I spent a few years living in a developing country in Africa so I have some appreciation of what you’re going through. I used to find lots of technology shops on Google Maps, etc, then when I got there they just sold phone covers and SIM cards and knock-off iPhones.

I can’t really offer much advice but have you considered just making something based on a second hand laptop? A lot of them are still pretty powerful just with old batteries and they’re designed to run efficiently.

Your decision, we have import tax as well starting from 150 euros or something, I've just always written 100 or less. With used hw you often don't get warranty beyound week or 10 days anyway.

Let me expand on that.

there is a really nice wiki article about intel hw encoding with color table
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

1.1.
the color does not show in dark mode on mobile

1.2.
Your CPU is under the Alder Lake, so HEVC 12b encode/decode and AV1 decoding.
This means you can encode big things into HEVC 12b to save space and also play back AV1 without issues in the future.

my setup and experience

2.1.
I have an i5-8400 so I encode everything too big into HEVC 10b.
I sometimes watch with 4 other people, so i had to tweak the config a lot to make it work fine when 5 people are watching at once.
From my experience, the jelly sometimes just puts everything into decoding the first stream while others just wait.
I recommend just setting only 1 core per stream and only like 300s transcoder buffer.

2.2.
playback devices do a lot, when using firefox, everything has to be transcoded except h264

on chrome, it usually just remuxes (mkv container is converted into something more compatible)
easy on resources

when playing using a jellyfin client, it is played directly

dedicated GPU

3.1.
I disagree with the dedicated GPU recommendation
as long as you tweak the settings, you'll be fine.

Test iGPU first, play around with it, see how many streams at once you actually have to serve.

The dedicated GPU is an extra investment for a start and a constant power consumer for later.

To make sure there is not a misunderstanding, the wattage of a PSU is not how much power it will draw. The wattage is how much is can supply. So if you have a 1000w PSU, but all your components draw 200w of power it will use about 200w of power.

Additionally, if you plan to get a lot of HDDs in the future, do some research on power rails. Some PSUs are designed to only be able to supply a small amount of power to things like HDDs because most people only have 1 or 2.

Let me expand on that.

there is a really nice wiki article about intel hw encoding with color table
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

1.1.
the color does not show in dark mode on mobile

1.2.
Your CPU is under the Alder Lake, so HEVC 12b encode/decode and AV1 decoding.
This means you can encode big things into HEVC 12b to save space and also play back AV1 without issues in the future.

my setup and experience

2.1.
I have an i5-8400 so I encode everything too big into HEVC 10b.
I sometimes watch with 4 other people, so i had to tweak the config a lot to make it work fine when 5 people are watching at once.
From my experience, the jelly sometimes just puts everything into decoding the first stream while others just wait.
I recommend just setting only 1 core per stream and only like 300s transcoder buffer.

2.2.
playback devices do a lot, when using firefox, everything has to be transcoded except h264

on chrome, it usually just remuxes (mkv container is converted into something more compatible)
easy on resources

when playing using a jellyfin client, it is played directly

dedicated GPU

3.1.
I disagree with the dedicated GPU recommendation
as long as you tweak the settings, you'll be fine.

Test iGPU first, play around with it, see how many streams at once you actually have to serve.

The dedicated GPU is an extra investment for a start and a constant power consumer for later.

This is all off the top of my head, as I'm not at my server atm...

I believe the 12400 should be good for hardware transcoding. I have a dell optiplex (i5 9th gen, can't remember exacts) running a low traffic server (my wife and I), with no issues running at least 2 4k streams concurrently. It comes down to what you encode your videos to.

Additionally I'd grab at least one new NAS drive, as they tend to be rated for long term use. If options aren't great there, then maybe a few drives in a raid configuration may also work. If you do get a NAS drive make sure its fairly quiet, my server is located in a common room, and the hdd fan is fairly audible. oops.

yeah, dont think the dedicated GPU will be necessary, most posts Ive seen clain that intel's igpu can handle multiple 4k streams, tho I could try to find a cpu with the 770 instead of the 730? Not sure how much of a diff it would make tho

My guess is the 770 would be a bit better. Could not find anything that could compare the two based on video performance and not strictly on gaming/rendering. So my opinion is not to care about it too much.

So I've been googling to find out what to buy for a jellyfin/game server and the problem is almost all posts are about buying hardware in the US or EU. I checked the second hand market and it SUCKS around here, like 10 year old+ CPUs being sold as 'intel i7' for stupid prices.

