Currently have a home lab of 2x super micro servers running older Xeon’s. Problem is power consumption is terribly expensive. I’m currently running ZFS with 4x4tb 4x8tb and 4x12tb with zraid and all mapped to a single storage container.

I’m looking for a good cpu (no celeron) multiple cores, and possibly dual cpu. Must have upgradable memory (current home lab is over 184gb of ram) and 128gb in the other machine. Boot drive should be an ssd.

Looking at running QNAP or synology so I don’t have to keep dealing with os and software upgrades that I don’t have a lot of time to deal with.

Will be running plex, ai workloads, various containers for work functions, etc.

Network is 10gb+ capable running UDM SE with a powered switch and plenty of networking throughout the home.

Overall just struggling to find the right nas. Willing to use a desktop nas but not my first option as I like rackmounting these things.

Hi there,
I’ve just ordered the DS923+ (upgrading from a DS218+) and will have 2 x 8tb and 2 x 14tb WD Red drives. The NAS is primarily use for storing photos and videos which serves them up through an external Plex server.
I’m not technically minded and the only reason for the upgrade is to future proof myself for more storage space. The DS218+ has been great and does what I need however I’m trying to find out why people would upgrade the RAM or install SSDs. Everything online shows how to do it but I’m after a laymen’s terms ‘what purpose does it serve?’

Many thanks

Hi, thank you in advance for any feedback and also thankyou for all of the youtube info you guys provide. I'm currently using an Nvidia shield pro with lifetime plex. I have a very large library of photos, music and movies - mostly bluray and 4k. I have watched your compares regarding plex severs or servers with graphics integrated. i.e., Synology 920+, which I can not find anywhere at all now. Can you please advise me on a good Nas device that I can also grow with, i.e., features for my use case.

Currently running xpenology dsm6.1.3 on a HP N40L microserver, with 3 x 4TB in raid5 and 2x8tb as standalone drives.
I use the 8TB raid5 for my files and documents and the 2 x 8TB for storage of my video files.
NAS is mainly used for torrents and video streaming using ds video to my iphone on the go and apple tv4k at home
As it's not a synology nas, transcoding does not work, neither does shr.
Thinking of changing to either a 4 or 5 bay synology nas but the DS923+ & DS1522 do not integrated graphics, which I'm worried about as my main use case is video streaming. Would like to have 2.5G support as well as I have a single 2.5G port on my router. That said, my internet connection is 1gbps and so technically I can't really make use of 2.5G.
Would DS423+ be a better fit? Concerned about synology requiring synology ssd and compatible hdds as well. Will QNAP instead be better as their hardware seems to be a better fit and more flexible in terms of compatibility.

Hello, i have a msi z87-g55 msi motherboard with free PCI-E slots, and i am thinking of buying an M2 nvme device that i will insert through an adapter to the slot. i am thinking of samsung 980 pro 2tb. Would you advice it to use in an older PCi-E gen 3 slot MB? or maybe it is better to go for a lower price crucial p3 plus?
Other suggestions?

Thank you

Thank you for your quick reply yesterday about my problems with Time Machine on my DS423+. I don't think I was clear with my first question and I hope I can bother you one more time. I have setup Time Machine on my DS423+ according to NAScompares instructions. When I go to TM settings in MacOS I see my new TM volume on the NAS along with my old TM volume on an external USB drive. Both are active, both have up to date snapshots. I want to verify that the NAS backups are usable before I remove the USB backup. But when I try to browse TM backups in MacOS I don't see the NAS volume, only the USB volume is browsable. It's almost as if the NAS volume has write privileges and not read privileges, is that possible? I've asked about this at Apple community and at Synology community with no help. It doesn't make sense that MacOS sees the NAS volume in TM settings but doesn't see it in TM browse mode but right now I don't know what else to try. Thanks for your help!

I recently purchased a Kingston Renegade Furry SSD. It comes with a graphine heat spreader. I will be installing the SSD in a PS5 w/ a Elecgear Heat sink. My question is do I need to remove the graphine heat spreader prior to installing the heat sink?

Hello,
I'm choosing my first NAS, I need storage for movies. Right now Nvidia Shield Pro is connected to the TV, as it plays 4K, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos (in my case via PLEX).

Did I correctly understood that if I connect NAS and Shield to the same network, I can play movies through the Shield in their original quality (without compression and re-encoding) on a TV using the Shield's processor? I need to install Plex media server to Shield and enable external storage on it to see my NAS files?

I looked after myself DS223, as it is budgetary and should be suitable for my tasks. At first I looked at DS223j, but it only has 1gb ram and it scared me away.

Hi. I'm a photographer. I'm looking to get a NAS for my photo archives. Mainly I'll be storing JPEG or RAW files inside. Will the embedded graphic chip affect photo viewing speed? Most reviews I've seen online are about videos, but what about photo encoding? I need to browse the photo quickly and not wait for them to decode one by one. Thanks.

I couldn't find too much but was wondering if you had any thoughts about V-Color's ECC SO-DIMM DDR 4 Memory. I paid $135 for 32GB (16x2) on Prime Day. Not sure if it's a scam or real. Just received them (they have 9 chips on either side of a single card) and am planning to put them in my Synology 1522+.
Would this be something you would be willing to review on your YouTube channel or any thoughts about V-Color's products?
Thanks,
Rob