ASRock B660M Steel Legend motherboard
ASRock B660M Steel Legend motherboard
It's not recommended for gaming use, but for your NAS it shouldn't impact performance significantly. The VRM might be less robust than in consumer devices.
Usual pre-made NAS systems use a low-power dual-core processor, which means they can’t handle heavy tasks without straining the power delivery system. It’s unclear why someone would design a NAS this big and resource-heavy, but there must be some purpose behind it.
For the Pentium model you're considering, that's not ideal. Upgrading to an i7 or i9 likely means you'll face power throttling unless you actively direct airflow toward the VRM during heavy usage. If your system won't consume more than 100W—especially with a processor under 12600K—it should be sufficient. Adding a 12700K would probably trigger throttling and lower performance when the load is high.
It means a NAS doesn’t have to be a complete desktop on today’s mid-range hardware—it’s unnecessary. I wouldn’t assemble a NAS from regular desktop pieces unless you had mostly outdated parts lying there. Realistically, fitting a 12TB drive into a NAS is unlikely.
You'd need something around 12.6 to 12.7 GHz to make sense for running VMs, though it's not a big deal since the hardware won't be fully stressed.
It really depends. I run a monthly clamscan on my server, which puts a lot of strain on the CPU—especially when using an SSD. Although it's built for a server rather than a NAS, it also serves as my NAS. I think it's always wise to have more CPU capacity than necessary, to avoid performance bottlenecks later. A ready-made NAS isn't automatically low power; they're designed to maximize profitability. For years, lower models were too weak and would struggle with a single HDD, but nowadays they perform much better, handling SSDs and possibly virtual machines.