Synology and QNAP etc are going to have to (finally) sort themselves out with all these new higher specced AND lower priced NAS devices coming on the market. About time too.
Honestly, they should ditch their codebase and get the help of UnRAID or TrueNAS, and then maybe design their own UI like what Eshtek has done with HexOS (minus the internet connection required part).
Yea Synology in particular has extremely underpowered hardware even with a very well polished OS, It doesn't make up for the inability to run multiple containers or VMs and get decent performance. 1GB NICs are so 2000 late and 10GB upgrades for another $120 is ridiculous and overkill for a low powered NAS, especially when 2.5Gb will do for a home NAS and everything these days comes with built in 2.5GB NICs or even faster WiFi. I have both Synology DS918+ and a Terramaster F-424 Pro running Unraid. Guess which one is running my containers like jellyfin and my retro VM and which one is a target for my rsync backups of the other for extra redundancy at my parent's home?
I just ordered the Terramaster F424 Pro. The N305 chip and 2 nvme slots are the perfect fit for me. A N100 would also be fine, but i wanted a bit more horsepower while still efficient.
@@danielgmur6486 IMO, the N305 is a bit of a waste, since while it has double the cores of the N95 and N100, it has the same 9 lanes of PCIe 3.0, which comes out to a lot of raw cores and compute but not enough connectivity and I/O for that compute to process.
I agree that their hardware is overpriced. I use both TrueNAS and Synology. I use Synology for LinuxISOs because I appreciate how the Synology Hybrid RAID works so well with varied drive sizes while also allowing me to expand by purchasing just 1 or 2 drives at a time. I wish this flexibility was possible using open software such as TrueNAS, OMV, or other alternatives. I did use Unraid for many years. It’s super flexible but I found the array to be lacking in performance as compared to Synology.
Yea hot-swap Its cool... but I wouldnt pay much extra for it. If you cant find 30 minutes of planned downtime to swap a drive sometime within a week or two of failure you probably need a MUCH more professional system than this one
Lets say you have a pile of 4,6 and 8 tb disks and you want to ingest them into your new 60Tb UnRaid server. You populate 3 20Tb disks and use the 4th to ingest data to those disks using Krusader or rsync. Once each disk is ingested you'll need to shut down, and swp to the next disk. And the same when you add the 4th 20Tb as the parity. Each disk swap needs a shutdown and restart. Not the end of the world, but certainly annoying.
its one of those things where most people can get away without hotswap just fine, but it makes it really tedious and annoying every time you do need to swap a disk, like it means if you need to swap a drive you need to shut down everything, and hope that you dont have anything running that'll get mad and have to start from scratch if stopped like shutting down the storage array itself and not having it able to stay online while missing a drive(think raidz and parity), sure can live without that, but its the fact that the entire rest of the system goes down with it since in a homelab you usually will have lots of non storage related services running on your storage server, meaning those go down too
There's a more gentle way to remove a hard drive from this drive carrier. Lift the black plastic part that is in contact with the hard drive, then push the drive (in the same direction you inserted) can remove it. I wish I can attach photos to comments...
This looks like it might be perfect for my needs. The big problem with building something yourself, is that you will either wind up with something more expensive, or something that's physically a lot bigger, or both. I love the functionality you get from that little of a case.
I've built similar solution myself with X86-P5 by CWWK, Jonsbo 5bay backplane and 3D printed parts and I will say, if this Aoostar would be available when I did it, I would just grab it instead of headache I've got.
By any chance are you able to check Plex transcoding on it? I've heard support for AMD APUs has improved recently, but only here and there and I haven't looked into it closely. It MAY be better than this Jellyfin performance.
@@ghangj Newer AMD stuff supports AV1, but not this chip. It has Vega 8 graphics, which is ancient. They only added AV1 encode with RDNA3 (Radeon 7000 series), and decoding needs RDNA2 (6000 series).
@@ShadyMorais Not just good, but GREAT CONTENT. The videos on this channel is one of the ones where I always watch the videos, about as soon as they post, w/o waiting.
Man, $400 for a 4-Bay NAS with a more powerful CPU where I can bring my own SSD and RAM? That ain’t bad at all. Synology charges $600 for a 4-bay, so that’s definitely a very tempting offer for me.
Not fair comparism. Synology also offers you software included. Ofcourse some could say "i dont want that, i want my openNas TrueNas" but this comes in the same way as if you buy a PC with windows is more expensive then a PC without any OS. If you dont want to invest much time, you might want to pay for the software and use the synology but if you want more control and save money but also invest more time -> custom solution. Be aware that the software price is not only the 200$ price gap as the synology comes often with weaker hardware and expansion options also you might be locked in.
I own one, bought it on release of N100. The box comes with all features I wanted from home NAS host. The computer runs TrueNAS on Proxmox with passthrough of SATA interface, with additional Kubernetes node. The possibilities are wide, you can also run router software thanks to 2 LAN ports and basically any software you want. I am huge fan of this form factor of computer as it is perfect for small homelab. Perfect middleground between closed NAS systems and custom NAS case. Strongly recommends, our guy received is as a gift and didn't mentioned very good post-buy support which isn't common dealing with chineese brands, but aoostar is a bit different I guess. Btw. I really hate how you remove drives here, you have even shown it, it's basically once installed never disassemble, it's very hard to extract disk
@wheezel55 run services to have full control over how my passwords, images, and videos are stored. imagine torrent client directly connected to vpn and pushing data to nas to be then picked by software that organizes them like netflix
This is very compelling. I bought a 4-bay Sabrent USB 3.1 DAS to connect to a repurposed old computer and-after many emails with customer service-determined that the 5V rail (stepped down from the 12V PSU) is directly connected to the USB 5V in and easily overpowered by a desktop chip, glitching the USB 3.1 controller and resulting in USB 2.0 speeds. I was actually told that this was *my* fault because I used add-in cards and it seemed to work fine with a laptop. It is really encouraging to see a system that is more capable and expandable and reliable like this for close to the same cost of that DAS and what I could get for my older system! Thank you for taking the time to review this!
I've following this mahince for a while and here are some additional info: 1, It has a re-purposed board from one of its mini PC thus with all it plugs side way, and probably help reducing cost. 2, You can adjust CPU power from BIOS up to ~60w, which will unleash its full potential with rating as shown in Passmark's site. Down side is that head sink can't catch up and will throttled some while later.(Heard that ~50w is the sweet spot) That said it's pretty powerful among recent China made NASs and good for AIO homelab + NAS
Fyi, they are using the motherboard from the AOOSTAR R7 (the compact 2 bay nas). Hmmm, put 4x rubber feet on the fan / "back", rotate the case upwards and now you have rear facing connectors, with a layout like the R7.
AMD need to use some of that Alveo IP they've got- they don't seem to share between divisions like they could. A cutdown version of the MA35D would be pretty sweet - or maybe just dedicate a bit of silicon to it in the IGP?
