DS425+

I’ve used Synology since 2011 or so with Macs; they work perfectly. I would strongly recommend them - easy to use, reasonably fast for what they are, and lots of flexibility in them. Yes, out of the box the 2025 models (DS425+, etc. with 25 in the name) require Syno-branded disks. This is either a g

Many do exactly that, although using a discrete GPU is pointless for most people; built in Intel iGPU is vastly fast enough for the vast, vast majority of people today, even if just using a little Intel Celeron / etc. CPU. You're basically building your own Linux box at that point, whereas the Synol