A quiet 2-bay NAS under the desk, talking Plex to the living-room TV and taking Time Machine or local backups from laptops, is the finished result this kit targets. The shopping list stays mutually compatible: a compact Synology chassis, a matched pair of NAS drives, a pure sine UPS for spin-up and short outages, and Cat 6 so the box never depends on Wi-Fi.

This method is the BOM-plus-steps sibling to the ranked upgrade path at /apartment-quiet-nas-plex-upgrade-path. Use that hub when you already own bits and need order-of-spend advice. Use this page when you want one under-desk kit for Plex media plus backups. Who it is for: apartments and small homes that need shared storage without a loud rack or a USB DAS that only one PC can see. For when a USB DAS is enough instead of a NAS, see /best-das-raid-enclosures. If a Mac mini Plex host fits better than a dedicated NAS, the compact sibling kit is /mac-mini-m4-plex-ups-kit.

What You Need

This is one compatible under-desk kit, not a mix-and-match catalog. Every core item is a live Amazon US listing already used on the site. Buy two of the drive SKU below; the products list includes it once.

Quiet 2-bay chassis

Diskless DS224+ keeps DSM, Plex packages, and Mac-friendly shares in a compact chassis that stays quieter than most 4-bay towers. Dual Gigabit Ethernet is enough for home Plex and backups; this method does not require 2.5GbE for the target workload.

Matched NAS drives (buy two)

One CMR NAS drive listing covers the kit. Order a matched pair so DSM can build RAID 1 or SHR with one-disk redundancy. Desktop HDDs and SMR "NAS" SKUs are the wrong fill for an always-on mirror.

Pure sine UPS

Spin-up current and brief brownouts are why this method standardizes on the CP850PFCLCD instead of a simulated-sine cube. Expect minutes for a clean DSM halt, not hours of movie night on battery. USB plus the vendor utility (or Synology UPS support) is how graceful shutdown gets armed.

Ethernet

Wire the NAS to the router or a nearby switch. Clients can stay on Wi-Fi; the server uplink should not. A Cat 6 five-pack covers the under-desk run plus spares. For Cat6 vs Cat6a shopping detail, see /best-ethernet-cables-cat6-cat6a.

What It Costs

About $660 as of writing for the core kit (DS224+ chassis + two WD Red Plus 4TB drives + CyberPower CP850PFCLCD + Cat 6 five-pack). Street prices move; treat that as a ballpark, not a locked cart total. Skip a separate unmanaged switch unless the desk already lacks a free LAN port.

Step-by-Step Setup

  1. Unbox the Synology DS224+ and place it under the desk on a hard surface with a few inches of clear intake/exhaust. Do not park it on thick carpet that muffles the bottom vents.
  2. Install a matched pair of WD Red Plus 4TB drives per the tray manual. Power on, find the unit with Synology Assistant or find.synology.com, and finish the DSM install wizard.
  3. In Storage Manager, create a RAID 1 or SHR volume with the two drives so one disk failure still keeps the pool online. This method treats mirroring as the default for Plex libraries plus backups on a 2-bay.
  4. Plug the NAS power brick into a battery-backed outlet on the CyberPower CP850PFCLCD. Connect the UPS USB cable to the NAS (or a management PC that can signal it) and enable UPS support in DSM Control Panel so the box can shut down cleanly on low battery.
  5. Connect Cat 6 from the NAS to the router or switch. Prefer a DHCP reservation so Plex clients and backup targets do not chase a moving address.
  6. Create a media shared folder and a backup shared folder with separate permissions. Install Plex Media Server from Package Center (or Docker if that is the house standard), point libraries at the media share, then enable Time Machine (or SMB/rsync backups) against the backup share. Confirm a local Plex stream and one backup job before calling the kit done.
  7. Smoke-test power: start a stream or a backup, pull wall power from the UPS input for a few seconds, confirm the NAS stays up, restore power, and separately confirm DSM sees the UPS before relying on overnight duty.

Mistakes to Avoid

Bottom line

For a quiet under-desk NAS aimed at Plex plus Time Machine or local backups, the DS224+, a matched pair of WD Red Plus 4TB drives, the CP850PFCLCD pure sine UPS, and Cat 6 is the complete kit. Use /apartment-quiet-nas-plex-upgrade-path when you are sequencing upgrades instead of buying the full BOM at once.