8:54 thank you for including power draw - so many dont include it, and with energy prices as they are here, it matters a lot because of that, ive been thinking of using a mac mini as a homelab. it sounds quite dumb but the M chips have extremely low power draw, it comes with 10gbe, and the thunderbolt ports provide 3x pcie 3x4 on the low end, and 3x pcie 4x4 on the higher end (though thunderbolt 5 adapters dont exist yet since its so new). the main problem would be software, but as far as i was able to tell, macos supports docker & vms, and most homelab-level software already supports arm due to raspberry pis... if you were up for it id love to see a video trying to implement this - but i understand if its cost-prohibitive/simply not something youre interested in.
14:39 depending on the wattage a power bank is capable of, it might actually work. And some power banks can pass power through them, so this could actually be a somewhat effective UPS, provided you find a powerbank powerful enough to run it and capable of output while being charged.
Yeah, I don't know what power bank he was using to test this, but as long as it's capable of providing the power required by the NAS it should work. Maybe there's a voltage/current combo that the NAS wanted but the bank couldn't support?
Exactly, there's no reason it wouldn't work with a decent power bank - probably needs 20 V support. Doesn't need to be 100 W if the system draws just 40 W during activity... 65 W should be enough.
Hotswap drives. On Linux OSs, you should be able to force a single hard drive scan after removing the drive from the software raid array and then physically swapping hard drives. This 3 step procedure (remove drive from software raid, hotswap disks, force disk rescan) has worked on a number of Linux systems without BIOS and hardware support before, though obviously not guaranteed. Please try, and let us know your results.
Aoostar comprises two parts: 'aoo' and 'star.' The second part is obvious, but to pronounce the first part correctly, you must sound like a wolf at night.
honestly this is exactly what I wanted (ideally a bit cheaper since you can get full n100 motherboards for 120$), but it being energy efficient, silent and holding 4 bays makes it great.
I really don't think it could be any cheaper, since this is the cheapes n100 solution that has case, hdd bays, power supply and form factor. The cheapest 4 bay ali express case is like 65$
Wow, for the past couple of weeks I was debating between a Synology or QNAP nas, but I was kind of frustrated because their prices are too high for the performance they offer, but this is amazing.
@@elmariachi5133 The Ryzen processor has the ability to support ECC, the Intel processor does not. It will all depend on how the motherboard was designed.
10:45 - Love this idea. I have two NVMe drives configured via dm-cache for my HDDs, and it works beautifully. Maximizes the storage space so I never really run out of space, but SSDs make sure that almost everything I ever need has SSD speeds, rather than having to spin up the platter to access it.
The "Full Service USB-C" has a Display Port Symbol on it. Pretty sure you can use for adding a monitor or three to it. Yes... there are adapters that will split the signal into to two to three monitors. WHY you would want that on a plex/file server, I don't know, but I'm sure we can find any number or reasons we might want to do that.
@@jayzn1931 it's useful in case of Plex server + download/sync on mobile device, where you don't need the full quality due to screen size, don't want to take much storage space or limited by mobile network speed.
My phone doesn't play 4k HEVC files, not sure if Android is able to do the transcoding after receiving but when I attempt to stream 4K HEVC Jellyfin seems to try to transcode it. Same on my laptop, I don't have a 4k screen on it
@@jayzn1931 There's a bajillion devices that can't play 5.1, dd, atmos, 7.1, etc. Yes, some of these can extract stereo from the stream, but there's no reason to send that much info, especially offsite. Same goes with 4k, DV, hdr10, hdr10+ on video side. The device might be able to play it, but it will either look like crap, or not play at all. And again, if you are able to transcode ahead of time it will reduce the amount transferred by a huge amount such as sending 720 instead of 4k
Great review. I'm SERIOUSLY considering this as a replacement to my Unraid box running on a Xeon E5 2450V2. Same Core and thread count with much better per-core performance in a tiny package. I would run 3 14tb data drives with 1 14tb Parity (and order 1 more as a backup). I really wish it had an internal USB slot for the boot drive (I don't feel comfortable having my boot drive on the outside of the case since Unraid boots off of a USB Thumb Drive). I run Jellyfin on my server and it does struggle with 4k though I can't seem to find info to know if the Ryzen model would struggle less (obviously it also struggles) :D
Love the content. I also think one of the magic of your channel is the pacing and going the right amount of depth to stay fun without feeling like work.
Any idea why this version (WTR PRO) is sequential better in power consumption compared to the Aoostar R1 which you also reviewed? In your video's / tests the R1 took like 20W while the WTR PRO only measured 7-8W.
Was looking into the N100, but it only has 1 SODIMM slot (32 GB support). While the Ryzen version has 2 SODIMM slots (64 GB support). Kind of sucks, was really looking into the N100 version, but kind of a deal breaker for me. Am going to have to think it over a little lol.
@@sneakysimian717 for Plex/Jellyfin media server you’ll be good. Wouldn’t risk my money going for the N100 if I’m planning to run virtual machines or anything else.
Most viewers are not going to buy even more hardware, but I, and probably most of the viewers, come back to every one of your videos because they are very entertaining. The subtle humour that is amplified by great editing. Thank you for your content!
Man, I really wish AMD had an alternative to QuickSync. That combined with a 10Gbe NIC would have made this thing perfect as a router and low-power failover NAS/Plex Server that I could run directly off of the 100w USB C port on my solar generator. Would be great for overnight shutdown of my main unit, and also for power outage scenarios where I could shutdown my main Unraid/Workstation and run most of those services on a small low power device like this...
I ended up repurposing my old Intel laptop with a broken hinge as a Jellyfin media server a little while back (with an external HDD enclosure for storage) and have been looking to upgrade to a proper NAS + RAID setup so I don't have to worry too much about a drive failure bringing me back to square one. I think I like this one!
@@Fighter_Builder I’m learning things; while it doesn’t support RAID you can run Unraid or TrueNas and use ZFS or Btrfs and get more or less the same features. So it’s actually not as bad as I thought.
I got into homelabs and tinkering a few months ago and I was wondering why nobody simply made a NAS box without proprietary OS... well, guess this solves it. A question: apart from Unraid, is there any other OS that handles HDD spindown properly? Cuz Unraid seems to be the only one but it's expensive and seems ro have issues with the normal power saving features ( the kind of stuff Powertop does very well).
This would be the perfect nas for me, if it could just do 10g. With no easy or even any hacky way to stuff something doing 10g in there, it's basically out of contention. I also see that for most people who just want an affordable nas, this thing really is great.
