Synology’s 2025 refresh brought the DS225+ and DS425+ with the familiar Intel Celeron J4125, but it also quietly removed the kernel graphics driver support that Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby use for hardware transcoding of H.264 and HEVC. This guide explains what changed, why it matters for real-world streaming, and how you can restore GPU-accelerated transcoding on these models using an unofficial SSH method shared by the community. If you rely on your NAS to reshape 4K or high bitrate files for phones, tablets, hotel TVs, or limited connections, this walkthrough will help you get that efficiency back.
I’m looking for a NAS and Synology was on the top of my list. But their new models only support Synology HDDs. That is already a huge red flag. And now that. Feels like Synology really doesn’t care about their customers…
I might go with a self build solution.
Synology publishes a list of certified non-synology drives, and warns you that drives outside the list are not recommended, but, at least in non enterprise models, allows them to be used. I believe there is some rather easy way (some config file change or the like) to circumvent the limitation, but yeah, dick move.
Go with a self build + unraid. NGL a Ryzen 5500 build is so cheap and much more powerful than these overpriced boxes, and unraid is pretty good. If I didn’t buy a ds415+ a couple of years ago I’d swap over.