@Dravere thx for the reply. Sadly it couldn't be more true.
The reason why I chose this setup (for now, certainly won't stick around as I hate it) is because I have a Plesk installed to manage the standard websites on the server. Plesk comes with Apache and (at least in my plesk version) can put an nginx in front as a reverse proxy to all its features. Sadly the version that it brings with itself is an nginx < 1.3.13 as would be required for nodebb to be usable as a reverse proxy.
I have tried manually updating nginx but, as Plesk brings its own custom repo to pull its own images from, this is non-trivial and has rendered my setup unusable until it was reset. So currently I am stuck with Apache until I can get that figured out
The only solution I could think of right now is to put a small machine in place that works as a sole loadbalancer and reverse proxy to which all domains point in the first place. That one can then distribute requests to the real server. That would enable me to run an additional nginx (not the plesk one) on a "non-80" port, allowing me to use any nginx. But as this is a sideproject that doesnt generate any income yet, putting a machine in front is not a viable option
The Server is running on full SSDs. I would need to ask them which ones specifically are being used if it's of relevance. I figured "as long as it's SSD, it should be fine" up until now. Let me know if I should inquire and I will.
Thanks again for your time. Cheers!