Hello there, Hardware Haven. Name's Chris here, from Southern California. Just thought I'd take a moment to say I've been really enjoying your content. I'm a big tech enthusiast and like to learn whatever I can about tech, and the history of technology. I do suffer from a degree of visual impairment, so my eye vision is almost next to nothing. I only see lights and shadows. Not sure if you're familiar with accessibility apps or software, like screen readers, but Windows XP was the first OS to include Windows Narrator, but it wasn't that great. I'd be happy to share more about living with visual impairment, and all accessibility tech out there, if that's something you'd be interested in learning more about. Not sure if you have an email attached to your channel, or if you've got Discord or other social media platforms, but keep up the good work, and look forward to listening to more of your tech projects. Take care of yourself man.
I don't know how the home networking situation in your country is, but in mine (Germany), where our houses are in use for severel decades, you can consider yourself lucky, if you have any networking in yours. Unless you build it yourself. So having 10gig network adaptors or 2.5gig ones or 1gig ones is in many homes here the same speed anyways.
what on earth are you talking about? almost everyone on the planet has to add networking to their homes if they want it. the speed of it is also their choice
toss in some SSD adapters in those 3.5" bays, and that's 12 SSDs on top of the 3 underneath... this box could be a real beast for a home server, especially isolating services in containers or in VMs
i went for the n100 , proxmox and put a coral m2 in the wifi slot , also unlike terramasters 424pro , the usb's work with a hub ,and there is plenty for a zwave ,zigbee, rf dongle ,and should be able to expand with a terramaster D8 hybrid i bought
I don't stream at all, so the graphics don't bother me one bit. I ordered the amd version wtr pro for my go to homelab server to test and play around with server / client / network scenarios. I believe to have gotten a pretty good little server to work with. It looks clean and tidy as well. Would have been nice to see your proxmox setup on this device you mentioned a wee bit.
Regarding hot swappable, a lot of these simpler non-enterprise chassis won't have a "identity" option for the drives, meaning that even if you could hot swap, you wouldn't necessarily know which drive to pull. I have made habit of adding a sticker with the S/N on the bay so I can easily recognize it. Also for the USB 3.0, I guess the idea is more that it can be used to power other devices, rather than powering itself via USB
I bought an Aoostar 2-bay NAS and it came with bad RAM. I've had no issues since replacing the RAM, but I recommend going with no RAM + no Drives and sourcing those yourself...
Brilliant review! I've been considering this make and model for some time, but hadn't found any review videos that walked through all the features, pro's and con's in the same way you did, thanks for that. For me, this ticks all the right boxes, its a toss up between this and the ASUSTOR AS5404T; what wins it out for me is the super efficent but very effective AMD chipset, that idle power draw is nearly as low as a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5!
Excellent presentation. Thank you. I really like the looks of this one for Proxmox. Love your idea of doing the boot drive and saving the 2280 NVMe's for storage. The lower power draw is perfect. How quiet is that fan as that could be a deal breaker for me? Also, can the 3.5" bays/caddies support 2.5" drives too? If so, I could see adding SATA SSDs there to keep things quiet?
Oh this looks amazing. You’re right about the non-hot swappable drives being a little let down but for the price it’s amazing. I’m seriously considering getting it especially with that super low power draw.
If you are using something like a Jackery or Bluetti as your power source rather than a wall outlet, the USB C port allows you to bypass the AC to DC conversion resulting in power savings. When running your home lab off of solar power, avoiding AC to DC power conversion is a very significant selling point!
This looks to be perfect for a home NAS and backup server! I might buy this when I move out just so my parents have their own NAS and I have a backup server in case my own NAS fails.
This hardware with a more modern CPU and 10GbE would be the dream for a low power decent feature set homelab machine if you don't need a ton of drives or fast storage for a lot of people who want to run something other than Synology. For the price it's really not bad though I'd want 10gbe + ECC personally but it's nice to see companies thinking outside of the box with 'entry level' NAS hardware.
6:52 It's possible that the Sys_Fan header is indeed a second fan port, but in this version they didn't put a fan there, but instead just used the thermal ports. 4-pins could have been Gnd/Pwr/PWM-Signal/Temp-Probe arrangement. So in this version they forewent the fan and just used the probe by itself, perhaps realizing that the unit actually didn't need a full featured fan and they saved a buck or 2 on each unit
if this exist 3 or 4 years ago i would have got one but i built one with a uNAS case and asrock rack motherboard with dual 10g and ECC ram and ryzen and IPMI/BMC, it did cost almost $1k more at the time. this unit costs what my motherboard alone costed. i also have 1 PCIe slot used for a old school read deal hardware accelerate RAID card that pulls about 1GB by 1GB read write with 4x 12TB Seagate drives in RAID 10. not bad read and write for 22TB, even with 24/7 NVR it still pulls 600-700+ MB/s read/write. enough to saturate 1gig ethernet
Thank you so much for making this video! I've been monitoring this server to replace my Nas at home. But, I was really curious how it would work, if at all, with bare metal TrueNAS Also, the power consumption data is really appreciated! Looks like this will suit my needs and run at less than half the wattage as my current server! The fastest subscribe button I've ever clicked.
@Hardware Haven All SSD NAS are the way to go, no if you are looking to max out capacity but weight when you are moving and also chances of screwing the HDDs while moving are way higher. Terra master F8 SSD is being reviewed almost in every server. Has it's pros and cons the only thing that I would keep: -8x SSD slots -Cooling -Compact size I know that are not so many options and that's the challenge. Would it be an option with those positives other than F8?
It doesn't seem to have power switches for individual disks. I am using Orico (or some name like that) bays on a regular PC case, and those bays have power switches.
how much power can your power bank support? you can easily get usb-pd compatible ones at 65W or more, with the power consumption of this nas those should be fine
I noticed with my MinisForum NAD 9 that the power brick draws about 5-8 watts on its own, so I could see using an efficient USB C charger like an Anker or UGreen GAN wall plug if you're after every watt for a 24/7 NAS/media server build. I was actually just looking at the N100 version of this to consolidate my TrueNAS Scale and Plex media server into one machine. The Ryzen 7700 I built using the combo at Micro-center is a bit overkill for just a NAS, plex doesn't support hardware transcode on AMD, and I was already planning a mini-pc for my mother this year as she's several years overdue for an update. I could just put windows on what I built and migrate to one of these easily.
I have to say, I love this! While I do enjoy building my own computers and servers, this is hard to beat. Our family is quite mobile and I've been trying to run my home server off a NUC10. It's kind of a pain. With only a moderate compromise in size, this is looking pretty good to me. I'm also glancing at their site and seeing there may be other options quite a bit like this in a slightly smaller package...
Great video! The Aoostar NAS looks nice for a plex setup, but I personally prefer when ports are located on the back for a cleaner setup like R1 2bay 40T. I’m definitely looking forward to future models with that design!
I was intrigued by that 2-drive little toaster thingy from Aoostar that was making the rounds earlier. This one also intrigues me. If I was new to the NAS or homelab market, I might have gone with this rather than the Synology that became my first NAS. As it is, I am now looking at more serious equipment for a fresh replacement of my DIY Truenas box in the Fractal Define R5 case I have. Possible one of the new HL-8s from 45 drives.
