Goodbye Synology, Hello NUC: a smarter move for Home Assistant users

There’s a moment when every smart home setup hits its limits. For me, it happened gradually—first with memory warnings, then with slow dashboards, and finally with a USB Zigbee stick that refused to connect. My Home Assistant instance, running inside Synology’s Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), had become more of a liability than a solution.

The culprit? A combination of tight memory constraints and Synology’s security model, which blocks direct USB passthrough—critical for many smart home devices.

That’s when I knew it was time to move Home Assistant to dedicated hardware. Enter the Intel NUC which I found fully spec’d and cheap on eBay.

I chose the NUC for its balance of performance, power efficiency, and flexibility. It’s small enough (smaller than an a Mac Mini) to tuck away in a cabinet, yet powerful enough to run my entire automation ecosystem without breaking a sweat.

Home Assistant Migration Process from Synology VMM to Intel NUC

The migration process was relatively painless:

1. Go buy a wired keyboard and mouse as I didnt have one
2. Login to Home Assistant make a fresh backup and download it to another computer / laptop
3. Flash Ubuntu and then Home Assistant OS (HAOS) onto the NUC using a USB stick (following Home Assistant’s Intel NUC guide)
4. Shutdown the Home Assistant VM on Synology
5. Boot up the Intel NUC and then go login to the new Home Assistant instance from your laptop.
6. Upload your most recent backup and let the system restore itself.
7. Finally do some checks - did all the devices and integrations load?

In under 90 minutes, everything was up and running: automations, dashboards, integrations, and all.

So, what’s better now?

• Full USB support: My Zigbee coordinator now connects instantly and reliably.
• Noticeable speed improvements: The UI feels snappier, and automations trigger faster.
• Stability: No more fighting for memory with other NAS services or worrying about VM crashes.

Running Home Assistant on a dedicated Intel NUC has been a leap forward in performance and reliability. It feels like a proper appliance now—always on, always responsive, and no longer limited by the general-purpose constraints of my NAS.

Next Steps and Final Thoughts

• Docker: So that I can run other apps side by side, I will most likely reformat the NUC and install Ubuntu and run HA via Docker
• AI Tools: I wanted to run Ollama locally, but this just uses up the CPU, hence Docker
• Frigate & Coral USB: It was painless and quick to get Frigate and Coral working once I had made this move

If you’re running Home Assistant on Synology and experiencing performance hiccups or USB issues, migrating to an Intel NUC might be the best smart home upgrade you make this year.

It’s not just a fix—it’s a long-term investment in stability and speed.

Meet the author

Damien Saunders
An experienced management consultant and business leader interested in digital transformation, product centred design and scaled agile. If I'm not writing about living with UCTD (an autoimmune disease), I'm probably listening to music, reading a book or learning more about wine.
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