I appreciate Brian's posts and they've helped me learn to build my own NAS systems, but there's a scammy angle to his articles.
All of the merchant links are affiliate links, which he (illegally) does not disclose.[0] He's effectively acting as a sales rep for these brands, but he's presenting himself as an unbiased consumer.
The affiliate relationship incentivizes Brian to recommend more expensive equipment and push readers to the vendors that pay Brian the most rather than the vendors that are the best for consumers.
I recognize that it's an unfortunate truth that affiliate links are one of the few ways to make money writing non-AI content about computer hardware. I'm fine with affiliate links, but the author should disclose the conflict of interest at the top of the post before getting into the recommendations.
In the interest of full disclosure, I also write about NAS builds on my blog, so I somewhat compete with Brian's posts, but I stopped using affiliate links five years ago because of the conflict of interest.
If you're not familiar with how affiliate relationships create dangerous incentives, I recommend reading the article, "The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare."[1] tl;dr - All the top mattress-in-a-box reviewers were just giving favorable reviews to the company that paid the best affiliate rates, even going so far as to retroactively update old reviews if the payout rates changed.
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
Just skimming over the article, I feel like the blue link coloured word "Topton" has been seared into my retinas.
That aside, as someone who has been building computers for nearly 3 decades, and NAS's for a decade plus, I dislike almost everything about this build.
Spending a lot on the PSU is a good move, but the motherboard is a bad choice for the price when a much more capable socketed board + CPU could be had for around the same price, and the use of no-name SSD and NVMe is an absolute no-no for me.
The impression I got from so many linked mentions of Topton this and Topton that, is that this was mostly done to push that particular brand for a sponsorship or affiliate program.
Youtube has already long gone the way of being untrustworthy for advice on this sort of thing due to sponsorships and affiliates etc, perhaps I should blog my advice and experience that no body pays to influence, in a more generic sense for those who actually need guidance on where to focus when building hardware like PCs and NASs.
I'm not going to suggest that hardware I chose for my "NAS" as it would be universlly bad advice for most people, but there is some generic knowledge to be shared here.
Sometimes it feels just like telling my kids to "learn from my mistakes", does anyone actually want to hear it?