Could really use some advice (DS1512+ or DS412+). Home user

[AlienFanatic]

First time post here on the Synology forums, and I'm really in a pickle.

I've been a long-time Windows Home Server user and, unfortunately, I borked my old ACER box pretty good. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to resuscitate the unit without a great deal of hassle, so I'm looking at a Synology solution. I'm waffling between buying the DS412+ and the DS1512+, mainly due to the fact that both have a more robust CPU (the d2700) that should give me significantly better performance than I was getting out of my old Atom 230 processor.

I am NOT planning on using it for any business purposes, but rather for entertainment and possibly a few tasks outside the home. The primary purposes are:
* Serving up media from SD to 1080p. Most of this will be sent via wireless 5ghz using a Cisco E4200 gigabit wifi router that can (but never does) go up to 450mbps.
* Home PC data backups (pictures, documents, videos) and not necessarily system images.
* Running a print server so that my family can share a single printer across several different OS'es.
* Redundancy. My biggest reason for getting a multiple-drive system is to ensure that if a drive fails I won't lose the thousands (literally) of hours of transcoding I've done to build my video library. Right now I've got about 3.5TB of video files, but I expect to see that rise to 5-6 over the next year.
* Remote access to music and pictures. I currently use Amazon's Cloud services for my wife's Android phone, but I'd like to provide a similar access for my son's iPhone without subscribing to Apple's iCloud.
* Possibly allowing my son to run a Minecraft server for giggles.
* Possibly running a ventrilo server if I ever decide to play online games again. Doubtful, but I like to keep the possibility open.

My goal is to have a product that serves me a minimum of 4-5 years with solid performance.

The main differences I see between the two are that the 1512+ has the extra bay and the expandable memory, but I'm just not sure if I need those at this point. The downside is that I want to buy from Amazon and they're 2-4 weeks backordered on the 412+ (likely due to the Blue Light issue), while I can get the 1512+ right now. (I'm not a patient man and I'm really nervous that I currently have zero redundancy for files I have stored on my local drives right now.)

For someone like me, is the 1512+ worth it, or is it vast overkill? And why would I need the extra RAM? I know why it's useful with desktops, but would the additional 2GB of ram allow me to run more services concurrently--not that I serve large swaths of people--or would that just be wasted on someone that isn't hosting dozens of users?

Thanks for any feedback you can give me. And feel free to suggest a DIFFERENT 4-5bay NAS if you think it's going to be just as good in the long run. However, taht d2700 processor is only available in these new units, so I'm loath to go with anything less. Thanks again!

[myCloud]

You don't really need the extra RAM. With all the services I run, my memory usage is typically between 350 and 400 MB. But for $12.99 for two more GB, I put it in anyway.

I was considering a 412 with RAID 5 and might've gone that way with enterprise grade drives (all we use at work), but they're 2.5 times as expensive and at the time were unobtainable. I wound up using the 3 TB Seagate Barracuda desktop grade drives, so I chose the 1512 to have the same 8 TB capacity in a RAID 6 (two redundant drives). So far I'm happy with my decision. The pain of spending the extra is soon forgotten. The regret of not buying the extra often isn't.

[markvk]

Hi Alien, maybe you could help me out here!

I'm just sorting out my HT and was going to buy a 1512, but a supplier suggested id be better off with a server, try as i might i just don't seem to be able to get a reason out of anybody why this might be.
Do you miss your server? did it do anything that you synology wouldn't do?

i wanted to build a media pc that could record tv back up my movies and music into one place (1512) catalogue it all in media centre and stream it to my output devices, will the sinology do this adequately

i also am a semi pro photog and want to store edit and print my photos via this set up, if i build a powerful enough media pc it should be able to do both shouldn't it?

WHY DO I NEED A SERVER????