You really don't need an AIO with a 5600X. Just grab a reasonably sized tower cooler and call it a day. There's less to fail, and less risk of water damage if it fails catastrophically. I've found thermalright to be exceptionally good for how well priced they are. Not as quiet as Noctua, but damn near the same cooling performance.

Another thing to consider is that a 5600X doesn't have built in graphics. I think you'd need to jump up to AM5/7600X for that.

Thanks! Wasn't sure about the cooling, so that's good to know. And yeah, I didn't know if I actually wanted graphics or not. Whether integrated or a card. Actually, now that I'm typing this out, I do need something for Jellyfin transcoding at least.

There is a part of me that wanted to run my own small llm to go with home assistant, but I don't think that's really necessary.

You most likely want graphics for initial install and troubleshooting (like when your NAS loses connection for example). I would recommend a 5600G instead. Nice little APU that works great with Jellyfin transcoding. It's what I have in my own DIY NAS.

Everyone else seems to be recommending going with Intel because it's apparently the gold standard in transcoding. But you don't have any problems with yours and being an amd?

I have not had any problems on my end. I do know that for encoding, there are some quality issues with AMF when comparing it against Nvidia and Intel at equivalent bitrates that was only resolved with the latest 90xx series, but for Jellyfin purposes it works perfectly fine.

I prefer AMD over Intel because for 3D acceleration, AMD wins hands down. I also like AMD CPUs over the absolute power-hungry heaters that are Intel CPUs because it allows me to use lower profile coolers and cheaper PSUs.