Nice to see these alternatives to home servers/NAS! I own a QNAP NAS and I hate it, barely works as a NAS and that crappy software never works reliable, hoping to get one of these mini PCs to improve my home server configuration
Hey Colten! Love your videos man! Just a note for you: white text on a yellow background is difficult to read (thinking of the performance graphs you made). White text with a black border is visible against almost any color. Keep up the great work man!
I have the N100 version and so far I really like it. I'm still deciding if I'll use it to replace my current unraid server that lives in a Node 804 case. This is about 1/4 the size. My biggest gripes are the drive bays like you said, you really gotta work to get the drives out. And the biggest issue was the order and ship time. It took 26 days from when I paid to when it shipped, and it took another 14 days to arrive. The company is based in the UK but all shipments come from China.
Love these small nas system videos. These things would work great as a portable system to take for a long vacation somewhere with potato internet or in a tiny home
Could you use the usb-c as some sort of UPS workaround? Like have it ported into a more powerfull powerbank with passthrough power and in case of a power faliure, the powerbank keeps it powered?
Nice! I like that they have a home server version (ryzen) and a media server version (intel N100). A meaningful choice rather than 'more expensive more better'. I would have liked a third version that had it all, just in case you wanted to run VMs and plex. Maybe some day, or maybe this is getting too close to 'just build it yourself already'.
The Max incarnation of the Terramaster 4-disk NAS would fill your bill, and then some, but of course it's more expensive. Though on principle, or if I were running TrueNAS Scale, I'd want ECC RAM, but then we're talking well over $1K for anything remotely power-efficient, even for a BIY.
I have four 20TB drives and two 1TB nvme. I can set up a raid5 with nvme front-end cache with this and something like TrueNAS? The USBC seems to *provide 100W from the PSU* not accept it from the wall.
Yes, although maybe better if the USB-C port was USB3.2 gen2 10Gb/s. Sabrent sells some rugged toolless 4- and 5-bay USB DAS enclosures that should work with Proxmox or TrueNAS Scale, at least according to the Level1 forums. The later USB-SATA bridge chipsets seem to have better error handling and reliability for support of RAID and ZFS, compared to earlier chipsets (so says Wendall). I bought a Sabrent 5-bay but I haven't gotten to testing ZFS on it yet.
Was that power bank Power delivery able? I have run plenty miny PCs from my 65W PD powerbank, add a 5W portable screen and you have an overcomplicated notebook
i have a little question. Can you set the SATA ports in the bios as a ESATA port, then they are hot swappable. i mean yea it disables the cache on the drives but who needs this feature anyway in a nas with no power loss protection.
@HardwareHaven: how did you configure pci passtrough for this one? I'm seeing two SATA controller entries, but if I add both, proxmox complains that I added it twice. Is it enough to add the .0 entry to see all 4 disks? (2 of my disks have yet to arrive, so I can't really test myself..)
Add in an Oculink port (even if it shares PCIe lanes with one of the SSD slots, and disables one if something is plugged in) and you've got my perfect mini NAS. The ability to get an AMD 8c/16t CPU & 64GB RAM and still plug in an external Intel or NVIDIA GPU for transcoding would make this absolute perfection for me. Right now, I have an AMD 5900X for my VMs and an 8th gen Intel mini for my Jellyfin server/transcoding. Oculink on this baby would allow me to replace both of those devices. Might be worth trying one of those M.2 to Occulink adapters and YOLOing this thing.
Not a bad option. I have a DAS with an N100 mini PC sitting on top acting as my primary file server. This would serve (no pun intended) the same purpose in a single unit. Swings and roundabouts though, slightly improved performance at a slightly higher cost (the N100 version due to fast direct interface), lack of upgrade or similar flexiblity if a single unit goes down but this isnt a big deal for most people in a similar way as mentioned about hot swappable. I will have to keep an eye out for deals towards the end of the year.
You can buy 5 and 8 bay hot swappable external enclosures for around $200 or less. So, I really don't have any interest at all in any more expensive prebuilt NAS that doesn't at least match that. I'd much rather buy a Zimablade or similar and pair it with an enclosure or two. The fact that 5 + 8 bay enclosures match with Snapraid parity numbers makes that combination the chef's kiss of low power, compact NAS devices. I've yet to see any prebuilt NAS that can match a Zimablade + 5 bay enclosure for features and price. FYI, I know some people will be down on this combo for doing stuff like transcoding and such but I'd rather keep my NAS pure. Having multiple purpose built devices for a range of tasks just works so much better than trying to cram all of that into a single, disappointing expensive box. Chances are, if you are looking at a device like this one, you are already on board with the idea of multiple low power devices rather than one giant expensive all in one server.
Having different devices for different software tasks will usually be less efficient, and also more clutter. This box is small, low power draw, and has more than enough CPU power.
Thanks for the video. I'm moving to the mountains and will likely take a dip in internet speeds, thinking a NAS will be a great option for a plex server
Synology and QNAP etc are going to have to (finally) sort themselves out with all these new higher specced AND lower priced NAS devices coming on the market. About time too.
Honestly, they should ditch their codebase and get the help of UnRAID or TrueNAS, and then maybe design their own UI like what Eshtek has done with HexOS (minus the internet connection required part).
Yea Synology in particular has extremely underpowered hardware even with a very well polished OS, It doesn't make up for the inability to run multiple containers or VMs and get decent performance. 1GB NICs are so 2000 late and 10GB upgrades for another $120 is ridiculous and overkill for a low powered NAS, especially when 2.5Gb will do for a home NAS and everything these days comes with built in 2.5GB NICs or even faster WiFi.
I have both Synology DS918+ and a Terramaster F-424 Pro running Unraid. Guess which one is running my containers like jellyfin and my retro VM and which one is a target for my rsync backups of the other for extra redundancy at my parent's home?
I just ordered the Terramaster F424 Pro. The N305 chip and 2 nvme slots are the perfect fit for me. A N100 would also be fine, but i wanted a bit more horsepower while still efficient.
@@danielgmur6486 IMO, the N305 is a bit of a waste, since while it has double the cores of the N95 and N100, it has the same 9 lanes of PCIe 3.0, which comes out to a lot of raw cores and compute but not enough connectivity and I/O for that compute to process.
I agree that their hardware is overpriced. I use both TrueNAS and Synology. I use Synology for LinuxISOs because I appreciate how the Synology Hybrid RAID works so well with varied drive sizes while also allowing me to expand by purchasing just 1 or 2 drives at a time. I wish this flexibility was possible using open software such as TrueNAS, OMV, or other alternatives.
I did use Unraid for many years. It’s super flexible but I found the array to be lacking in performance as compared to Synology.
i pronounce it aoostar
Ahh that makes sense.
those "dad jokes" are the funniest jokes known to man
eh-oo
Can i acess the bios?@@HardwareHaven
It's pronounced Wooseter
Hot-swap drives = higher cost
I don't think the majority of people buying this will be too concerned it doesn't have hot-swap drives.
