DIY NAS Recommendations

[HeliturtleOP]

I currently run a little NAS / home server out of an old Lenovo Think Center M73 (with a 4th-gen i5). I wanted to add an Intel Arc A310 to help with Jellyfin transcode and generally encoding media. I've now come to find out that my old platform doesn't seem to be compatible with the new GPU, and I'm now considering just building up a new NAS from scratch and porting over all my old data.

If anyone has proof that the card should work on this platform, I'd be more than happy to try and get it working, but I think it might just be better to build a new server on a newer platform.
 

In terms of price, I was hoping to pay around or less than $1000 CAD (roughly $715 USD)
 

I already have the card, which I can text on a different pc just to make sure it works.
I also have an 850W ATX PSU, which I would love to be able to re-use in this build.
 

What I'm looking for in terms of help is a case and a platform.
 

So the case would have to fit the ATX PSU, but I don't have any motherboard constraints.
And I know that the A310 gets a performance boost from being paired with an Intel CPU, but I was wondering if the boost is enough to stop considering AMD altogether.

I was also curious if a modern i3 would bring enough performance for what I do (Jellyfin, Fileflows, Arrs apps, Obsidian live server)
 

Thanks for any help anyone can provide with this. Although I've built a PC before, this whole NAS thing is still a little foreign to me.
 

(Also, I don't know if it matters, but I'm running Ubuntu server with casaOS as a Docker frontend)

[Needfuldoer]

I'm running an A380 in a Xeon V4 motherboard (same era). Aside from some weird glitches on the UEFI BIOS splash screen, it works fine. I'm also running an A310 in my Cascade Lake home server; it's a great little transcode card.

 

You already have the card, so give it a try! The worst thing that can happen is it doesn't work. 

[Nellah]

If you go with a modern Intel CPU you won't even need the A310 unless you are handling a *lot* of simultaneous transcodes. My Plex+Jellyfin server is run off a mini PC with an N150 CPU (my storage is in a separate PC) and even the dinky little iGPU of the N150 can handle simultaneous 4K transcodes. I've never seen my server do more than two simultaneous real time transcodes though so it might have a lower ceiling; direct plays, though, are virtually zero overhead.

 

I'm not expressly familiar with Fileflows or Obsidian but the rest of that is well, well within a modern i3's capabilities.

[Blue4130]

On 10/28/2025 at 10:16 AM, HeliturtleOP said:

And I know that the A310 gets a performance boost from being paired with an Intel CPU

No it doesn't. The GPU doesn't care if you are on intel or amd.