Philipp95

You can usually buy them in stores from the netherlands too

So you want a asus g14 or g15. Either last gen or current gen ryzen (5000 or 6000 the 6000 series has multiple hours of extra battery life and a small bump in performance) + a 3050 or 3060 config. The screens are color calibrated (in certain models it is listed when they are) and very nice.
 
Keep in mind one stick of ram is soldered. In the 16gb version this would be 8gb in the 32gb one this would be 16gb. The second stick can be upgraded up to 32gb of ram. The laptop is relatively upgrade friendly.
 
It's also "dockable". Basically get a usb c hub that allows for displayport mst and well enjoy up to 2 displays and a bunch of io of off one usb c port from the laptop.

My company used 10 of these for passively cooled PCs all around the workshop with coffee lake Celerons, they're just perfect lots of USB 2.0 native Com port and m.2 for boot drive, and as I said moisture proof coating which is super nice because ofrapidly changing temperatures in the winter months!

It should work. Serial interfaces works well as long as the drivers are correct.

To check, you can close pin 2 and 3 of the COM port with a jumper, and try with a terminal if the peripheral shows and echo what you send. If that's the case, something weird is going on with your application. I usually use FTDI serial to USB adapters, they show up as serial interfaces. On linux as ttyS0. On windows as a serial port.
 
Other than finding the correct driver, with possible issues with windows driver signature, they work. Check the code of the chip and install the correct driver. Might make your choice of MOBO that much easier.

Nice!
That's a Coffee Lake board.

Yea that should be plenty for a nas. You really don't need much cpu power to do a home nas.

Seems right to me with my experience with pentiums. The low end chips often never get close to the tdp as they just can't pull that much power. 

KZ - both disabled?

K = CPU + iGPU
KF = CPU only
KA = iGPU only