Best Mini PC for NAS (2026): Mini NAS Boxes by Capacity

Most guides to using a mini PC as a NAS tell you that mini PCs have limited storage and that you should attach an external enclosure. That is true, and it is also where they stop. The number you need in order to decide — how many terabytes a given machine can hold — is almost never printed.

Maximum capacity ranges from 8TB to 72TB across all six machines here, a nine-fold spread. That gap decides more than the processor does. The second question, once you know a mini NAS box can hold your data, is how fast a copy can go — and on five of these six machines the answer is the network port, not the M.2 slot. On the one with hard-drive bays, it is the drives.

Quick picks

Under 8TB and you want it small and quiet: Beelink SER8 or EQ14. Two M.2 slots, 8TB ceiling, no drive bay.
Up to 24TB, all solid state: Beelink ME mini. Six M.2 slots in a mini NAS the size of a grapefruit.
Bulk storage, spinning drives: Beelink ME Pro. Two 2.5/3.5-inch bays plus three M.2 slots, and a 5GbE port.
10GbE, and storage that can grow outside the box: Minisforum MS-01. No bays, 24TB inside with a U.2 drive, plus a PCIe slot.

Check the ME Pro on Amazon

The number that decides this

A NAS is storage first. So the first question is not which processor, it is what the chassis can physically hold — and the answer splits these machines into four groups.

Two M.2 slots, no bay: 8TB. This is the standard general-purpose mini PC. Beelink publishes the SER8’s ceiling as “Dual M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 X4 Max 8TB (4TB*2)”, and the chassis takes no 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drive. The EQ14 is the same shape. For documents, container volumes and a modest photo library this is plenty. For a media library it is not.

Six M.2 slots, no bay: 24TB. The ME mini is a general-purpose mini PC rearranged around storage. It keeps the same N150 processor as the EQ14 but fits six M.2 slots into a 99mm cube. Everything is solid state, so it stays quiet and compact, and you pay for capacity at NVMe prices rather than hard drive prices.

Three NVMe slots with room for a U.2 drive: 23TB to 24TB. Both Minisforum machines have three NVMe slots and no bays. Their published ceilings assume a U.2 drive in one slot: 24TB on the MS-01 (a U.2 drive on the bundled conversion plate plus two 22110 M.2 drives) and 23TB on the MS-A2 (a 15TB U.2 plus two 4TB M.2). With M.2 drives only, both stop at 12TB. Each also has a PCIe slot, the route to an HBA and external drives — capacity you add, not capacity the case holds.

Two 3.5-inch bays plus three M.2 slots: 72TB. The ME Pro is the only machine here that takes a standard hard drive. Beelink rates each bay at 30TB and each of the three M.2 slots at 4TB. That is where the nine-fold gap comes from — not from a better processor, but from a chassis with room for two spinning drives.

The drives have a power bill of their own

Our home server comparison ranks machines on idle draw, because a machine you leave running costs money whether or not it is doing anything. For a NAS, that calculation has a second term: the drives.

Seagate’s current IronWolf datasheet (DS1904.22, April 2024) lists power per model. The 12TB (ST12000VN0008) idles at 5.1W and the 7,200 RPM 8TB (ST8000VN004) at 7.8W. In standby, with the platters parked, they drop to 1.17W and 1.0W.

At the U.S. average residential rate, each watt of continuous draw costs about $1.60 a year. So a pair of 12TB IronWolf drives at idle adds roughly $16 a year on top of whatever the machine draws, and a pair of the 7,200 RPM 8TB drives adds about $25 a year, because that model idles higher than the larger one. Spun down to standby, either pair costs $3 to $4 a year. To run these at your own rate, use the power cost calculator.

