I kicked my Synology NAS to the curb and replaced it with a custom-built server running Proxmox and I should have done it sooner
Taking back control of my data has been long overdue. My journey with a Synology NAS started years ago as simple network storage for work images and Plex media. Over time, it evolved into an overloaded home lab, juggling too many tasks and failing to perform any efficiently.
Building a personal server had always been part of my long-term plan for deeper home lab experimentation. Now the NAS is back to its original purpose—archiving files—while the new Proxmox-powered system handles the demanding workloads it was never meant to manage.
Realizing the limitations
The surprising part is not that this transition happened, but that it took me so long to accept that my needs had changed. Despite Synology’s reliable performance over the years, its constraints became too pressing to ignore.
The simple fact is that my home lab needs have outgrown the available resources on my Synology NAS or on my mini PC.
The mini PC’s 12GB RAM cap and lack of GPU support, along with the NAS’s limited drive bays, made it impossible to scale further. While corporate missteps nudged this decision, the shift had been inevitable for some time.
About this article
SilverStone, Asus, and Kingston provided hardware for this build. None of the companies reviewed or influenced the content before publication.
Author’s Note
This migration marks a clean break toward building a flexible, high-performance home lab designed to evolve with my computing needs.
Author’s summary: Transitioning from a Synology NAS to a custom Proxmox server finally gave the author flexibility, power, and control lacking in prebuilt systems.