I've decided to buy new stuff, at least I get warranty. When I searched around for info on that I also got a lot of useless (for me) advice like buying mini pcs that are either not available around here or very expensive. Basically I think I just need to build something myself using non server hardware, is that a bad idea?

What I have in mind right now, please tell me if there is anything that will cause issues later:

• i5-12400 (mainly for the integrated graphics to use jellyfin's hardware transcoding. Is the UHD 730 enough for that?)

• No idea what to get for MB, I usually buy AMD. H610 boards seem cheap enough but very limited on storage options (sometimes only a single pcie slot even), I do want to eventually add lots of storage to it.

• Server quality storage is extremely expensive, not sure if its worth buying. Was think about getting some WD blue 2tb drives, but really not sure here either.

• For case I saw some suggestion for cases with a ton of hotswappable drive bays but sadly I couldnt find any to buy in my country, will probably get whatever cheap one I can find.

• PSU I want to get any gold PSU with low wattage from a reputable brand but its been hard to find 500W or lower here, usually shops only offer brand PSUs that are 650W+.

• 16gb of any decent ram I suppose?

Btw I live in Brazil, if you feel like searching around even tho the websites are in portuguese:
www.kabum.com.br
www.pichau.com.br
www.terabyteshop.com.br

Any help is appreciated, its gonna be my first server so I have no idea what I'm doing

I think Brazil has very high tariffs so that is probably what is driving up prices.

10 year old hardware may not be that bad. It depends on what it is and how much electricity costs.

No need to think, I mention in another comment that we have 50% tariff on all imported stuff. And I'm not buying 10 year old stuff for that price lol

Any libraries, businesses or other places looking to get rid of hardware?

I would start on the cheaper end as you will waste money with mistakes

So I've been googling to find out what to buy for a jellyfin/game server and the problem is almost all posts are about buying hardware in the US or EU. I checked the second hand market and it SUCKS around here, like 10 year old+ CPUs being sold as 'intel i7' for stupid prices.

I've decided to buy new stuff, at least I get warranty. When I searched around for info on that I also got a lot of useless (for me) advice like buying mini pcs that are either not available around here or very expensive. Basically I think I just need to build something myself using non server hardware, is that a bad idea?

What I have in mind right now, please tell me if there is anything that will cause issues later:

• i5-12400 (mainly for the integrated graphics to use jellyfin's hardware transcoding. Is the UHD 730 enough for that?)

• No idea what to get for MB, I usually buy AMD. H610 boards seem cheap enough but very limited on storage options (sometimes only a single pcie slot even), I do want to eventually add lots of storage to it.

• Server quality storage is extremely expensive, not sure if its worth buying. Was think about getting some WD blue 2tb drives, but really not sure here either.

• For case I saw some suggestion for cases with a ton of hotswappable drive bays but sadly I couldnt find any to buy in my country, will probably get whatever cheap one I can find.

• PSU I want to get any gold PSU with low wattage from a reputable brand but its been hard to find 500W or lower here, usually shops only offer brand PSUs that are 650W+.

• 16gb of any decent ram I suppose?

Btw I live in Brazil, if you feel like searching around even tho the websites are in portuguese:
www.kabum.com.br
www.pichau.com.br
www.terabyteshop.com.br

Any help is appreciated, its gonna be my first server so I have no idea what I'm doing

Just want to point out you don't need beefy hardware if you'll use jellyfin only in your network or if you won't stream very heavy media over the internet. If your library is mostly 1080p, you'll be able to stream that without transcoding for the most part.

What would be some options for NAS drives? The ones I found were quite expensive to the point I think it would be cheaper to just replace damaged drives and run them in RAID. Was also thinking about using a M.2 drive to run programs on and HDDs for file storage, I wonder how beneficial and how hard it is to do that

Western Digital Reds or Seagate Ironwolf iirc. Yeah they're expensive because they're rated for a different use case than traditional drives. I'm no expert though! I believe I've got a WD Red.

I believe thats what I do though, I have a ssd in there as well for the base os. And I just have the nas drive mounted. Jellyfin docker container setup to point to the nas drive as the media storage folder, as well as a samba share setup so I can throw stuff like bandcamp purchases easily.

Man, 7200 version of those drives are all over 400 USD here, my poor bank account

So I've been googling to find out what to buy for a jellyfin/game server and the problem is almost all posts are about buying hardware in the US or EU. I checked the second hand market and it SUCKS around here, like 10 year old+ CPUs being sold as 'intel i7' for stupid prices.

