Tell me you have a bad idea without saying you have a bad idea

Don’t use USB for storage

If you can’t stuff it in the case, you should reconsider your setup

And, TBH, no one hosting media has enough storage in the long run… consider a NAS

Just stick with air

I’ve used both Noctua U14s and Be Quiet Dark Rock coolers with no issues

I’ve had more issues with making sure there’s enough airflow over the VRMs than cooling the actual processors

I don’t know that it’ll do much for security, but it might make administration easier to have them on a separate physical network

If its primary purpose is a NAS, you should be using a NAS OS

I strongly question why UnRAID lets you do something that a purpose-built NAS OS, like TrueNAS Core, does not

I prefer Micron/Crucial, but DDR4 ECC UDIMMs are getting harder to find as the world has moved on to DDR5

For TrueNAS, more RAM is always better

You need more RAM

If you can’t put in enough RAM to get the performance you want, then you need faster drives

I wouldn’t suggest paying for the upgrade solely for the backup cell Internet

And, to be honest, if you looked into it, you’d probably find it to be cheaper to roll your own entire system rather than dump money into a closed ecosystem

OP clearly isn’t looking hard… I have a line with 3GB a month of 5G data (plus unlimited throttled after that) for $15

Best solution: Build/buy a NAS and connect over your network

Second best choice: Stop using a NUC and get a computer with the necessary space for the hardware that you want to use