What to buy? Use Case = Music Studio / PLEX

[Dolan666]

Complete NAS newb here. And would love some help! 

I've been trolling through product reviews and tech spec's for days and cannot make a deicison. 

I'm a home studio audio engineer who previously had a Macbook Pro with 8TB storage, and since purchased a Mac Studio with 2TB - so figured I would invest in a NAS. I also use PLEX at home, so would like something which can store media and playback from my living room TV via PLEX App.

Bonus points if I can use this as file sharing with my band members, so I can get away from using GoogleDrive, Dropbox and OneDrive. 

Here's what I think my requirements are:


- Loudness: Whether I am putting this thing in my Music Studio or Living Room (TV), I am extremely concious amibient sound. This is probably my biggest consideration. 
- Storage: I haven't got into whether I want to put the NAS in a Raid5 config yet, so as a start I'd need at least 2x2-4TB SSD. I've read a lot of reviews about M.2 being a lot better than 2.5 SSD in terms of read/write speeds. 
- Cost: I'm happy paying between $1k-$2.5k AUD, but would prefer that to include the cost of the NAS + drives. 
- PLEX: Being able to save media directly to the NAS, and play from my living room TV in 4K streaming. 
- External Connectivity: Able to share files with people outside of my home network, but locking it down to user by user access to specific folders on specific drives.  

I had shortlisted the following devices, but they all had their pros/cons which stopped me from purchasing:

- QNAP TS-410e: This was what I almost purchased based on reviews from Music creators, but three things stopped me - #1 the longevity of something which doesn't have a fan, #2 the network speed (2.5GbE), and #3 you're restricted to use 2.5" SSD and not M.2 SSD. 
- QNAP TS-i410x: My reasoning for reviewing this was that I thought it was the same as the 410e but allowed for a faster network speed than the 410e (e.g. 10GbE vs. 2.5GbE), but after reading the tech spec it doesn't seem to boast the same "noise-sensitive environments" use case, and instead more towards industrial use. 
- QNAP BS-h574TX: At first glance this SHOULD be my choice, although the cost (i3) was more than I wanted to spend. But I watched videos of someone in a Podcast studio and the Fan noise when pushed to higher limits seemed to me to be a lot. But I'm unsure if the fan % would actually get that high in general use. If the sound was too much I would need to home it in my living room, but then I lose the benefit of the Thunderbolt Network connection direct to my Mac Studio. 
[font=Roboto, 'Open Sans', Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Helvetica, 微軟正黑體, 'Microsoft JhengHei', 'PingFang SC', 'Lantinghei SC', sans-serif]BS-h574TX[/font]

[ed]

Suggested Setup Options

1. QNAP HS-264 – Fanless, Silent, Affordable (~$850 AUD + drives)
• Pros: Fanless design, runs quiet in studios and living rooms, supports 2x 2.5” SATA SSDs, solid for direct-play Plex.
• Cons: No M.2 support, limited to 2-bay, and no 10GbE.
• Use Case Fit: Great for silent Plex and collaborative file sharing, less ideal if you need top-tier editing I/O speeds.

2. UGREEN DXP4800/6800 Pro (~$600–$800 AUD + drives)
• Pros: Budget-friendly, supports NVMe SSDs, very quiet (2.5GbE or 10GbE on some models), runs third-party OS like TrueNAS or UnRAID.
• Cons: Not official QNAP/Synology-level software polish, but great for DIY or power users.
• Use Case Fit: Better suited if you want full NVMe performance, custom OS, and are okay with a bit more manual setup.

3. Synology DS923+ with 2x M.2 NVMe (quiet fans, ~$900 AUD)
• Pros: Near silent, polished DSM OS, supports NVMe caching (or pools with Synology drives), strong Plex for direct play.
• Cons: No GPU for transcoding, and NVMe-only storage pool limited to Synology SSDs (workarounds exist).
• Use Case Fit: Excellent UI for sharing, easy to manage, just make sure your TV app plays formats directly (Plex Direct Play).

⸻

If silence is your top priority and you can work with 2.5” SATA SSDs, the QNAP HS-264 is honestly still one of the best options. You can fill it with 2x 4TB SSDs and get a clean, quiet experience in your studio and living room. If you want more horsepower, and don’t mind a little more noise mitigation (e.g., placing it in an adjacent room or closet with good ventilation), the QNAP BS-h574TX is strong but may be overkill unless you need that Thunderbolt uplink constantly.



If your 4K content is Direct Play compatible (meaning your TV’s Plex app supports the format natively), you won’t need GPU transcoding at all. But if you expect to stream HEVC or need to transcode audio/video for older TVs, QNAP units with i3/i5 or a GPU option (like the TVS-h674) are more ideal — though pricier and noisier.

Alternatively, if you’re comfortable going DIY or third-party OS (like UnRAID or TrueNAS SCALE), a UGREEN DXP6800 Pro or similar with NVMe-only storage can hit that silent high-speed sweet spot with more flexibility than QNAP/Synology — just less hand-holding.