It’s perfectly reliable. You only need caution when using RAID5 and RAID6 as these features are still in the experimental phase.

My router (shit one provided by the carrier) is restarting frequently, I think due to overheating

Not sure this is what you are looking for, but syncthing is for self-hosting and it’s Peer-2-Peer. I use it to synchronize my important documents and photos across my devices, it has options for encryption and file versioning.

Syncthing is the 3 in my 3-2-1 backup strategy. It enables me to maintain 3 copies of my files: desktop, phone, NAS

openmediavault and casas are good noob-friendly OSes for NAS purpose. Much faster and simpler to get it running than some Proxmox and True NAS overkill solution.

You can also just install whatever Linux OS you like, and plug-in some screen, keyboard and mouse and do your setup this way, like any other computer!

For Hardware, I recommend to build a computer out of standard parts. For what you said, a small motherboard with an integrated Intel N100 CPU and a nice looking case like the Jonsbo N2 will sever you well. This is very close to my current setup, using an older j5040 CPU and it runs everything just fine with no effort (Jellyfin w/ light transcoding, *arr stack, Usenet and torrent clients, syncthing, SMB and NFS filesharing, and more)

I second this proposition of DIY build. My current build is an older version of this using an ASRock motherboard with integrated Intel j5040. It’s already very capable! I run Jellyfin with HW transcoding and a dozen other containers and there is still plenty of headroom.

The Jonsbo N2 case is pricey but good quality, nice looking and nice to build with ! Cheaper options are there but not as nice in terms of looks and usability.

You can look into this database: PSU Low Idle Efficiency Database by Wolfgang’s Channel / Google Docs

Have you tried running in a Wayland session if you have the same issue ? I am not so sure, but I think GPU acceleration is only really working with Firefox in Wayland. Also, check which version of the Nvidia driver you have, maybe there is something newer you can use from the backports repository.

I haven’t encountered this problem myself.

This isn’t exactly what I recommend. Only in the case the hardware is bleeding edge, as in, it was released less than 6 month ago, then check in which Kernel version it starts to be supported, as well as check the Kernel version shipping with the distribution you are interested in installing. Distro Kernel version >= Kernel version where the driver starts to be included, no problems. Otherwise, check a distro that has more frequent upgrades.

Things to check: GPU, CPU, WiFi chip, Ethernet chip. In windows you can find the information in the device manager. On Linux (e.g: test with a live USB) the command lspci with display the information.

A common case would be: I am interested in Debian because I heard it’s the most stable, will my AMD 5070XT work with that ? Probably not very well, better Check Ubuntu non-LTS or Fedora.

I am not recommending op to modify the Kernel from the Linux distro, just consider this point in choosing the distro.