Yea hot-swap Its cool... but I wouldnt pay much extra for it. If you cant find 30 minutes of planned downtime to swap a drive sometime within a week or two of failure you probably need a MUCH more professional system than this one
Lets say you have a pile of 4,6 and 8 tb disks and you want to ingest them into your new 60Tb UnRaid server. You populate 3 20Tb disks and use the 4th to ingest data to those disks using Krusader or rsync. Once each disk is ingested you'll need to shut down, and swp to the next disk. And the same when you add the 4th 20Tb as the parity. Each disk swap needs a shutdown and restart. Not the end of the world, but certainly annoying.
its one of those things where most people can get away without hotswap just fine, but it makes it really tedious and annoying every time you do need to swap a disk, like it means if you need to swap a drive you need to shut down everything, and hope that you dont have anything running that'll get mad and have to start from scratch if stopped
like shutting down the storage array itself and not having it able to stay online while missing a drive(think raidz and parity), sure can live without that, but its the fact that the entire rest of the system goes down with it since in a homelab you usually will have lots of non storage related services running on your storage server, meaning those go down too
wait disks could be hot-swappable? i guess that's a thing only with NAS devices because I never had one
@@dash8brj That's what a powered USB 3 hard drive dock is for.
There's a more gentle way to remove a hard drive from this drive carrier.
Lift the black plastic part that is in contact with the hard drive, then push the drive (in the same direction you inserted) can remove it.
I wish I can attach photos to comments...
I thought that too, but doing it in multiple places at the same time will be annoying
Makes sense, but still a bit annoying compared to alternatives
@@HardwareHaven is it possible to dremel the clips off and use screws? Great video btw, really helped me making a decision (to buy this!) :)
This looks like it might be perfect for my needs. The big problem with building something yourself, is that you will either wind up with something more expensive, or something that's physically a lot bigger, or both. I love the functionality you get from that little of a case.
I've built similar solution myself with X86-P5 by CWWK, Jonsbo 5bay backplane and 3D printed parts and I will say, if this Aoostar would be available when I did it, I would just grab it instead of headache I've got.
By any chance are you able to check Plex transcoding on it? I've heard support for AMD APUs has improved recently, but only here and there and I haven't looked into it closely. It MAY be better than this Jellyfin performance.
Lets up vote this. You can't find any meaningful test done on this on TH-cam I don't understand why
@@fcasinhas my assumption is either that it’s a moving target/unofficial or…
maybe people don’t care 😅 I’m curious though!
My best guess will be yes. I think AMD supports AV1 and Jellyfin has an AV1 options and will have to tweak the settings to get it to work.
@@ghangj Newer AMD stuff supports AV1, but not this chip. It has Vega 8 graphics, which is ancient. They only added AV1 encode with RDNA3 (Radeon 7000 series), and decoding needs RDNA2 (6000 series).
@@ArisenDrake the n100 offering the company has does support av1
Hardware Haven brings the content I've been wanting.
Marco brings the comments I've been wanting.
@@HardwareHaven Geez, you two, just get a room 🤭
I wanted to like your comment as I agree that HH is bringing a lot of good content to the community IMO, but that would take it out of 69
@@ShadyMorais Not just good, but GREAT CONTENT. The videos on this channel is one of the ones where I always watch the videos, about as soon as they post, w/o waiting.
Man, $400 for a 4-Bay NAS with a more powerful CPU where I can bring my own SSD and RAM? That ain’t bad at all. Synology charges $600 for a 4-bay, so that’s definitely a very tempting offer for me.
Ya I'd even consider this for basic workstation tasks due to the decent cpu and video out.
The price is great, but the fact that you can install your own software (TrueNAS SCALE) really rocks.
If you only could install xpenology🤔
Not fair comparism. Synology also offers you software included. Ofcourse some could say "i dont want that, i want my openNas TrueNas" but this comes in the same way as if you buy a PC with windows is more expensive then a PC without any OS. If you dont want to invest much time, you might want to pay for the software and use the synology but if you want more control and save money but also invest more time -> custom solution. Be aware that the software price is not only the 200$ price gap as the synology comes often with weaker hardware and expansion options also you might be locked in.
@@MikelManitiushow true nas outperforms Synologys OS?
I own one, bought it on release of N100. The box comes with all features I wanted from home NAS host. The computer runs TrueNAS on Proxmox with passthrough of SATA interface, with additional Kubernetes node. The possibilities are wide, you can also run router software thanks to 2 LAN ports and basically any software you want. I am huge fan of this form factor of computer as it is perfect for small homelab. Perfect middleground between closed NAS systems and custom NAS case. Strongly recommends, our guy received is as a gift and didn't mentioned very good post-buy support which isn't common dealing with chineese brands, but aoostar is a bit different I guess. Btw. I really hate how you remove drives here, you have even shown it, it's basically once installed never disassemble, it's very hard to extract disk
what do you guys do on home servers?
hey - any idea if the BIOS supports wake on power restored (in the event of a power outage)?
@@wheezel55 spend time messing with the home server
@@wheezel55 coping and seething, as usual.
@wheezel55 run services to have full control over how my passwords, images, and videos are stored. imagine torrent client directly connected to vpn and pushing data to nas to be then picked by software that organizes them like netflix
This is very compelling. I bought a 4-bay Sabrent USB 3.1 DAS to connect to a repurposed old computer and-after many emails with customer service-determined that the 5V rail (stepped down from the 12V PSU) is directly connected to the USB 5V in and easily overpowered by a desktop chip, glitching the USB 3.1 controller and resulting in USB 2.0 speeds. I was actually told that this was *my* fault because I used add-in cards and it seemed to work fine with a laptop. It is really encouraging to see a system that is more capable and expandable and reliable like this for close to the same cost of that DAS and what I could get for my older system! Thank you for taking the time to review this!
I've following this mahince for a while and here are some additional info:
1, It has a re-purposed board from one of its mini PC thus with all it plugs side way, and probably help reducing cost.
2, You can adjust CPU power from BIOS up to ~60w, which will unleash its full potential with rating as shown in Passmark's site. Down side is that head sink can't catch up and will throttled some while later.(Heard that ~50w is the sweet spot)
That said it's pretty powerful among recent China made NASs and good for AIO homelab + NAS
Fyi, they are using the motherboard from the AOOSTAR R7 (the compact 2 bay nas). Hmmm, put 4x rubber feet on the fan / "back", rotate the case upwards and now you have rear facing connectors, with a layout like the R7.
I'm really surprised we haven't seen a M.2 video encoding accelerator card.
Gimme that little Intel A310 GPU on an M.2 card! Well sort of.
GREAT point. 👍👍
@@JaccoSWneeeeeeed
Intel needs to make one, with AV1 support.
