I currently run a qnap ts-453d NAS based on your recommendations (Thanks!) It is used specifically as Plex server and filled with 4 12TB drives for storage. You have suggested I might get a even better experience if I were to add an NVME card and M.2 storage for caching. Given the age on my system (2 years) can you suggest a Card to add to this NAS as well as some M.2 choices? I see QNAP makes several choices with different Gens. I don't want to buy one that is Gen4+ if Gen2 spec limits my choices. I'm just trying to see if this is a worthwhile upgrade. Cheers! John
Yes, you upgrade this NAS with NVMe slots and also 10GbE LAN.
Here is the list of compatible cards:
QNAP QM2-2P10G1TB Dual M.2 2280 PCIe SSD and single-port(10GBASE-T)10GbE expansion card, PCIe Gen3 x8,
QNAP QM2-2P2G2T Dual M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD & dual-port 2.5GbE QM2 expansion card, PCIe Gen3 x4
QNAP QM2-2P-384 Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen3 x8
QNAP QM2-2P-344 Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen3 x4
QNAP QM2-2P-244A Dual M.2 22110/2280 PCIe SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x4
QNAP QM2-2S-220A Dual M.2 22110/2280 SATA SSD expansion card, PCIe Gen2 x2
You are right about PCIe gen bottlenecks. This Celeron CPU could cope up to 1000MB/s speeds. So technically you could get a cheaper SATA SSD compatible card QM2-2S-220A or a slower NVme QM2-2S-220A card.
You can then use it for caching. Or you can create a separate SSD volume and move all apps to be stored there.
I hope this helps.