Synology’s 2025 refresh brought the DS225+ and DS425+ with the familiar Intel Celeron J4125, but it also quietly removed the kernel graphics driver support that Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby use for hardware transcoding of H.264 and HEVC. This guide explains what changed, why it matters for real-world streaming, and how you can restore GPU-accelerated transcoding on these models using an unofficial SSH method shared by the community. If you rely on your NAS to reshape 4K or high bitrate files for phones, tablets, hotel TVs, or limited connections, this walkthrough will help you get that efficiency back.
TrueNAS. More control for slightly more work up front. Hardware will be easier to maintain. Lots of gamer desktops that won’t run Win11 available that probably have enough SATA ports to get the job done.
Gamer desktops tend to be power hogs. Running them 24/7 can rack up some hefty power bills, plus noise, plus space, plus other tradeoffs.
Better a used thin client.
A thin client for a NAS? That’s a hard no for me. Take the GPU out if you don’t need it, put a more efficient PSU and it will sip power as long as you aren’t running 27 virtual machines on it. I guess it’s more space than a thin client, but I have no idea how you are getting multiple HDDs or SSDs in a tc. USB is trash at long term data storage, and having a bunch of external drives and cables isn’t superior to a slightly bigger box. Not to mention anything that’s actually sold as a thin client probably won’t run ZFS very well if at all. If it’s not ZFS and it’s not hardware raid what the hell is the point of having network storage? Save the TC for a docker host or host a VM on your NAS that it can connect to instead.