AMD need to use some of that Alveo IP they've got- they don't seem to share between divisions like they could. A cutdown version of the MA35D would be pretty sweet - or maybe just dedicate a bit of silicon to it in the IGP?
8:54 thank you for including power draw - so many dont include it, and with energy prices as they are here, it matters a lot
because of that, ive been thinking of using a mac mini as a homelab. it sounds quite dumb but the M chips have extremely low power draw, it comes with 10gbe, and the thunderbolt ports provide 3x pcie 3x4 on the low end, and 3x pcie 4x4 on the higher end (though thunderbolt 5 adapters dont exist yet since its so new). the main problem would be software, but as far as i was able to tell, macos supports docker & vms, and most homelab-level software already supports arm due to raspberry pis... if you were up for it id love to see a video trying to implement this - but i understand if its cost-prohibitive/simply not something youre interested in.
14:39 depending on the wattage a power bank is capable of, it might actually work. And some power banks can pass power through them, so this could actually be a somewhat effective UPS, provided you find a powerbank powerful enough to run it and capable of output while being charged.
Yeah, I don't know what power bank he was using to test this, but as long as it's capable of providing the power required by the NAS it should work. Maybe there's a voltage/current combo that the NAS wanted but the bank couldn't support?
Exactly, there's no reason it wouldn't work with a decent power bank - probably needs 20 V support. Doesn't need to be 100 W if the system draws just 40 W during activity... 65 W should be enough.
9:24 the doggo really had opinions but it wasn't convinced they were relevant enough to the video, that's why the sideeye.
Hotswap drives.
On Linux OSs, you should be able to force a single hard drive scan after removing the drive from the software raid array and then physically swapping hard drives. This 3 step procedure (remove drive from software raid, hotswap disks, force disk rescan) has worked on a number of Linux systems without BIOS and hardware support before, though obviously not guaranteed.
Please try, and let us know your results.
Aoostar comprises two parts: 'aoo' and 'star.' The second part is obvious, but to pronounce the first part correctly, you must sound like a wolf at night.
"he's not dumb or anything..." friend unfriends him.
honestly this is exactly what I wanted (ideally a bit cheaper since you can get full n100 motherboards for 120$), but it being energy efficient, silent and holding 4 bays makes it great.
I really don't think it could be any cheaper, since this is the cheapes n100 solution that has case, hdd bays, power supply and form factor. The cheapest 4 bay ali express case is like 65$
Wow, for the past couple of weeks I was debating between a Synology or QNAP nas, but I was kind of frustrated because their prices are too high for the performance they offer, but this is amazing.
This one and XPEnology on top will give you a fully functional Synology.
This would be perfect (aside from the transcoding not being amazing) if it supported ECC…
The processor does, so you just need to install the correct DIMMS
@@rogerthomas7040 Doesn't it need support from the BIOS to enable ecc? Thought otherwise the dimms would run without doing any ECC
@@rogerthomas7040 what about the motherboard? That also needs to support ECC.
@@rogerthomas7040 which one? The Intel or the Ryzen? And what about the BIOS?
@@elmariachi5133 The Ryzen processor has the ability to support ECC, the Intel processor does not. It will all depend on how the motherboard was designed.
10:45 - Love this idea. I have two NVMe drives configured via dm-cache for my HDDs, and it works beautifully. Maximizes the storage space so I never really run out of space, but SSDs make sure that almost everything I ever need has SSD speeds, rather than having to spin up the platter to access it.
The "Full Service USB-C" has a Display Port Symbol on it. Pretty sure you can use for adding a monitor or three to it. Yes... there are adapters that will split the signal into to two to three monitors. WHY you would want that on a plex/file server, I don't know, but I'm sure we can find any number or reasons we might want to do that.
Can't you set up a port bonding? That way you could double your network speed unless it uses single tcp connection
This would be done in software. Any server-oriented OS like Proxmox, FreeNAS, etc should have options in the standard setup interface to set up LACP.
Okay, that cut at 3:28 made me snort laugh out loud. Nicely done!
Nice, lol
I guess I never transcode stuff. I just have good hardware hooked up to my TV that can just stream stuff as is.
Same. I never got who needed transcoding. But I am sure for some use cases it’s useful.
My approach too - Nvidia Shield can handle h265, h264 and pretty much everything else.
@@jayzn1931 it's useful in case of Plex server + download/sync on mobile device, where you don't need the full quality due to screen size, don't want to take much storage space or limited by mobile network speed.
My phone doesn't play 4k HEVC files, not sure if Android is able to do the transcoding after receiving but when I attempt to stream 4K HEVC Jellyfin seems to try to transcode it. Same on my laptop, I don't have a 4k screen on it
@@jayzn1931 There's a bajillion devices that can't play 5.1, dd, atmos, 7.1, etc. Yes, some of these can extract stereo from the stream, but there's no reason to send that much info, especially offsite. Same goes with 4k, DV, hdr10, hdr10+ on video side. The device might be able to play it, but it will either look like crap, or not play at all. And again, if you are able to transcode ahead of time it will reduce the amount transferred by a huge amount such as sending 720 instead of 4k
Great review. I'm SERIOUSLY considering this as a replacement to my Unraid box running on a Xeon E5 2450V2. Same Core and thread count with much better per-core performance in a tiny package. I would run 3 14tb data drives with 1 14tb Parity (and order 1 more as a backup).
I really wish it had an internal USB slot for the boot drive (I don't feel comfortable having my boot drive on the outside of the case since Unraid boots off of a USB Thumb Drive).
I run Jellyfin on my server and it does struggle with 4k though I can't seem to find info to know if the Ryzen model would struggle less (obviously it also struggles) :D
Love the content. I also think one of the magic of your channel is the pacing and going the right amount of depth to stay fun without feeling like work.
Any idea why this version (WTR PRO) is sequential better in power consumption compared to the Aoostar R1 which you also reviewed?
In your video's / tests the R1 took like 20W while the WTR PRO only measured 7-8W.
I think you are comparing consumption with drives vs consumption without drives. R1 was using 10W without drives.
There’s a version with an Intel N100, I guess that option is better for a media server, however the AMD will be the best option for other tasks.
Was looking into the N100, but it only has 1 SODIMM slot (32 GB support). While the Ryzen version has 2 SODIMM slots (64 GB support). Kind of sucks, was really looking into the N100 version, but kind of a deal breaker for me. Am going to have to think it over a little lol.
N100 has no dual lane memory support!
@@sneakysimian717 for Plex/Jellyfin media server you’ll be good. Wouldn’t risk my money going for the N100 if I’m planning to run virtual machines or anything else.
@@intrax2tvHonestly... is it really a problem on a machine like this?
32GB seems plenty to me for the use case this device seems to be designed for.