That inversion is a property of one model, not a rule about capacity. The same sheet lists a 5,400 RPM 8TB (ST8000VN002), also sold as IronWolf 8TB, at 4.0W — below the 12TB. Check the model number, not just the terabytes. The sheet also stops at 16TB, so it says nothing about the 30TB drives the ME Pro bays are rated for. Our guide to NAS hard drives compares current drives model by model on idle power. And if the machine spends most of its time idle, spinning the drives down matters more than the processor you chose.

All-flash machines like the ME mini sidestep spinning drives entirely: nothing to spin up, nothing to park, no platter noise. We have not put a number on NVMe idle draw because it varies with the drive and the power-management settings enough that one figure would mislead.

How we compared

Capacities, slot counts and lane widths come from the manufacturers’ own product pages. Drive figures come from Seagate’s datasheet. Copy speeds come from one published measurement (The DIY Life, on the ME mini) and from Ethernet line rates.

Idle power for the machines comes from published independent measurements. For the three N150 machines, the measurements that exist were taken under conditions that do not line up with each other. ServeTheHome metered the ME Pro on its N95 version, a different processor from the N150 unit listed here, with no drives fitted. The DIY Life metered the ME mini running TrueNAS with two NVMe drives. igor’sLAB metered the EQ14 idling under Windows. The table shows the EQ14’s figure, with a note that it was taken under Windows: it is the same model and processor listed here, and the one condition that differs is something a note can state. The ME mini figure includes drives the other rows do not, and the ME Pro figure comes from a different processor, so those two get a dash. The SER8 figure comes from a review that does not state the OS; the table note says so too.

Three-year electricity is calculated from the machine’s idle figure alone. It does not include the drives — add the figures above for any machine you plan to fill with spinning disks.

We do not own these machines. Everything here comes from published specifications and from measurements by people who took them.

The machines

Beelink ME Pro — the only one that takes a hard drive

Two 2.5/3.5-inch SATA bays, three M.2 2280 slots, a 5GbE port and a 2.5GbE port, on the same N150 processor as the cheapest machine here. Beelink rates the bays at 30TB each and the M.2 slots at 4TB each, for 72TB total.

That combination is the whole reason this machine is on the page. Everything else here asks you to solve bulk storage outside the box. This one does not. With only two bays, the size of each drive sets the ceiling; our guide to high-capacity NAS drives compares large drives on idle power per terabyte.

The processor is the limit rather than the storage. The N150 is four cores with no hyperthreading, and memory is LPDDR5 soldered to the board — 12GB or 16GB depending on the configuration — so there is no upgrade path. For a file server that is fine. For a file server that also runs a dozen containers and a VM, it will feel tight.

Check the ME Pro on Amazon

Beelink ME mini — 24TB with no moving parts

Six M.2 slots, up to 24TB, dual 2.5GbE, an internal power supply, and a chassis Beelink lists at 99x99x99mm. The same N150 as the ME Pro and the EQ14.

This is the all-flash answer. No platters means no drive noise and no spin-up delay before a file arrives. It also means 24TB of NVMe, which costs considerably more than 24TB of hard drive.

Memory is LPDDR5, soldered, in 12GB or 16GB depending on the configuration. As with the ME Pro, plan around the processor, not around growth.

Check the ME mini on Amazon

Beelink SER8 — the fast one, with the small ceiling

Eight Zen 4 cores, sixteen threads, and the lowest idle figure in the table: ServeTheHome recorded 7–10W for the whole system. Also two M.2 slots and an 8TB ceiling with no bay.

If your storage needs are genuinely under 8TB, this is much the fastest of the four Beelink machines on this page. If they are not, no amount of processor makes up for the missing slots. The 8TB wall is in the chassis, not the silicon.

Check the SER8 on Amazon

Beelink EQ14 — the cheap seat

An N150, two M.2 slots, 8TB, two 2.5GbE ports, and one DDR4 SO-DIMM slot, 16GB maximum. The same storage ceiling as the SER8 for much less money and much less compute.

