this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
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Currently running all my docker compose containers on my gaming PC. 15 containers in total. Mostly *arr stack, plex, immich, home assistant, actual budget and jellyfin. Running on Mint.

Want to get these onto a dedicated pc. I have a mini with a I5 10-600, 32GB ram. I've played with it a little with jellyfin, on Debian and don't think I was able to get quick sync enabled with my testing, and one transcode pretty much maxed out the CPU usage. To use this PC, I'd need to buy a 4 bay USB HDD enclosure.

So, basically I'm just wondering before I spend money and time if the hardware is even capable enough for my usage. 3 concurrent streams is probably the most it'd ever see, ideally with no more than 2 transcodes. Immich, home assistant etc are all pretty new and just in testing for now, but would only have 2 users total. Mostly using Plex, jellyfin is also in testing so it'll be ready if plex enshitifies too much.

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[–] Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Figure I can work out stuff like quick sync easy enough. Main concern was spending $100 or so on the USB enclosure and hours setting it up just to have to go back to the more powerful PC.

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

If you’re going to run the drives as individual drives in the enclosure, you should be fine but if you set them up as a RAID array, USB won’t work well. The connection is too unreliable and will cause issues. I’ve tried with a 10-bay USB-C enclosure using unRAID, Fedora, and Debian. I tried multiple cables. It just kept dropping the connection during large transfers.

[–] Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago

Good to know. Storage space is expensive though and anything that's using the big drives can be downloaded again if needed. So plan was to use online backup for the stuff I can't lose like immich photos, actual budget etc and if a media drive crashes, I'll just redownload.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I wonder if it was just a shitty chipset, or if it was overheating.

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Nah, I looked into it and USB is just super unreliable for any sort of array. The drives all worked just fine if I ran them as individual drives.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah but like... where is the weak link? Is there some deficiency in the protocol itself? Or the implementation in the chipset on one or both sides? Or bandwidth, or overheating?

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago

In my case, it wasn’t overheating. Drives rarely got above 75-80F. There were two large fans and plenty of ventilation to pull air through the enclosure. From what I’ve read, mostly on unRAID forums, it is USB that is the issue.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don't run the 'arr stack, but for comparison, one of my servers is a Optiplex 7020 SFF / i7-4790 / 32GB RAM. It's running around 45 containers now with ease from automatons with n8n to streaming audio with Navidrome. In fact, it spends most of it's life in an idle state with load averages looking like .20/.27/.32. I don't do any transcoding tho, so I can't speak to that as far as resources. I see others have made suggestions in that dept. As far as the 4 bay USB HDD, you're going to need some storage space at some point or another so it's not like it would be wasted effort.