@@intrax2tv Okay okay fine. I bought it. Are you happy now!? I was looking for an excuse NOT to get it lol
Most viewers are not going to buy even more hardware, but I, and probably most of the viewers, come back to every one of your videos because they are very entertaining. The subtle humour that is amplified by great editing. Thank you for your content!
Man, I really wish AMD had an alternative to QuickSync. That combined with a 10Gbe NIC would have made this thing perfect as a router and low-power failover NAS/Plex Server that I could run directly off of the 100w USB C port on my solar generator. Would be great for overnight shutdown of my main unit, and also for power outage scenarios where I could shutdown my main Unraid/Workstation and run most of those services on a small low power device like this...
What do you mean? Quick sync is just the video encode/decode engine. AMD also has the same features, although their quality may be lesser.
Anyone know what the show was that he was playing when testing the transcoding? It looked dope.
Foundation by Apple TV
I ended up repurposing my old Intel laptop with a broken hinge as a Jellyfin media server a little while back (with an external HDD enclosure for storage) and have been looking to upgrade to a proper NAS + RAID setup so I don't have to worry too much about a drive failure bringing me back to square one. I think I like this one!
Same here, priced nicely and still packin sum power
But it doesn’t support Raid.
@@cenobitedk Yes thats one of the tradeoffs with a cheap home server, but for 500 ish what can you really expect lol
@@cenobitedk Darn, I didn't know that. Thanks for the heads-up.
@@Fighter_Builder I’m learning things; while it doesn’t support RAID you can run Unraid or TrueNas and use ZFS or Btrfs and get more or less the same features. So it’s actually not as bad as I thought.
I got into homelabs and tinkering a few months ago and I was wondering why nobody simply made a NAS box without proprietary OS... well, guess this solves it.
A question: apart from Unraid, is there any other OS that handles HDD spindown properly? Cuz Unraid seems to be the only one but it's expensive and seems ro have issues with the normal power saving features ( the kind of stuff Powertop does very well).
This would be the perfect nas for me, if it could just do 10g. With no easy or even any hacky way to stuff something doing 10g in there, it's basically out of contention. I also see that for most people who just want an affordable nas, this thing really is great.
I just ordered the N100 version, can the main fan be replaced with a standard PWM Noctua fan? Thanks!
I would *assume* so, but didn't try it. It looked like a standard PWM header though.
Hello there, Hardware Haven.
Name's Chris here, from Southern California.
Just thought I'd take a moment to say I've been really enjoying your content.
I'm a big tech enthusiast and like to learn whatever I can about tech, and the history of technology.
I do suffer from a degree of visual impairment, so my eye vision is almost next to nothing.
I only see lights and shadows.
Not sure if you're familiar with accessibility apps or software, like screen readers, but Windows XP was the first OS to include Windows Narrator, but it wasn't that great.
I'd be happy to share more about living with visual impairment, and all accessibility tech out there, if that's something you'd be interested in learning more about.
Not sure if you have an email attached to your channel, or if you've got Discord or other social media platforms, but keep up the good work, and look forward to listening to more of your tech projects.
Take care of yourself man.
I don't know how the home networking situation in your country is, but in mine (Germany), where our houses are in use for severel decades, you can consider yourself lucky, if you have any networking in yours. Unless you build it yourself.
So having 10gig network adaptors or 2.5gig ones or 1gig ones is in many homes here the same speed anyways.
what on earth are you talking about? almost everyone on the planet has to add networking to their homes if they want it. the speed of it is also their choice
toss in some SSD adapters in those 3.5" bays, and that's 12 SSDs on top of the 3 underneath... this box could be a real beast for a home server, especially isolating services in containers or in VMs
Found this channel a couple of days ago and have been binge-watching since, love the content!
Thanks! Glad you like 'em
i went for the n100 , proxmox and put a coral m2 in the wifi slot , also unlike terramasters 424pro , the usb's work with a hub ,and there is plenty for a zwave ,zigbee, rf dongle ,and should be able to expand with a terramaster D8 hybrid i bought
Excellent video. I loved the guest appearance of Ruth.
I don't stream at all, so the graphics don't bother me one bit. I ordered the amd version wtr pro for my go to homelab server to test and play around with server / client / network scenarios. I believe to have gotten a pretty good little server to work with. It looks clean and tidy as well. Would have been nice to see your proxmox setup on this device you mentioned a wee bit.
Regarding hot swappable, a lot of these simpler non-enterprise chassis won't have a "identity" option for the drives, meaning that even if you could hot swap, you wouldn't necessarily know which drive to pull. I have made habit of adding a sticker with the S/N on the bay so I can easily recognize it.
Also for the USB 3.0, I guess the idea is more that it can be used to power other devices, rather than powering itself via USB
Looks like a nice, less expensive option to the Zimacube Pro for a dedicated media box.
I bought an Aoostar 2-bay NAS and it came with bad RAM. I've had no issues since replacing the RAM, but I recommend going with no RAM + no Drives and sourcing those yourself...
Man, I'm so happy I saw this video 2 days after finishing setting up my new Ugreen NAS
Brilliant review! I've been considering this make and model for some time, but hadn't found any review videos that walked through all the features, pro's and con's in the same way you did, thanks for that.
For me, this ticks all the right boxes, its a toss up between this and the ASUSTOR AS5404T; what wins it out for me is the super efficent but very effective AMD chipset, that idle power draw is nearly as low as a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5!
Excellent presentation. Thank you. I really like the looks of this one for Proxmox. Love your idea of doing the boot drive and saving the 2280 NVMe's for storage. The lower power draw is perfect. How quiet is that fan as that could be a deal breaker for me? Also, can the 3.5" bays/caddies support 2.5" drives too? If so, I could see adding SATA SSDs there to keep things quiet?
Noise was pretty good, and system fan could be swapped for something else (I think). And yes, it supports 2.5" SATA SSDs
Oh this looks amazing. You’re right about the non-hot swappable drives being a little let down but for the price it’s amazing. I’m seriously considering getting it especially with that super low power draw.
If you are using something like a Jackery or Bluetti as your power source rather than a wall outlet, the USB C port allows you to bypass the AC to DC conversion resulting in power savings. When running your home lab off of solar power, avoiding AC to DC power conversion is a very significant selling point!
This looks to be perfect for a home NAS and backup server!
I might buy this when I move out just so my parents have their own NAS and I have a backup server in case my own NAS fails.
Is the system able to be remotely turned on via smart socket, as that is what I have setup with my main pc
Check out the Terramaster F4-424. I also considered getting the Aoostar WTR.
This hardware with a more modern CPU and 10GbE would be the dream for a low power decent feature set homelab machine if you don't need a ton of drives or fast storage for a lot of people who want to run something other than Synology. For the price it's really not bad though I'd want 10gbe + ECC personally but it's nice to see companies thinking outside of the box with 'entry level' NAS hardware.
