The advantage of the PC server over this would be extensibility and flexibility - you can add more disk space over time if you buy a different case and transplant the components, or as you suggest add a USB disk (if you're just streaming individual music/video files from it USB 2.0 is fine). If you used SSDs instead of HDDs it would be a lot quieter but waaaay more expensive! You'll ultimately be limited to the number of bays and whatever the largest size of disk it supports is, although you can probably plug in extra USB disks (bear in mind though that putting USB disks in RAID is possible but could be problematic and is likely to result in a performance hit). I'd say it's definitely quiet enough for living room use and I never really noticed it even when new, but it's not totally silent because of the HDDs and fan. I've got no idea what QNAP is like in terms of interface, but I've been connecting my Syno directly to my DAC by USB and streaming from there (it has an android app for controlling playback). I've been running a similar setup with a Synology NAS for a few years now and it's been really good. If custom, are there things to look for in order to ensure good clear audio via dlna or toslink? (I think dlna can handle 24/196 and optical only 24/96). So can I build a raid media server for say $500 (the price of a good capable nas)? That would be better than the nas? The nas isnt very powerful so a pretty cheap CPU would be stronger. I can send music to my Yamaha wxc-50 via DLNA. Then I'd probably need to run a virtual PC linux or windows to run a different music manager like JRiver or Emry unless.

I can install Kodi/Plex from the Qnap app store. Looking at a used Qnap ts-453mini with a Celeron J3455 and 4-8gig of ram (listed by plex and reviews as a decent plex server being able to transcode several 4k movies in real time. I probably will also run something different for my music. THEN I want to run something like Kodi that has a slick looking interface for all of it and a Plex addon for movies. Plus I have TB's of music I can incorporate (the music started it all). I've decided to localize all of our home videos (many) and pictures which are scattered across various computers and USB drives. I didnt want to have a PC in the living room but what I've decided to accomplish has grown so now I'm looking at either a used PC or nas. As opposed to snagging a good performing 4k transcoding capable nas. You can skip all this long winded vomit.my question is.So can I build a fairly quiet raid media server for say $500 (the price of a good capable used nas)? I can source used stuff like case, etc.

Jriver media center qnap