This is pretty much where I'm at.
The Synology gives a good balance of shit just works and the ability to tinker.
The built in software is rock solid and everything just works. Then with docker and vm support, you can tinker and self host to your hearts desire.
With that said, it does come at a price.
The frustrating thing about the steam link is how locked down it is. I'm not mad that they discontinued it or that they made the software available for raspberry pi. That last part is actually really cool.
The thing is, you can't do shit with it other than steam link. I want to hack this thing man! I want to install other shit on it and add it to the lab lol.
Before I got my Nuc, my home server was an Alienware Steam Machine lol
For me it's the hardware transcoding capabilities of the Nuc is what makes it stand out.
Quick sync is so good and well supported that Intel is a no brainier for me.
Mainly my current setup is pretty decent and a meaningful upgrade would be a few hundred dollars even at current amazing prices.
With that said, I have taken advantage of the amazing prices in my homelab.
32 gb ram and 1tb Samsung 980 Evo gen 4 nvme for $120 is insanity compared to like 2 years ago.
It's wild how cheap SSDs and ram are right now. It's so tempting to upgrade both on my main PC.
I've heard that steaming video is against ToS for tunnels, but I've not been able to confirm this.
But man, cloudflare tunnels are so cool. They are game changer if your behind a cgNAT or can't port forward for some reason. And they are even useful if you can port forward. Cloudflare cacheing and ddos protection, and your IP is not exposed.
Beautiful.