JONSBO N4 Black NAS Pc Case, Walnut Wood, 8-Drive Bay/6 * 3.5 "HDD (4 hot-swap,2 Non hot-swap),2 * 2.5SSD,Micro ATX Chassis, USB3.2Gen2Type-C, 1x120mm Fan Built-in, Black

I think ease of use/setup and customer service would be the main objectively valid points as I wouldn’t expect everyone to be comfortable with a headless server or tinkering with PC parts/ as an example. You can definitely build a NAS box with powerful parts for cheaper than some popularly recommended prebuilt NAS like a Ugreen DXP 4800 Plus. MB+CPU+RAM combo $200 PSU $59 Jonsbo N4 $128 6+2+custom bays Or Jonsbo N5 $265 12+4+custom bays eBay LSI 9300-8i with SATA cables $48 eBay 2.5GB RJ45 NIC $40 —- $475 | $610 Slap in a cheap Intel GPU for ~$100 from hlsales or hwswap and you have very powerful hardware with more bays than a prebuilt box and a dGPU. I’m not gonna bother with the subjective details or parts optimization since that depends on individual expertise, just proving they can be built for cheap