ARM vs. x64

I'm in need of some expert advice on a home NAS solution, in short I would appreciate community input over whether ARM or an x86/64 build best suits my use case.

Here’s a list of currently known plugin/service requirements:

• Subsonic (multiple concurrent clients, audio only but with some FLAC transcoding)
• MiniDLNA (one or two concurrent clients)
• BTSync (might favour non-ARM CPUs?)
• iSCSI (for experimentation)

I have 2 x 2TB external USB 3.0 HDD’s which should be reused, ideally without liberation from their OEM housing, even if that might help with heat and thus lifespan.

Two hardware options currently under consideration:

• Qotom i5-5250U | 8GB RAM | 128GB SSD | £265
• ODROID XU4 | 2GB RAM | 120GB SSD + 16GB eMMC (OS) | Cloudshell Case | £230

I’ve good experience with Qotom in an earlier pfSense router build, so this is a platform I would happily revisit if suitable for the job. However ODROID and ARM would be new territory, frustratingly it seems impossible to get a good feel for comparative performance against them and more traditional Intel architectures …multiple cores but with more limited instruction sets, and perhaps with ODROID some thermal issues.

Thanks everyone, please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks @ryecoaaron - Really appreciate your input, I had suspected the i5 might perform better but needed confirmation of that fact. On cost there’s little difference between them and in terms of reusability the Qotom seems infinitely more flexible, especially when factoring in all those Intel NICs (product page).