Makes sense. Might as well wait for the zfs anyraid coming out “soon”

I keep my place at 74, and basically have a per room heat pump to never have the temp be an issue even on a 108 day. I've been running the setup for over two years now and have monitored thermals the whole time and have never had an issue. I understand the concern, and had the same concerns at first too, but the results don't lie. It's just very well tuned for it's environment

Two of the drives are 18tb I got cheap 😂 so maybe in a decade I'll get that 8tb of space

I hate hearing fans and computers and have always wanted to do a project like this, but have always been concerned about heat buildup, like anyone would be. And while it LOOKS like it would be an issue... If it works, it works.

I actually have a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU and no dedicated GPU as media server and it uses very little CPU (less than 20%) whilst playing 1080p video even with a torrent server over a wireguard VPN running on the background.

You don't really need much CPU or GPU for playing or streaming videos from compress video files as long as you have hardware decoding on either processing unit (just make sure it implements all the way up to the AV1 coded).

You only need lots of CPU or GPU power if the codec you're decoding from or encoding to is not implemented in hardware since in that case it will use software decoding or encoding so it's down to raw CPU or GPU power.

In fact if all you want is a media server that solution I have is probably one of the best ones, mainly because it uses very little power (tops at 25W, usually much less) and runs silent, which is why I can have it in my living room using it as a media player connected to my TV, and with a wireless remote people can't really tell it's a PC since it just looks and works like a store bought media player rather than one I put together myself.

However that option means buying new stuff, and I can see the value in using old hardware if you have it around, plus the old hardware will still likely be more powerful so you can also use it for more demanding stuff or just more stuff at the same time, which is why I didn't suggest it and instead just suggested some tweaks to make that old hardware consume less and make less noise.

And it isn't thermally throttling? If not, that's awesome. Have you ever taken a sound meter with a spectrum analyzer and seen if there's any frequencies you can try to kill?

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

[Thread #138 for this comm, first seen 17th Oct 2026, 20:50]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

With the big tower cooler it now has in the server it barely touches 80c under load. As for sound, I can take a recording when I get home later this week if anyone's are still interested

I am guessing the egg-shell foamed enclosure is for the sound, but you probably have a bunch of sound coming from the fan port, nessisary for ventilation. You can cut a lot of the sound but maintain the airflow by cutting an s-shaped ducting spanning the width of the enclosure. The shape will drop the sound, while then ducting keeps the air flowing. I would not recommend any sorts of filters to block the sound because they are a bit too restrictive for an enclosure in your style.

I get about the same affect by placing a layer of the foam on the wall behind the fans. But you're totally right. Without that lil bit the fan noise from the intake and exhaust was a lil noticeable

The reason I bring that up, is I have a little knowledge in acoustics and just wondered if your pc was putting out more lower frequency noise than that wood is realistically able to absorb. So, not personally interested, as all projects like this are case by case (ha, no pun intended), and moreso just if you wanted to fiddle with it more, like adding a piece of slate or sheet of rubber to the exterior or something.

I'm CURIOUS what it sounds like, but I doubt a phone recording or speaker is gonna be worth much to satisfy my dirty nerdy needs.

Hey, I've been upgrading the same freenas (now trunas) for 15 years. I need 40tb of space to redo the raid lmao. It's striped and mirrored, so I'm losing 18tb. It is what it is for now, works great for my files and Plex.

The CPU usage looks high, mines usually around 3% per core. 🤔

What app are you using to see that chart, looks like mobile?

It's in the middle of rencoding my library, should finish at some point and return to low usage

Yea it's mobile. Away from home for a bit 😅

That makes sense then. Thought it was avg usage

What app though?

Oh! Just the stock webpage

Would be nice to be able to mismatch my drive size though

I gotta look into this sometime. I'm still doing Z mirrors of 4TB drives. I was lucky to score those.

I have a bunch of 500GB / 1TBs just sitting there though that would need power and a SATA extension, maybe to put non-critical stuff on...

Oh duh, I see the IP

It's not super useful unless you post links to articles explaining what they are.

Cramped? The smaller side is the length of the whole mini-ITX board. They are bigger than they look. Bit over 22cm i think?

That said, this case is also a option for my TV-console build. Luckily, i've bought most of the hardware before the LLMocalypse.

If you can click a link, you can copy and paste into a search engine.

Yes, just like with any of these acronyms. I'm just pointing out that this bot doesn't serve its main purpose.

Also high density mass loaded vinyl works better for your enclosure. Foam helps against reflections but they still let sound trough. Mass loaded vinyl basically adds mass to the walls of your enclosure which stops them from transferring the sound waves to the outside.

I thought so too, but turns out not all of the CPUs have onboard graphics and the HDMI port on my motherboard was a lie. Although the graphics card does help with transcoding.

I know for sure Intel server CPUs (for example, Xeons) don't have integrated graphics and somebody else mentioned that many Ryzen CPUs don't either.

That said, I'm not sure if they need integrated graphics to have hardware decoding for certain video codecs (though it makes sense that those things come together). Personally when I was looking into buying a mini-PC to transform into a media server for my living room, I made sure to check in the CPU specs if it had both integrated graphics (as it's connected to my TV) and hardware decoding for the most recent codecs (I ended up going for a mini-PC with an N100 processor, since it has all that plus its power consumption is pretty low with a TDP of 6W so I can leave it always on as it also doubles as homeserver).

Does it help to point out this is vinyl backed foam 😉 really thin vinyl sheet on it, but it helps

thanks for sharing, i was hoping for more specifics to experiment with; i have a powershell script i'm running that does the same thing:

    try {
        ffmpeg -y -hwaccel nvdec -i "$input" `
            -map 0:v? -map 0:a? -map 0:s? `
            -c:v h264_nvenc -preset slow -rc vbr -cq 21 -b:v 0 `
            -pix_fmt yuv420p `
            -c:a aac -b:a 160k `
            @subtitleArgs `
            "$temp"

        if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0 -and (Test-Path $temp)) {
            $encoded = $true
        }
        else {
            throw "GPU encode failed"
        }
    }
    catch {
        Write-Warning "GPU failed -> CPU fallback"
        Add-Content $logFile "GPU failed, CPU fallback: $input"
        $gpuFallbackCount++

        ffmpeg -y -i "$input" `
            -map 0:v? -map 0:a? -map 0:s? `
            -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 20 `
            -pix_fmt yuv420p `
            -c:a aac -b:a 160k `
            @subtitleArgs `
            "$temp"

        if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0 -and (Test-Path $temp)) {
            $encoded = $true
        }
    }

cool gaming rig, too! you also know the SFF pains 🤣😂

Tdarr is a pretty fun automation tool if you Wana try. Basically I down scale to 1080p if it's higher, then I rencode to av1 at 8mbps or lower depending on current bitrate. I also keep all audio and subtitle streams how they were

Haha fair enough. Fixing it after the fact basically requires a second server of equal or greater storage. I fear a rebuild on my 16tb disks.

All that storage these days would require a morgage