

You definitely want an 8th gen (Intel) or better to have Jellyfin Quick Sync support. It’s what I have (i5-8400T) and it offer a fairly decent AVC (h264) and HEVC (h265) transcoding for my usage. However, for futur proofing consider an 11th gen for the AV1 support.
Maybe you might find home in one of those NAS ootimized distros like Openmediavault, truenas, unraid. If not CasaOS or old good Debian with portainer.