5 Things to Know About RAM for a Home Media Server

64GB ECC is overkill Unless you run dozens of VMs or massive deduplication, 64GB is wasted on a media server. 8GB is workable, 16GB comfortable, and 32GB future-proof.

ZFS ARC doesn’t help much with video ZFS uses RAM for read cache, but video files are sequential reads. The ARC offers little benefit beyond a few gigabytes for Plex or Jellyfin.

ECC is nice but not necessary ECC is worth it only if your hardware supports it cheaply, like used server gear. For a home server, non-ECC with regular scrubs is fine.

Bit flips are not a real concern The probability of a bit flip corrupting a movie is astronomically low. Don’t pay a premium for ECC just for media storage.

Spend the savings on drives or networking Put the cash toward more storage or 10Gb networking. Those upgrades actually improve performance.