Three SSD NAS Builds, One Surprising Efficiency Winner

Summary

The quietest contender delivered 4K HDR transcoding at 60 FPS while drawing just 10.4W—but choosing the best SSD-only NAS still depends on what you sacrifice. For most homes, hard drives remain more economical for bulk storage, paired with a 1 to 2 TB SSD for containers and virtual machines. All-SSD systems make more sense for professionals needing fast access or users who value compact size, silence, and low power over huge capacity. The ultra-compact Maiyunda M1S offers four NVMe slots, replaceable RAM, 2.5 gig Ethernet, and about 10 to 11W idle consumption. However, its SSDs run through single PCIe Gen.3 lanes, its fan is loud, ASPM breaks Ethernet, and availability is poor. The ARM-based FriendlyElec CM3588 is the efficiency champion: it idles at 3.2W, runs silently with passive cooling, and nearly saturates 2.5 gig networking. Its main compromise is limited operating-system support, with Proxmox, TrueNAS, and unRAID lacking official ARM versions. The €377 DIY C246 build is larger and power-hungry, reaching 85W under storage benchmarks, but provides ECC memory, 8 SATA ports, full-bandwidth NVMe connections, expansion options, and 10 Gigabit performance up to 1175 megabytes per second. Choose the CM3588 for efficiency, the M1S for compact x86 compatibility, or the C246 build for speed, ECC, and versatility.