Its idle cell shows igor’sLAB’s 11.8W, measured under Windows. A box running a NAS OS may idle differently, and we found no measurement under Linux or a NAS OS. Even so, the figure is above the SER8’s 7–10W, so on the published numbers the cheaper machine is not the cheaper one to leave running. The two NAS-specific machines above share its processor, but their cells are dashes, so this article does not rank the three N150 machines against each other on power.

Check the EQ14 on Amazon

Minisforum MS-01 and MS-A2 — 10GbE, and room to grow outside

Three NVMe slots each, no bays, and a PCIe slot. The MS-01 has three M.2 slots, and the first takes a U.2 drive through the bundled conversion plate. The MS-A2 has one U.2/M.2 slot and two M.2. With a U.2 drive fitted, Minisforum rates them at 24TB and 23TB. The MS-01 pairs an i5-12600H with two 10GbE SFP+ ports and two 2.5GbE ports; the MS-A2 does the same networking with sixteen Zen 5 cores.

For a NAS, the case for these is 10GbE and the slot. A PCIe HBA plus an external shelf will take you past anything on this page. It is a more involved build, and the total draw depends on what you attach.

scottstuff.net measured the MS-01 at 13.2W idle on an i5-12600H under Ubuntu with no add-in cards. ServeTheHome measured 25–29W on an i9-13900H unit. Which figure applies depends on your CPU and what goes in that slot.

Check the MS-01 on Amazon

Compared on what they can hold

Capacities and slot counts from manufacturers. The Minisforum ceilings assume a U.2 drive in one slot. The running-cost column covers the machine only — drives are extra. Power cost assumes continuous operation at the U.S. average residential rate, 18.31¢/kWh (EIA, July 2026).
Model	CPU	NVMe slots	Drive bays	Max storage (TB)	Networking	Idle draw (W)	3-yr power cost
Beelink EQ14Beelink	Intel N150 (4C/4T)	2	None	8¹	2x 2.5GbE	11.8²	$57
Beelink SER8 (Ryzen 7 8845HS)Beelink	AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8C/16T)	2	None	8³	1x 2.5GbE	7-10⁴	$34–$48
Beelink ME mini (N150)Beelink	Intel N150 (4C/4T)	6	None	24⁵	2x 2.5GbE	—⁶	—
Beelink ME Pro (N150, 2-bay)Beelink	Intel N150 (4C/4T)	3	2x 2.5/3.5-inch SATA	72⁷	1x 5GbE (Realtek RTL8126) / 1x 2.5GbE (Intel i226-V)	—⁸	—
Minisforum MS-01 (i5-12600H, barebone)Minisforum	Intel Core i5-12600H (12C/16T)	3⁹	None	24¹⁰	2x 10GbE SFP+ / 2x 2.5GbE	13.2¹¹	$64
Minisforum MS-A2 (Ryzen 9 9955HX, barebone)Minisforum	AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX (16C/32T)	3¹²	None	23¹³	2x 10GbE SFP+ / 2x 2.5GbE	25-45¹⁴	$120–$217

