I’ve been super happy with my 8th gen Intel NUC i5. I put it in an Akasa Turing fanless case, installed an NVMe for host OS, and an 8TB SSD for data. It’s low power and so quiet that I couldn’t imagine ever using fans again.
I also have a USB 3.2 drive dock for external backup HDDs, but I only turn it on when actively doing a monthly backup.
8TB holds more media than I’ll ever need, but I do trim movies and shows regularly. For some, 8TB won’t be anywhere near enough, and SSDs exceeding this are ridiculously expensive.