If you don’t have one already, it could be turned into a linux-based input device for your TV.

they may be using really slow hard drives or an SSD without DRAM.

or maybe a shitty network switch?

maybe the bandwidth is used up by a torrent box?

there’s a lot of possible causes.

if the cpu performance and memory capacity is still enough, i’d recommend upgrading the storage. SSDs are reportedly getting more expensive, but it isn’t that bad yet.

running an external drive through some kind of USB 3.X connection would also be possible, although at reduced speed. (won’t matter with a HDD, obviously)

not OC, but i ended up redownloading whatever was x265 and replacing it with 264 or anything else.

also the 1060 in my NAS can do NVENC encoding. that helped a lot with compatibility.

didn’t have money for an external hard drive or anything like that growing up, so a lot of stuff got lost over the years. but when i upgrade my NAS’ hard drive i will buy an enclosure and scrape all of the important stuff together. like recovery codes for my 3ds collection, old photos of my late cat. that kinda stuff. then i’ll see how frequently i’m gonna update the data.