You’re starting to convince me, I’ve been looking at getting a GMKtec G3 N100 mini pc and just slotting it beside my existing NAS. I can even get a dedicated gigabit ethernet connection going between these two.

Interesting, I’ll investigate this!

Yeah, I’m also upgrading from a 14 years old Intel Atom D2701. It has a TDP of 10w, at the same time it has roughly a tenth of the performance of an N100. And then the HW accel for encode and decode is in addition to this, fot this type of task the difference is larger than 10x - the D2701 cannot do transcoding.

Thanks, the Jonsbo N1 actually has five hotswap bays, and I believe you can squeeze in another 3.5" besides the PSU if you have a small PSU. I’ll consider the N3 but I don’t think it will fit where I have my current NAS so I’ll have to replan a bit.

Yes, I’m thinking about either getting a PCIE SAS HBA to open up the option for SAS drives, or to get an ASM1166 M.2 to 6xSATA.

You’re right that I’ve focused too much on ECC, I think I’ll see it as nice to have more than something I’d prefer to have.

You’re right, I probably don’t need ECC. I’m mostly worried about bit flips in my important data, and as you say, a checksumming FS and RAID will protect against this while the data is in storage. However, it doesn’t protect against bit flips while copying data, for example copying data to backups - but there are other solutions for this, which I should consider.

Hot swap is nice to have. I haven’t even considered that it wouldn’t be supported by a mobo, I should look into that, thanks. These are the mobos I’m considering for each option:

N100: Topton N100 motherboard, 4x2.5G, 6xSATA, PCIE x1 https://a.aliexpress.com/_EvVv0k6

8500G: ASRock B650I Lightning WiFi (Gigabyte A620I AX might be an option, but it has only one M.2 slot so the upgradeability is less)

13100: ASRock Z790M-ITX Wifi

The N100 option is cheaper and should be lower power, but as you say I worry about needing another upgrade in a year or so, and this option doesn’t offer much upgradeability so that would mean at least a new mobo and cpu. The other options could accommodate a beefier CPU if needed.

Yeah, old Xeons tend to not be very low power, also I don’t think I’ll be able to find one with a mini ITX board to fit it in a compact case. Also, I’d probably need to add a discrete GPU, which adds to the cost and power consumption.

I want a low power build to limit heat and noise produced in my office room, to limit the electricity bill and as I understood it the case I’m considering also doesn’t have the best thermals, so I don’t want to put a CPU with too high a TDP into it.

The ReadyNAS 626 actually has a Xeon D-1521, but with a quite low TDP - 45W.

Regarding budget, I’m aiming for 400-800$. The N100 option, including case and PSU (but not disks) is at the lower end of this, while the 8500G and 13100 options are at the upper end.