Beelink EQ14: two M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 slots and no 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drive bay.
Beelink EQ14: 11.8W idle measured by igor'sLAB under Windows (January 2025), not under Linux or a NAS OS. Beelink does not publish an idle figure.
Beelink SER8: Beelink publishes the ceiling as "Dual M.2 2280 PCIe4.0 X4 Max 8TB (4TB*2)". The chassis takes no 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drive.
Beelink SER8: 7-10W system idle measured by ServeTheHome (3.5-4.7W at the package). The review does not state which OS was used.
Beelink ME mini: six M.2 slots (2230/2242/2280) totalling 24TB. No drive bay, so all capacity is NVMe.
Beelink ME mini: The DIY Life measured about 8W idle under TrueNAS with two NVMe drives fitted. Beelink does not publish a figure, and that measurement includes drives the other rows do not, so no figure is shown.
Beelink ME Pro: two 2.5/3.5-inch SATA bays rated at 30TB each, plus three M.2 2280 slots rated at 4TB each, for 72TB total. The only machine in this comparison that takes a 3.5-inch hard drive.
Beelink ME Pro: the published idle measurement (ServeTheHome) was taken on the N95 version with no drives fitted, not on the N150 unit listed here, so no figure is shown. Note also that with hard drives fitted, the machine figure alone does not describe the system: each drive adds its own idle draw.
Minisforum MS-01: three M.2 slots; the first can take a U.2 drive via the included conversion plate.
Minisforum MS-01: three M.2 2280 slots (PCIe 4.0 x4, 3.0 x4 and 3.0 x2, up to 4TB each, so 12TB with M.2 drives only) and no drive bays. Minisforum publishes a 24TB maximum with one U.2 NVMe SSD (via the bundled U.2 conversion plate) and two 22110 M.2 NVMe SSDs. The PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (x8 electrical) is the route to an HBA and external drives.
Minisforum MS-01 (i5-12600H): 13.2W measured by scottstuff.net under Ubuntu 24.04 with no add-in network card and no power tuning. ServeTheHome measured 25-29W on their i9-13900H review unit.
Minisforum MS-A2: three NVMe slots in total, made up of one U.2/M.2 2280 and two M.2 2280/22110.
Minisforum MS-A2: one U.2/M.2 2280 slot (U.2 up to 15TB, PCIe 4.0 x4) plus two M.2 2280/22110 slots (up to 4TB each, PCIe 3.0 x4 by default, switchable to PCIe 4.0 x4), and no drive bays. Minisforum publishes a 23TB maximum (15TB U.2 plus 2x 4TB M.2); with M.2 drives only it is 12TB. It has a PCIe 4.0 x8 slot (x16 physical, splitting supported).
Minisforum MS-A2: 25W idle measured by ServeTheHome, with one of their configurations idling at 45W.

Read the two storage columns together. Max storage is not a spec you can upgrade your way out of — a machine with two slots does not grow a third, and a chassis without a bay does not grow one either. Everything else on this table is a matter of degree.

Note also that the three N150 machines — EQ14, ME mini, ME Pro — share a processor, yet their ceilings are 8TB, 24TB and 72TB.

Which link limits a file copy

Capacity tells you what fits. The next question on a mini NAS is how fast data gets in and out, and that depends on two links in a row: the PCIe connection of the M.2 slot, and the machine’s fastest network port. A copy over the network runs at the speed of the slower one.

M.2 lane widths and port speeds from manufacturers' specification pages. Empty cells mean the manufacturer does not publish the lane width.
Model	M.2 slots (PCIe gen x lanes)	Fastest port (Gbps)	Drive bays
Beelink EQ14Beelink	—¹	2.5	None
Beelink SER8 (Ryzen 7 8845HS)Beelink	2x 4.0 x4	2.5	None
Beelink ME mini (N150)Beelink	5x 3.0 x1 + 1²	2.5³	None
Beelink ME Pro (N150, 2-bay)Beelink	3.0 x2, 2x 3.0 x1⁴	5	2x 2.5/3.5-inch SATA
Minisforum MS-01 (i5-12600H, barebone)Minisforum	4.0 x4, 3.0 x4, 3.0 x2	10	None
Minisforum MS-A2 (Ryzen 9 9955HX, barebone)Minisforum	4.0 x4, 2x 3.0 x4⁵	10	None

Beelink EQ14: two M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 slots. Beelink does not publish the lane width of either slot.
Beelink ME mini: Beelink lists five storage slots at PCIe 3.0 x1 plus a PCIe 3.0 system-disk slot whose lane width it does not publish. The DIY Life reports one slot running at x2, and measured about 280MB/s from both the x1 and the x2 slots over 2.5GbE, with the network link as the limit.
Beelink ME mini: Beelink also lists a 2.5GbE + 5GbE version. Which version this Amazon listing ships has not been confirmed.
Beelink ME Pro: lane widths of the three M.2 2280 slots from Beelink's specification table. The two 2.5/3.5-inch bays are SATA and are not counted here.
Minisforum MS-A2: the U.2/M.2 slot runs at PCIe 4.0 x4. The two M.2 2280/22110 slots run at PCIe 3.0 x4 by default and can be switched to PCIe 4.0 x4.