I've decided to buy new stuff, at least I get warranty. When I searched around for info on that I also got a lot of useless (for me) advice like buying mini pcs that are either not available around here or very expensive. Basically I think I just need to build something myself using non server hardware, is that a bad idea?

What I have in mind right now, please tell me if there is anything that will cause issues later:

• i5-12400 (mainly for the integrated graphics to use jellyfin's hardware transcoding. Is the UHD 730 enough for that?)

• No idea what to get for MB, I usually buy AMD. H610 boards seem cheap enough but very limited on storage options (sometimes only a single pcie slot even), I do want to eventually add lots of storage to it.

• Server quality storage is extremely expensive, not sure if its worth buying. Was think about getting some WD blue 2tb drives, but really not sure here either.

• For case I saw some suggestion for cases with a ton of hotswappable drive bays but sadly I couldnt find any to buy in my country, will probably get whatever cheap one I can find.

• PSU I want to get any gold PSU with low wattage from a reputable brand but its been hard to find 500W or lower here, usually shops only offer brand PSUs that are 650W+.

• 16gb of any decent ram I suppose?

Btw I live in Brazil, if you feel like searching around even tho the websites are in portuguese:
www.kabum.com.br
www.pichau.com.br
www.terabyteshop.com.br

Any help is appreciated, its gonna be my first server so I have no idea what I'm doing

So I've been googling to find out what to buy for a jellyfin/game server and the problem is almost all posts are about buying hardware in the US or EU. I checked the second hand market and it SUCKS around here, like 10 year old+ CPUs being sold as 'intel i7' for stupid prices.

I've decided to buy new stuff, at least I get warranty. When I searched around for info on that I also got a lot of useless (for me) advice like buying mini pcs that are either not available around here or very expensive. Basically I think I just need to build something myself using non server hardware, is that a bad idea?

What I have in mind right now, please tell me if there is anything that will cause issues later:

• i5-12400 (mainly for the integrated graphics to use jellyfin's hardware transcoding. Is the UHD 730 enough for that?)

• No idea what to get for MB, I usually buy AMD. H610 boards seem cheap enough but very limited on storage options (sometimes only a single pcie slot even), I do want to eventually add lots of storage to it.

• Server quality storage is extremely expensive, not sure if its worth buying. Was think about getting some WD blue 2tb drives, but really not sure here either.

• For case I saw some suggestion for cases with a ton of hotswappable drive bays but sadly I couldnt find any to buy in my country, will probably get whatever cheap one I can find.

• PSU I want to get any gold PSU with low wattage from a reputable brand but its been hard to find 500W or lower here, usually shops only offer brand PSUs that are 650W+.

• 16gb of any decent ram I suppose?

Btw I live in Brazil, if you feel like searching around even tho the websites are in portuguese:
www.kabum.com.br
www.pichau.com.br
www.terabyteshop.com.br

Any help is appreciated, its gonna be my first server so I have no idea what I'm doing

So I've been googling to find out what to buy for a jellyfin/game server and the problem is almost all posts are about buying hardware in the US or EU. I checked the second hand market and it SUCKS around here, like 10 year old+ CPUs being sold as 'intel i7' for stupid prices.

I've decided to buy new stuff, at least I get warranty. When I searched around for info on that I also got a lot of useless (for me) advice like buying mini pcs that are either not available around here or very expensive. Basically I think I just need to build something myself using non server hardware, is that a bad idea?

What I have in mind right now, please tell me if there is anything that will cause issues later:

• i5-12400 (mainly for the integrated graphics to use jellyfin's hardware transcoding. Is the UHD 730 enough for that?)

• No idea what to get for MB, I usually buy AMD. H610 boards seem cheap enough but very limited on storage options (sometimes only a single pcie slot even), I do want to eventually add lots of storage to it.

• Server quality storage is extremely expensive, not sure if its worth buying. Was think about getting some WD blue 2tb drives, but really not sure here either.

• For case I saw some suggestion for cases with a ton of hotswappable drive bays but sadly I couldnt find any to buy in my country, will probably get whatever cheap one I can find.

• PSU I want to get any gold PSU with low wattage from a reputable brand but its been hard to find 500W or lower here, usually shops only offer brand PSUs that are 650W+.

• 16gb of any decent ram I suppose?

Btw I live in Brazil, if you feel like searching around even tho the websites are in portuguese:
www.kabum.com.br
www.pichau.com.br
www.terabyteshop.com.br

Any help is appreciated, its gonna be my first server so I have no idea what I'm doing