I wanted to join the NAS club for so long but it was always either bang for buck for prebuilts ($1k for 4 bays, with 4Gb RAM and the CPU is slower than my previous phone?!) or lack of availability for 4+ SATA boards.
Last year I had aha moment when I learned about SAS boards.
Result - for ~$1k I have 8 bay NAS that's also strong HTPC and console capable of running games like Silksong with no sweat.
Before I learned about SAS cards my biggest limiter was number of SATA slots. If not for that card I would be looking at $600+ niche mobos.
But the biggest winner was 5500GT. I was looking at N300 for lower power consumption, but Ryzen draws 1W at idle and has APU capable of serious gaming (not 4k Elden Ring, but c'mon).
Last year I had aha moment when I learned about SAS boards.
My final build was:
Result - for ~$1k I have 8 bay NAS that's also strong HTPC and console capable of running games like Silksong with no sweat.Before I learned about SAS cards my biggest limiter was number of SATA slots. If not for that card I would be looking at $600+ niche mobos.
But the biggest winner was 5500GT. I was looking at N300 for lower power consumption, but Ryzen draws 1W at idle and has APU capable of serious gaming (not 4k Elden Ring, but c'mon).