The network side is plain arithmetic: divide the port speed by eight for the line rate. That gives about 312MB/s for 2.5GbE, 625MB/s for 5GbE and 1,250MB/s for 10GbE. Real copies land somewhat below those figures. The slot side is the same kind of arithmetic: PCIe 3.0 carries about 985MB/s per lane and PCIe 4.0 about 1,969MB/s, so even a single PCIe 3.0 lane is faster than a 5GbE line, and every M.2 slot on this page is faster than the machine’s fastest port.

ME mini: the network fills first, even from an x1 slot. Five of its six slots are PCIe 3.0 x1, plus a system-disk slot whose width Beelink does not list. But The DIY Life measured about 280MB/s from an x1 slot and from the one slot it found running at x2 — the same figure, over 2.5GbE. If the slot were the limit, the x2 slot would have been faster. Even an x1 slot, at about 985MB/s on paper, is faster than the 625MB/s line rate of the 5GbE version Beelink also lists, so the narrow slots would show mainly on copies that never leave the box. We found no published measurement of either.

ME Pro: the 5GbE port is faster than one hard drive. Seagate’s DS1904.22 rates the 8TB and 12TB IronWolf above at 210MB/s maximum sustained, about a third of the 625MB/s 5GbE line rate. Two drives read in parallel add up to 420MB/s on paper, still short of it. So with hard drives, the drives set the pace. The only storage here that could use the rest of that port is the NVMe in the M.2 slots — one PCIe 3.0 x2 and two x1 — and no published measurement shows how close they get.

MS-01 and MS-A2: the port is still the limit, just a higher one. Each pairs a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot with two 10GbE SFP+ ports. At 1,250MB/s, 10GbE has four times the line rate of 2.5GbE, and about six times what one 210MB/s hard drive delivers. Even the narrowest slot, the MS-01’s PCIe 3.0 x2 at about 1,969MB/s, is faster than that, so an NVMe copy over the network still stops at the port — at 1,250MB/s, as long as your switch and your client also run at 10GbE.

SER8 and EQ14: both stop at 2.5GbE, so anything leaving the box tops out at the same 312MB/s line rate as the ME mini, whatever is in the slots.

So on this page, the slot is never what sets the speed of a network copy. Choose on capacity first, and pay for 5GbE or 10GbE only if the rest of your network can use it.

Which one, for how much data

Rows are how much data you have. Columns are whether that number is going to move.
Use case	If this is all you will ever need	If you expect to outgrow it
Under 8TB: documents, backups, a modest photo library	Beelink SER8 (Ryzen 7 8845HS)	Beelink ME mini (N150)
8-24TB and you want silence	Beelink ME mini (N150)	Beelink ME Pro (N150, 2-bay)
Bulk storage over 24TB	Beelink ME Pro (N150, 2-bay)	Beelink ME Pro (N150, 2-bay)
Storage plus real compute (VMs, containers)	Beelink SER8 (Ryzen 7 8845HS)	Minisforum MS-01 (i5-12600H, barebone)
10GbE, or storage you plan to expand outside the box	Minisforum MS-01 (i5-12600H, barebone)	Minisforum MS-A2 (Ryzen 9 9955HX, barebone)

The columns are about growth rather than budget, because at these capacities the binding question is whether today’s number is the final one. Capacity ceilings cannot be upgraded, so the cost of guessing low is buying twice.

The top row shows why. Under 8TB every machine here qualifies, so capacity stops discriminating and the choice moves elsewhere: the SER8 has by far the most compute of the 8TB-class machines, while the ME mini costs you cores but leaves 16TB of headroom you have not used yet. Buying a NAS chassis you do not need costs you compute; buying the compute you want can cost you the room to grow.

