Build a quiet all-flash NAS for files, photos and backups. Count the drive slots and PCIe lanes, demand fast networking, and size the RAM for ZFS — CPU power is a secondary concern.
Count the M.2 slots and how many PCIe lanes each gets. Budget chips share a few lanes across all drives, so four NVMe drives may run at x1 each — still faster than 2.5GbE, but not than 10GbE.
A single NVMe drive saturates 2.5GbE. Dual or quad 2.5GbE (with link aggregation) or 10GbE is what lets an all-flash NAS feel fast.
ZFS uses spare RAM as cache (ARC). 16 GB is a comfortable floor; ECC is rare on mini PCs, so keep good backups.
A NAS never sleeps. Low idle power and good drive cooling matter more than burst performance.
The classic NAS-board chip: eight cores, quad 2.5GbE and multiple NVMe slots at low power.
| Graphics (iGPU) | Intel UHD 32 EU |
| Memory Architecture | 1x SODIMM DDR5 4800MHz |
| Storage Exp. | Up to 4x M.2 NVMe + 2x SATA |
| Idle Power | 9W – 15W |
| Est. Barebone Cost | $220 - $310 |
High-bandwidth TrueNAS SCALE box, multi-tenant router, localized NVR security server.
Enough for SMB/NFS shares and backups across two drives at ~6 W — limited by lanes and a single RAM slot.
| Graphics (iGPU) | Intel UHD (24 EU) |
| Memory Architecture | 1x DDR4/DDR5 SODIMM (Up to 32GB) |
| Storage Exp. | 1x M.2 NVMe + 1x 2.5" SATA |
| Idle Power | 5W – 8W |
| Est. Barebone Cost | $120 - $180 |
OPNsense Firewall, Pi-hole, Plex DirectPlay, lightweight Proxmox cluster nodes.
Models with 10GbE, two PCIe 4.0 x4 slots and lots of RAM make a very fast storage + compute server.
| Graphics (iGPU) | Radeon 8060S (40 CUs, up to 2.9 GHz) |
| Memory Architecture | LPDDR5X-8000 256-bit, soldered (64GB or 128GB) |
| Storage Exp. | 2x M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 |
| Idle Power | 10W – 18W |
| Est. Barebone Cost | $1,500 - $2,800 |
Local LLM inference on 30B–120B models, ROCm/AI development, 1440p gaming without a discrete GPU, heavy multi-core builds.
| Drive slots | 3+ M.2 NVMe, or a SATA / U.2 option |
| Network | Dual 2.5GbE minimum; 10GbE for all-flash speed |
| Memory | 16 GB+ for ZFS ARC |
| Boot | A separate small boot drive or USB/eMMC for TrueNAS |
| Power | Under 12 W idle with drives |
| Graphics | Intel UHD Graphics (24 EU) |
| Memory | 16GB LPDDR5-4800 soldered (12GB option) |
| Storage | 6x M.2 2230/2242/2280 (1x PCIe 3.0 x4 + 5x PCIe 3.0 x1), Up to 24TB |
| Idle Power | 6W – 7W (no drives) · ~17W with six SSDs |
| Price | $525 (N150/16GB/1TB) |
Intel N100 / N305 Micro Node