Synology NAS vs mini PC for occasional transcoding? What do I need to look for?

[TheDreadPirate]

In your signature it lists an i3 - how is this for transcoding?
And is your storage directly hooked up to your server or also via a NAS?

I'm assuming this was directed at me and not elephant.

I used to use my i3-12100 for transcoding.  Added an Arc A380 so I could encode my library going forward with AV1.  And when 10.9 is released I can transcode to AV1.

When I was using the 12100 for transcoding it would handle like twelve 1080P SDR streams.  I was very impressed.  It could barely handle 2 HDR to SDR tone mapped streams, which is part of the reason why I added the A380.

My storage is directly attached to this server.  It's a custom built mATX PC.