ASK NC

I am looking for something with 4-9 bays total. I really want 4-6 of 3.5 drives with the ability to add ssd's(2.5 or M.2) for caching. I do not need to have 10GbE.

This will mainly be used as a multimedia NAS for video. I am looking for the ability to stream 4k(direct play with Kodi) and would like it to be able to transcode 4k(Plex) if it is needed. I currently have a Terramaster F4-220(Intel Celeron J1800 dual core with 2GB of DDR3) and it struggles to direct play 4k and it will not transcode it at all.

I would prefer DDR4 for memory(assuming it would add longevity to the device) but it is not a requirement if you do not think it is needed for a multimedia NAS.

From the little I have seen/demo’d I prefer QNAP OS over Synology but am open to either.

If you have any suggestions please let me know, I am new to NAS' and still learning. Thanks again.

You will need the best NAS there is to transcode 4K Plex. It is TVS-872XT with i5 CPU and TVS-1282 with i7 CPU. And there is TS-673/873 with a PCI slot for a GPU card. These are the options from the NAS range. You can also get a NUC PC with i7 and attach a cheap NAS for storage purpose only. Other people do the same with Nvidia Shield TV.I hope this helps.