Time to upgrade?

[Velkro]

Hi

I currently have a QNAP TS-453A-8G which has served me well (pun intended) for the last few years. Running 4 4tb seagate ironwolf drives. One of the drives has decided to start failing and I was going to replace all 4 as they are a good age now, however I'm wondering whether to just replace the whole system at the same time. 

Main usage at present is as a media server for plex and a backup repository for phone and other desktops (win/lin). I was considering trying to use as  a roon server but see on the roon page they tend to use nuc style systems for that with more ram and more capable cpu. Other new uses would be with home automation.

Things are a bit slow at the minute (navigating the nas through portal as is the maintenence of apps) and may improve with a refresh (maybe) however media serving atm is flawless.

I was considering something with a bit more kick and with m.2 availability, the ability to transcode would also be useful. I'm not sure I have the patience for DIY but it's not completely off the cards.

Cheers in advance

V

[ed]

Thanks for the message, and you’re definitely not alone in this crossroads. The TS-453A was a very capable NAS in its day, especially with the 8GB RAM configuration, and it’s good to hear it’s still holding up well for Plex and backups. That said, the combination of aging drives, a slowly degrading UI experience, and ambitions like running Roon or expanding into home automation does make a strong case for considering an upgrade.

If media serving is working flawlessly right now, you’re not under immediate pressure to replace the whole system, but there are a few things that could be limiting you long-term. First is the CPU — the Celeron N3150 is pretty dated by today’s standards, and even though it’s fine for basic file serving and some Plex work (especially with direct play), it does fall short when multitasking or running heavier apps. The fact that things feel slow in the web UI and app management is a symptom of that bottleneck.

If you’re thinking about diving into Roon, home automation (like Dockerized Home Assistant), or heavier Plex transcoding, then a newer system with a better CPU, NVMe slots, and more responsive software will go a long way. You don’t necessarily need to jump all the way to a DIY build if that feels like too much work. There are some great turnkey systems now with far more headroom than the TS-453A.

If you want to stay with QNAP, something like the TS-464 or TS-664 would be the natural evolution. These have much better CPUs (Intel N5095 or N5105), support NVMe SSD caching or storage pools, offer faster 2.5GbE networking, and still keep the familiar QTS environment. They’re also well-suited to running Docker containers, and will handle Roon Core and light Plex transcoding just fine. You also get a more responsive UI experience all around.

If you’re open to other brands, Asustor’s Lockerstor Gen2 series also hits that balance well — offering HDMI, better media handling, and a modern OS, while still being user-friendly and affordable. If you ever decide to take the plunge into DIY or TrueNAS in future, these prebuilt NAS systems still have resale value, so you’re not locked in.

As for the drives — replacing all four makes sense given their age, especially if one is already failing. You might even consider moving up to 6TB or 8TB drives to give yourself some future breathing room without needing to expand right away. IronWolf or WD Red Plus are still solid options if you’re staying with RAID 5 or SHR-like redundancy.