Are Higher End NAS better than Entry Level Desktops For Home Server?

gengyuntx · April 25, 2021

Relatively new and thinking about getting a home server for media sharing among my many devices.

An entry level NAS is probably just fine so I was looking at something like WD My Cloud EX2 or Synology DS220j (suggestions?)

However, as I was researching I found higher end NAS which had much less CPU and RAM power than a comparable priced PC; why won't people reconfigure these PC for server use but rather would go for a higher end NAS? According to what I learned on the internet, getting a pre-built NAS from a name brand manufacturer would sometimes pose privacy concerns; aren't PC-repurposed home servers more preferable in this regard too? I guess while getting the prebuilt NAS would also get you the software support which you don't get otherwise. But is that the only reason to justify for the big price difference?

jwwagner25 · April 27, 2021

I just recently upgraded from synology DS220j to qnap TS-451D2, as it has four bays, is barely any bigger than the already compact 220j, and has a celeron processor able to handle plex transcoding to several devices.

I have a desktop w/ ryzen 1600 that isn't being used, and prior to getting the 220j several months ago, I considered doing some type of freenas setup with it. Decided against it for several reasons:

Space - the synology/qnap are incredibly compact. Not having to worry about where to put the hard drives/ PC case considerations.

simplicity; both software and hardware..

As others mentioned, qnap is all in one solution. I would recommend it over the synology because you have much greater control over functions of the system, and RAM is upgradable. Of course it's more money but I believe you get what you pay for.