New NAS/Plex/Docker server substitute

Dear all,

I have only just recently discovered this forum but am absolutely amazed at the amount of quality content accumulated here. I would start by thanking you all for sharing.

Obviously then I could not pretend to build a NAS/Plex server substitute without your approval.

I have been running a QNAP TS-251 (8Gb RAM) for the last 5 years with 2x4TB HDDs (now stripped and backed up to a 10Tb HDD). It works as a NAS, Plex Server, Nextcloud server, Pi-hole (LXC) and docker host managed through Portainer (torrent-VPN, *arr stack, kanboard, vaultwarden,… to name a few).
It has been doing everything I want with adequate speed, I would say.

It now has a faulty fan (70mm cant find a replacement) and overall has just got more noisy overall.

Looking into a new, more energy efficient and silent system.
Right now I have almost 0 need to transcode but that is a possibility in the future, so just went with Intel.

Somebody here recently suggested https://perfectmediaserver.com/ as a starting point for software stack and I really like the idea of MergeFS+SnapRAID - would love to hear your comments on this.

I plan on running my 2x4Tb as a single volume and then have it mirrored in my 10Tb HDD.
I was hoping that a 512Gb M2 NVME could allow me to run everything from the M2 (will put my 20Gb Nextcloud documents+photos there) and so have the HDDs suspend most of the time - would this be possible/feasible most of the time? Should I have an SSD as cache?

I don’t expect to change my use case so soon, but would like to possibly try out VMs in the near future so thought that for the price difference a Pentium would be helpful vs Celeron.

Finally, I should say I am in the European Union and mostly just jealous of the prices you have in the United States (retail or second hand). These were the cheapest prices I could get after searching several of the businesses that I have available to me.

Please feel free to comment/suggest changes. Budget is tight right now (and prices somewhat crazy?) so looking to have a nice platform for upgrades if necessary in the future.

Pentium Gold G6405 €59,9
Asus Prime H410M-D €65,9
Disco SSD Western Digital Blue 500GB 3D M.2 €52.85
Crucial Value 8GB (1x8GB) DDR4-3200MHz CL22 €34,9
Corsair 450 Bronze €30.26 (how loud is it? I have a Seasonic Gold Focus and it is at 0% fan most of the time when not gaming - thinking of plumping for the Seasonic B12-BC-650 €48.78)
COOLER MASTER - CX N300 €45.24
Total: €289

All prices in € without shipping.
I already have the HDDs.

Thank you for reading and for your help.

Just realised the H410 chipset doesnt support RAID. Changing to
Gigabyte B460M DS3H V2 €78,9

Total ~300€

How does this sound now?
Thank you.

If you’re looking at a home NAS, you should be looking at Unraid.
If you’re looking at Unraid, that means you don’t need hardware RAID.