The original post: /r/homelab by /u/I-Code-Things on 2024-09-17 18:51:08.

There’s so much NAS info floating around and it goes from basic to expert with no in-between. Can someone help me understand these points?

1. Why do people recommend Synology over QNAP, then others say Synology sucks and to use something else that has unraid, truenas, etc?
2. When would you use 3.5" HDD vs 2.5" SDD vs M.2 NVME? e.g. a typical HDD nas vs the Asustor Flashstor 2 (all NVME) vs the UGreen NASync (mix of NVME and HDDs)
3. What is ECC and why is it important? Also, is it worth not going to DDR5 because for some reason it can’t fully use ECC?
4. Someone said for hardware transcoding, any intel cpu going to beat most GPUs until you spend > $2500k. Is that right?
5. At what point do you just use the NAS for storage, then have a different server for your services like Jellyfin, sonar, etc.

It does seem like most spec and speed conversations are for people using a NAS as more enterprise equipment where large file transfers is the critical aspect and things like not having an SFP+ port are deal breakers. If a solid media server is really the important piece, what factors should be the most important?