I tried turning my NAS into a PC – here’s how it went

If you’ve got a spare PC gathering dust, there are plenty of ways to put it to good use. Thanks to the myriad NAS operating systems out there, it’s easy to convert your old desktop into a robust storage server.

But how about flipping things the other way around? Considering most NAS enclosures have the same components as a PC, it should be theoretically possible to use your Network-Attached Storage device as a run-of-the-mill PC. So, I did what any other tech fanatic would in my shoes and decided to set up some desktop operating systems on my pre-built NAS enclosures. Long story short, assuming your NAS has decent specs, you can turn it into an everyday PC – just don’t expect it to play the newest triple-A titles at 4K60FPS.

The NAS I used as the lab rat test subject

It’s a bit more powerful than the average NAS, but it should suffice for the project

If you’ve been following my reviews here on XDA, you might be aware that I have a couple of NAS units in my household. Since this article is exclusively about pre-built enclosures that run on proprietary operating systems, I couldn’t use the Aiffro K100, as it comes with Windows 11 pre-installed.

Eventually, I honed in on the TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus, and there are a few reasons for that. Processor-wise, it packs an Intel i3-N305, which may be a moderately capable x86 CPU for typical NAS workloads, but still lags behind most desktop-grade processors. Plus, it has a low power draw of 15W, making it the perfect test subject for my experiment.

OS-wise, I decided to go with a GUI-based Linux distro, with Ubuntu being my first choice as it’s the most beginner-friendly distribution. Given the F8 SSD Plus supports PCIe Gen 3 SSDs, I slapped an old Crucial drive inside one of the eight M.2 SSD slots. Thereafter, I flashed the ISO file for Ubuntu on my trusty 128GB flash drive using Rufus and turned on the NAS with the bootable plugged in.

Installing Ubuntu was quite simple

Though I had to disable a certain setting in the BIOS

As always, the first step after creating a bootable drive is heading to the BIOS. Mashing the F10+Del combo like a lunatic during the bootup sequence worked well, as expected. Typically, most BIOS launch the OS from the flash drive once you modify their boot order, though TerraMaster does things a little differently.

That’s because the default BIOS has the TOS Boot First option enabled, which can override the boot order to launch TOS instead of any other operating system. Turning it off is fairly simple, as you can set it to Disabled to boot into your custom operating system. However, the inconveniences were far from over, as Ubuntu 24.10 displayed this weird bug every time I attempted to install the OS. After a couple of failed attempts at troubleshooting, I switched to the LTS version of Ubuntu 24.04 and the F8 SSD Plus quickly booted into the OS.

Given the low overhead of Linux distros, the Intel i3-N305 and 16GB of memory delivered a fairly responsive experience. There were zero slowdowns in Firefox even after opening 20+ tabs, and YouTube playback was just as great even at 1440p. Meanwhile, most of the essential apps, including LibreOffice, Inkscape, Obsidian, VSCode, and Emacs worked well. Even Docker containers run without any performance issues, though I suppose I shouldn’t sound so surprised considering it’s possible to deploy tons of containers even on a Raspberry Pi. I was tempted to end my tests at this stage, but I wanted to see how far I could go with this experiment. So, it was time to install Windows 11 on my makeshift NAS-PC.

Windows 11 ran surprisingly well

And I even managed to get some light gaming done

Just to spare myself the trouble of going through the extensive Windows 11 setup process, I used the Windows Customization options of Rufus to remove the tedious steps from the installation wizard. After slotting in another SSD and modifying the boot order yet again, I arrived at the Windows 11 setup screen, though my first couple of attempts at installing Microsoft’s flagship OS ended in vain.

For some inexplicable reason, slotting multiple drives in the F8 SSD Plus caused issues when installing an OS. So, the fix was as simple as unmounting the Ubuntu drive while leaving a single SSD inside NAS. The procedure succeeded handily, and after a couple of minutes, I arrived at the all-familiar Windows 11 screen.

Unfortunately, the Ethernet and Wi-Fi drivers were broken, and I had to whip out my trusty USB-to-Ethernet adapter to access the Internet. The next step was to install the Intel iGPU drivers and escape from the miserable 800×600 resolution. As luck would have it, the display adapter drivers on Windows Update were bugged, and after spending almost an hour troubleshooting the issue, I switched to the Intel diagnostics tool. Before long, it began installing the official Intel graphics drivers, and I was able to work at the native resolution of my Uperfect UGame K118 monitor.

Overall, the experience wasn’t all that different from Ubuntu, though subjecting the NAS to multiple browser tabs eventually slowed it down. I also tried to run a handful of games, because, why not? Surprisingly, the Intel UHD Graphics included with the i3-N305 can tackle 2D titles and very light 3D gaming at 720p. I also tried running Blender, and unless I worked on high-polygon models or messed around with the modifiers and particle effects, the tool worked decently on the makeshift. With most of the tests succeeding, it was time to assess the feasibility of this project.

Should you turn your old NAS into a PC?

In most cases, probably not. With the average pre-built NAS possessing an underpowered processor, it doesn’t make sense to get a storage server just to convert it into a PC. However, if you’re not satisfied with the proprietary OS of your rig, it might be a good idea to explore other operating systems – and I don’t just mean NAS-centric distros.

A properly configured Debian variant can turn your NAS into a multi-purpose device without consuming too many resources. So long as the processor is as capable as the i3-N305 (or even an Intel N100), you can technically use it as a Windows 11 machine, though I’d still recommend going with a lightweight Linux distro instead. Finally, if you’ve recently upgraded your NAS for something with faster Ethernet and more drive bays, you can prevent it from gathering dust by converting it into an experimentation server with Proxmox, XCP-ng, SmartOS, or any of the other home lab operating systems.

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