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Four modern cores can run a bounded private RAG stack, especially with remote inference; heavy OCR, ingestion, embeddings, or local LLMs change the threshold.

A compact NAS has no fixed user limit. Size it from simultaneous workload, network budget, metadata latency, background jobs, and measured peak response.

Eight gigabytes is a workable baseline for a dedicated family photo server; 16GB is safer when several users, AI jobs, video, and other apps overlap.

Integrated graphics is enough for many mixed-client media servers when most playback is direct and the iGPU supports the transcodes the remaining clients need.

Camera count alone cannot size an NVR. Recording, decoding, object detection, bitrate, FPS, retention, and simultaneous activity set the real limit.

One NVMe slot can be enough when app state is backed up and bulk data lives elsewhere; two slots mainly buy redundancy, separation, or easier recovery.

A 512GB NVMe pool is a useful baseline for many home app stacks, but databases, thumbnails, logs, VMs, and churn can justify 1TB or more.

Sixty-four gigabytes is overkill for a light lab, but justified when several VMs or memory-heavy services must stay active together without swapping.