The second row hides a trade the table cannot show: past 24TB inside the case, the only way up is the ME Pro, and the ME Pro gets there with spinning drives. If silence is non-negotiable, the ME mini’s 24TB is your ceiling, not your starting point.

The third row has the same answer twice because the ME Pro is the only machine here that holds more than 24TB inside its own case.

The bottom row is the most open-ended. Both Minisforum machines have a PCIe slot and 10GbE, and both top out at 23TB to 24TB inside the box; past that, the ceiling is whatever you attach. The MS-A2 sits in the right-hand column because its x16 slot supports splitting (bifurcation), so one slot can carry more than one card or drive later. That flexibility is real, and so is the extra work.

Frequently asked questions

Can a mini PC really replace a NAS appliance?

For storage it depends on capacity. A machine with two bays and 72TB of headroom covers what most households will ever need. A machine with two M.2 slots and 8TB does not, no matter how fast it is. Against a purpose-built appliance you give up bay count and the vendor’s software; you gain a general-purpose computer that can run anything.

Is it cheaper to reach 24TB with hard drives or NVMe?

Hard drives, by a wide margin per terabyte, which is why the ME Pro exists. The counterweights are noise, heat and the drive power figures above. All-flash costs more up front and has no drive noise; what you hear is the cooling fan.

Do more drives always mean more power?

More drives, yes. More capacity, not necessarily. On Seagate’s current IronWolf sheet the 7,200 RPM 8TB idles at 7.8W and the 12TB at 5.1W. But the 5,400 RPM 8TB idles at 4.0W, so the model matters more than the size.

What about ECC memory?

None of the manufacturers here publishes ECC support for these machines. If your filesystem choice makes ECC non-negotiable, look at used towers or purpose-built NAS units built on server chipsets instead; none of the six here advertises it.

Why does the MS-01 reach 24TB with only M.2 slots?

Because its first M.2 slot takes a U.2 drive through the conversion plate in the box, and Minisforum’s 24TB figure counts one. The MS-A2’s 23TB works the same way, with a 15TB U.2 drive. Fill either with M.2 drives only and the ceiling is 12TB.

Does the network speed matter for a NAS?

Only once the drives can outrun it. A single IronWolf at 210MB/s (Seagate DS1904.22) does not fill a 2.5GbE link at about 312MB/s. The section on which link limits a file copy goes machine by machine. Which 10G switch fits depends on whether the ports are SFP+ or RJ45; our 10GbE switch guide sorts the switches by that.

One thing a bigger box does not solve

Every machine on this page is one machine. A mirrored pair inside it protects you from a drive failing; it does not protect you from the machine failing, from the flat flooding, or from deleting the wrong directory and not noticing for a month.

The usual shorthand is 3-2-1: three copies of anything you care about, on two kinds of media, one of them somewhere else. The first two are what the hardware above is for. The third is not a hardware decision at all, and it is worth settling before you pick a capacity — because if the offsite copy is going somewhere that charges by the terabyte, the size of your array stops being a one-off purchase and becomes a monthly bill.

For the part you could not replace — documents, photos, configuration backups — a personal cloud plan covers that third copy without mirroring the whole array. pCloud’s personal plans come in fixed sizes of 500GB, 2TB and 10TB, and pCloud sells them as one-time lifetime payments as well as subscriptions, so the offsite copy has a set size instead of a per-terabyte bill. The largest of those is well under the 24TB and 72TB ceilings above, and that is the point: it is for the folder you cannot lose, not a second copy of everything.

See pCloud's plans

If storage is not the main thing

This comparison assumes capacity drives the decision. If you are still working out what the machine is for, our home server comparison ranks the same hardware on broader criteria, and the Proxmox comparison covers what changes when you intend to run a hypervisor.