least cost for a Plex/Jellyfin server.
Are there any differing opinions or reasons one might consider other options?
Edit: Got an unraid up and running from this post: Intel i13500 King of the 1700 Media Server? (Update: Set up and going) - #11 by Chazn2
My only concerns with intel is the lack of ECC support… depending on what OS you go with and who you listen to, it’s either ‘not a problem at all’ or ‘your RAM-cached OS will get corrupted without it and all of your data will be corrupted on a scrub.’
Really wish there was more tech-tuber testing and coverage on ECC and filesystems; wendell and lawrence have videos talking about systems without ECC, but I haven’t seen any sort of deep dive videos on ECC, myths, etc. Such videos would get a lot of views, I wager.
Very good point, I hear it depends a bit on the filesystem being used, but it is always nice to have ECC for obvious reasons.
You can go much cheaper if all of your playback devices can support Direct Play. Eliminate the need for transcoding is the secret.
I want to make mine easy for friends to connect to and use.
The 13500 is ECC compatible.
If you can find/afford a w680 motherboard…
For now it’s a super budget system, but it’s good to know future future me has a good upgrade path.
(Everything except the CPU was second hand or re-used from an old ded PC)
For Jellyfin you really don’t need that amount of cores. The transcoding works great on the iGPU with quicksync and barely uses the CPU. I have a small homeserver with a 12100 and it can transcode 4K without breaking a sweat (didn’t try multiple streams as I’m not sharing the server with friends/family)
I have no experience with Plex but I imagine it’s similar as long as it supports quicksync.
The 770 vs 730 iGPU was also a consideration.
I do wonder if I’ll ever find a real use for all the cores 
I noticed the 13500 is back in stock at newegg for the first time since about week after launch. It’s $250 there, $300 elsewhere, and out-of-stock everywhere else.
It’s set up, I feel like I’m over compensating for something with all these cores.
It only cost me a little more than the last gens most entry chip with an Intel UHD Graphics 770 and came with ‘all the cores’.
If anyone can think of a use for this beast of a machine let me know, I may do a write-up of my experience with it after a month.
I actually got mine at a discount somehow!
I think it’s a bit of a king for any kind of home server - more cores = more room for virtualization. I wanted to get it for mine but the only thing that stopped me is the apparent lack of vPro on Raptor Lake-S. Yes, one would also need some hard to get/pricey Q670/W680 MB.
I wonder what’s the idle power consumption on yours (maybe you could mention other key HW)? I heard those E cores are supposed to idle very efficiently.
Enjoy your build!
Heh, I’m on a most basic of basic B660M GAMING DDR4, 2 * SN850 500GB cache, 4*2TB main pool.
I have a very old Noctua NH-D14 which they were kind enough to send a 1700 mounting kit free of charge for, it’s just got the middle fan in it and the CPU has never reached a temp that it’s needed to turn on for - but the fan is there just in case.
The other noctua fan it came with has been repurposed to blow over the three stacked fans at the bottom of the Cooler Master NR400, it’s next to silent but even an extremely quiet and slow fan was able to bring the drives down to reasonable temperatures. I’m sad that Linux is awful for fan control compared to Windows as I’d love to be able to only have that fan going when needed.
It’s complete overkill for these docked programs:
If I had a VM, I would give the performance cores from Jellyfin to the VM, but I don’t have a use for a VM ‘yet’.
I decided what my first VM would be, as I’m much more Windows literate than Linux, a Tiny11 VM will do wonders for if I need another system to troubleshoot my main computer.
Know it’s been a hot while, but how is it running? Did you end up going with ECC ram?
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