My Synology NAS for example has 8 GB RAM and a J4150 processor. Runs about 15 containers, Wireguard and on top DSM (which is Synology's OS). Usually idles around 1-3%.
Software makes all the difference - DSM has been by far the biggest benefit and surprise to me and I would be deprived of time with anything else. I'm running TrueNas as a second backup server but it no way compares to DSM. Sometimes I don't want to trawl through logs and trial and error just to get a basic CRON setup to backup a file off another server, there's countless examples where DSM has just worked.
I really think Synology is missing a trick here, they clearly have software that is miles ahead of everything else and customizable should you need to. They should be more like Microsoft of the NAS world, making DSM run on non Synology platforms, or at least making it easier to do yourself. It's a great OS and it sells itself and can easily be a way to up sell stuff like Active backup for business.