I did something similar last year. Market for mITX NAS boards is pretty bad. I went for ASRock N100DC-ITX – it has 2x SATA ports, but there's also PCIe 3 x4.
The main benefits of this board were:
* it's not from an obscure Chinese company
* integrated power supply – just plug in DC jack, and you're good to go
* passive cooling
Really hope they make an Intel N150 version.
Question,whats the problem with a motherboard being from an obscure Chinese company?Is it because its harder to find replacements or some other reason. i ask because i recently built my own homelab like 4 months ago and source all my parts from Aliexpress which as way cheaper than any name brand on amazon an they're all relatively obscure. My homelab is running perfectly though so why the apprehension?
I am more worried about them in the long-term. Reviews are usually not as detailed as I'd like them to be (shout out to ServeTheHome – they're doing a great job in terms of that), or they're nearly impossible to find.
For me personally, there are two things I am concerned about:
1. Issues that can only be resolved via BIOS update. Almost all obscure Chinese SBCs won't get any updates, so you're stuck with whatever issues you encounter.
2. In case of hardware failures, there's a 0% chance for RMA. You are not getting a replacement or your money back.