Selfhosted

Lots of good suggestions here

I'm a bit surprised by your budget. For something just running plex and next cloud, you shouldn't need a 6 or even 3k system. I run my server on found parts, adding up to just $600-$700 dollars including (used) SAS drives. It runs probably a dozen docker containers, a dns server, and homeassistant. I don't even remember what cpu I have because it was such a small consideration when I was finding parts.

I'd recommend keeping g your synology as a simple Nas (maybe next cloud too, depending on how you're using it) and then get a second box with whatever you need for plex. Unless you're transcoding multiple 4k videos at once, your cpu/GPU really don't need much power. I don't even have a dedicated GPU in mine, but I'm basically unable to do live 4k transcodes (this is fine for me)

I'm very happy with my ASRock N100 (either m or DC). It has sufficient performance for my needs (proxmox with opnsense, jellyfin and various other services) while using very little power

I had an Intel s2600 with dual Xeon and 120 gigs of RAM. It seems like such a good idea to run that as a home server. However, the amount of power that it used because it was older was way too much.

I ended up hunting on eBay and found an old Asus motherboard, Intel chip, ram, and a pny Nvidia card.

I bought refurb hard drives from serverpartdeals and a new case from Amazon.

I recommend starting with a chassis you want and working backwards to help narrow your scope.

I know you wanted smaller but heres what I bought. SilverStone Technology CS382... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKTYSZV9?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Also, I run truenas scale with a bunch of apps. Ssd z1 for os. Ssd z1 for transcode and caches. And then 4 drive set for main storage and another 4 drive set for backup of the first set.

I'm reusing a blade server I managed to snag from a company I worked for in 2008. It's perfect as a media server for friends and family. It is only recently degrading slightly but hey, it lasted a long time!

Point is you can use almost anything. Do your homework on compatible parts and make what you can afford

Maybe building one yourself might be a good idea. I found someone's old desktop with an 8th Gen i7, 32gb of ram, mobo and Gtx 1070 gpu on the side of the road while on a road trip. Thing was sitting in the rain and slightly rusted, but when I cleaned off the corrosion, stuffed it full of hdds and set it up with truenas scale it's been running flawlessly with an uptime of almost a year. Been running like that for about 5 years now with the occasional maintenance.

If you don't need enterprise level hardware and support, I can suggest MinisForum. They released the MS01 fairly recently and I believe it fits your specs.

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01

I bought a used desktop with 4 SATA ports. Has i5 7th gen and currently 5 TB and an 500GB SSD and has max ram of 64GB. I guess the HDD are not included in the price?

I'm not sure what your software requirements are but if you go the DIY route a desktop works. I made the BIOS auto turn on on power restored and have services start on startup so it gives the server feeling.

Bonus is that you can use it as a gaming server and upgrade the components easily for a while depending on the motherboard.

To be fair the Synology lineup is confusing, but if you get the right model - one with a Ryzen processor and support for 32GB memory (officially; they can take more) - then you've got yourself a proper little workhorse with low power consumption, a stable, reliable OS, and super easy expansion thanks to the hot-swap drive bays and their Hybrid RAID option. My 8 bay model is running a couple of full-blown VMs and what must be two dozen or so docker containers while barely breaking a sweat. The DS723+ is the equivalent 2 bay model.

For things that need some acceleration like Plex and Immich I've added a little N100 box (a Beelink S12 Pro) with Ubuntu Server and another Docker instance, and mounted the NAS storage via SMB. This also sips power even when transcoding 4x Plex streams at once.

All of which is to say you don't need to do a complex, potentially power hungry and difficult to expand self build to do what you want.

I would suggest looking into TiniMiniMicro used PC and let NAS do NAS things. Try to get a PC with decent number of thread and put as much RAM as it supports. Install ProxMox on it and go nuts. Learn Linux TV has a great series of videos on it.

My solution to this question a year or so ago was to take my gaming desktop, which was collecting dust after I moved to my gaming laptop, and gut it down to a 4U server rack case. Best decision I've ever made. 12 core Ryzen and 128gb memory. Got a 10g adapter in the pci express, 8xHDD for data and then 2 mirrored nvme for the OS itself. Only thing I kept out was the video card since I had no use for it (yet)

An equivalent "server" on the market would probably cost a fortune and cost you a ridiculous amount of electricity.

You say you need an i3 or higher but don't list anything that necessitates that. What do you need that for? N100 is near-ubiquitous in the space.

What about this guy?

If you think about what the "S" in "NAS" is you'll realize why they prioritize storage...

You want a general purpose server.

For many reasons I would go used. There are used server vendors which have great machines for a reasonable price. You can of course build your own with that money but if you go used you will have a beast which will likely run for decades still.

No one has brought up Unraid OS specifically yet. Others have said just build your own machine, and yes absolutely this is the way. And then just slap Unraid on that and you have yourself exactly what you're looking for. It's user friendly, as powerful as your wallet can handle, and plenty of room for expandability.

Are you looking at Dell/HP/Lenovo's sites? Don't do that, those are going to be way overpriced and way overkill. Also most of them are rack servers, not really suited to home use. If anything, you'd want to spec it out as a tower workstation.

Personally I build mine out of parts, and usually used parts. Currently I'm using a little U-NAS NS-410 case, and I replaced all the internals with something better. Total cost was less than $400, I think.

Some good ideas on this site if you are interested in building your own https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-is-finally-cheap/13956

Tiny/mini/micro makes up my server environment (and two customs using old cases and replaced parts).

Storage is a 1520+ and the two customs, with the 1515+ for backups I don't want to lose (syncs to two other locations).

Tiny/mini/micro is the majority of compute tasks, mostly proxmox, LXC's, and a few VMs.

The little machines have plenty of processing power, usually nvme but I can add it on if needed. Combine it with network storage, and you don't need anything else imo.

Bonus is they are small and cheap as off lease machines being auctioned off.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

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