DS916+ to an UnRaid of your choosing...

Hello all,

I am now moving house and so my previous thread of building an UnRaid NAS will have to be put on hold. I do however not want to abandon plans of migrating to UnRaid all together at this time and so I am going to sell my Synology DS916+ (without the 2x 12tb HDD's) and build a stepping stone server in the meantime. I've had the DS916+ for a couple of years now and it has worked well for me as an intro NAS, however I've outgrown it now and I'm itching to move over to UnRaid to be able to tinker further and build on my knowledgebase. 

For info, the DS916+ has the following specs;
*INTEL Pentium N3710 1.6GHz (4 cpu cores)
*8gb RAM
*4x available HDD bays

I use my NAS mainly as a media server, supplying 2-4 HD streams and I run multiple dockers (Sonarr, Radarr, SabnzbdVPN, NextCloud, Bitwarden). I want at least the same performance from my new build, but more the better, along with the ability to run two Windows VM's with decent gaming horsepower, nothing crazy, but a smooth(ish) experience for games such as C&C & Star Citizen (at a push?) Most importantly, I would like the ability to add several more HDD's in the future, however the case does not need to be a looker, it will be out of sight. 

I would very much appreciate suggestions for this build, keeping cost to a minimum, whilst achieving the above. Lastly, I'm in the UK, if that makes any difference. 

Many thanks. 

***Edit***

A quick look on cpubenchmark.net shows the i5-10400 as high up on the "best value" list;

Edited June 28, 20206 yr by Mike12421
Update