I tried Linux Mint on my old XPS laptop and the battery life is, unfortunately, a nonstarter for me. It lasts about 2 hours running Linux versus up to six on Windows (thanks to battery settings). It also doesn’t hibernate properly. I wish it had worked for me

Try Kagi small web: https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

I’ve been using a Quadro P600 for encoding without issue. It seems to be able to handle everything I throw at it, though I never do any crazy multi-streams. I got it for about $80.

Edit: I was too excited to reply. I have no idea if it’s good for driving a normal desktop VM. Sorry if this isn’t helpful!

It was my understanding that Synology products came with the rest of the computer parts as well. Is that true?

What cooling mods did you do?

This and the N3 look fantastic. I was kind of hoping I could keep my mATX mobo and ATX PSU though, and both are ITX