I startled my dogs laughing at that last bit.
Last time I dealt with Matlab much was like fifteen years ago when I was helping some people using it for quick interpretation of data. We just kept finding bugs that caused calculation errors (which they fixed pretty quickly TBF) and it was so much slower than any other general programming language we tried. It could be way better now, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t had call to use it since… A circuit simulation class?
I bought a protectli awhile back. Mines 4 port 2.5 gbps nics, and it runs opnsense out the box.
You should take a look at their sfp+ model, if I were in your shoes that’s what I’d be looking at. It’s all in one, works nicely, is incredibly customizable, and is lower power usage than basically anything you’ll build yourself.
I use that for my router/firewall, then I use an off lease dell thin client to run my home assistant server, and a standard off the shelf buffalo nas. If you’re into immich, I’ll recommend jellyfin over Plex. I used it for years but they started collecting more data, sticking their own junk in etc. Jellyfin is open source and works great.