6:52 It's possible that the Sys_Fan header is indeed a second fan port, but in this version they didn't put a fan there, but instead just used the thermal ports. 4-pins could have been Gnd/Pwr/PWM-Signal/Temp-Probe arrangement.
So in this version they forewent the fan and just used the probe by itself, perhaps realizing that the unit actually didn't need a full featured fan and they saved a buck or 2 on each unit
Very nice video. The unit reviewed seems to be a very nice box to run TrueNAS on.
I have the R7 and have been running it 24/7 with Jellyfin for about a year and absolutely love it. Definitely getting this new bad boy.
My techie friend also uses a Mac mini as a server and he's looking to upgrade to a nas system. I'm finding your videos incredibly useful!
I have been searching for a replacement for my DIY nas the last days and now you post a video of what i am searching the whole time
This is a pretty awesome little box. I've said it before and I'll say it again; you find the most interesting stuff! Thanks as always!
if this exist 3 or 4 years ago i would have got one but i built one with a uNAS case and asrock rack motherboard with dual 10g and ECC ram and ryzen and IPMI/BMC, it did cost almost $1k more at the time. this unit costs what my motherboard alone costed. i also have 1 PCIe slot used for a old school read deal hardware accelerate RAID card that pulls about 1GB by 1GB read write with 4x 12TB Seagate drives in RAID 10. not bad read and write for 22TB, even with 24/7 NVR it still pulls 600-700+ MB/s read/write. enough to saturate 1gig ethernet
Thank you so much for making this video! I've been monitoring this server to replace my Nas at home. But, I was really curious how it would work, if at all, with bare metal TrueNAS
Also, the power consumption data is really appreciated! Looks like this will suit my needs and run at less than half the wattage as my current server!
The fastest subscribe button I've ever clicked.
Thank you for showing those images of Calgary. It's not often you see your hometown in a TH-cam vid.
10:39 BRILLIANT!!! THANK YOU!!!!
Wish there was an option with ECC RAM.
Ooh, and N100 with ECC would be sweet. 👍
Why.....
@@jothaintruenas recommends using ecc with ZFS
The Ryzen chip version should support ECC if the motherboard bios implements it… would be cool if someone tested it
Why.....
Being able to boot using an m.2 to nvme adapter @10:31 is huge, as I hate sacrificing a slot or booting from a USB stick like in other NAS boxes
@Hardware Haven
All SSD NAS are the way to go, no if
you are looking to max out capacity but
weight when you are moving and also chances
of screwing the HDDs while moving are way higher.
Terra master F8 SSD is being reviewed almost in every server.
Has it's pros and cons the only thing that I would keep:
-8x SSD slots
-Cooling
-Compact size
I know that are not so many options and that's the challenge.
Would it be an option with those positives other than F8?
It doesn't seem to have power switches for individual disks. I am using Orico (or some name like that) bays on a regular PC case, and those bays have power switches.
how much power can your power bank support? you can easily get usb-pd compatible ones at 65W or more, with the power consumption of this nas those should be fine
I noticed with my MinisForum NAD 9 that the power brick draws about 5-8 watts on its own, so I could see using an efficient USB C charger like an Anker or UGreen GAN wall plug if you're after every watt for a 24/7 NAS/media server build. I was actually just looking at the N100 version of this to consolidate my TrueNAS Scale and Plex media server into one machine.
The Ryzen 7700 I built using the combo at Micro-center is a bit overkill for just a NAS, plex doesn't support hardware transcode on AMD, and I was already planning a mini-pc for my mother this year as she's several years overdue for an update. I could just put windows on what I built and migrate to one of these easily.
I have to say, I love this! While I do enjoy building my own computers and servers, this is hard to beat. Our family is quite mobile and I've been trying to run my home server off a NUC10. It's kind of a pain. With only a moderate compromise in size, this is looking pretty good to me.
I'm also glancing at their site and seeing there may be other options quite a bit like this in a slightly smaller package...
This is right up my alley! Great video! And I appreciate the tinkering.
Great video! The Aoostar NAS looks nice for a plex setup, but I personally prefer when ports are located on the back for a cleaner setup like R1 2bay 40T. I’m definitely looking forward to future models with that design!
I was intrigued by that 2-drive little toaster thingy from Aoostar that was making the rounds earlier. This one also intrigues me. If I was new to the NAS or homelab market, I might have gone with this rather than the Synology that became my first NAS. As it is, I am now looking at more serious equipment for a fresh replacement of my DIY Truenas box in the Fractal Define R5 case I have. Possible one of the new HL-8s from 45 drives.
I always love to see the pets making an appearance. ❤😊
Nice to see these alternatives to home servers/NAS! I own a QNAP NAS and I hate it, barely works as a NAS and that crappy software never works reliable, hoping to get one of these mini PCs to improve my home server configuration
What is the adapter you are using for the m2 e key to ssd 2230?
I have the R1 with the 5285U and I use the USB-C to charge my macbook - one less wire needed. Great review as always.
Hey Colten! Love your videos man! Just a note for you: white text on a yellow background is difficult to read (thinking of the performance graphs you made). White text with a black border is visible against almost any color. Keep up the great work man!
I have the N100 version and so far I really like it. I'm still deciding if I'll use it to replace my current unraid server that lives in a Node 804 case. This is about 1/4 the size. My biggest gripes are the drive bays like you said, you really gotta work to get the drives out. And the biggest issue was the order and ship time. It took 26 days from when I paid to when it shipped, and it took another 14 days to arrive. The company is based in the UK but all shipments come from China.
i ordered one of these after ur video. delivery will take ages though
Love these small nas system videos. These things would work great as a portable system to take for a long vacation somewhere with potato internet or in a tiny home
Is it possible to have more information about noise level?
Is it something that you can have near your TV ?
Should we replace the fan with a Noctua?
Could you use the usb-c as some sort of UPS workaround? Like have it ported into a more powerfull powerbank with passthrough power and in case of a power faliure, the powerbank keeps it powered?
thanks for the in depth review - I'm looking forward to getting mine soon.
Nice! I like that they have a home server version (ryzen) and a media server version (intel N100). A meaningful choice rather than 'more expensive more better'.
I would have liked a third version that had it all, just in case you wanted to run VMs and plex. Maybe some day, or maybe this is getting too close to 'just build it yourself already'.
The Max incarnation of the Terramaster 4-disk NAS would fill your bill, and then some, but of course it's more expensive. Though on principle, or if I were running TrueNAS Scale, I'd want ECC RAM, but then we're talking well over $1K for anything remotely power-efficient, even for a BIY.
I have four 20TB drives and two 1TB nvme. I can set up a raid5 with nvme front-end cache with this and something like TrueNAS? The USBC seems to *provide 100W from the PSU* not accept it from the wall.
Seems like a decent file server or storage system. Not sure if I would be using it for a dedicated home theater media server, though
I think you said you found an e keyed SSD. I can't find one and I googled my something off.
Can you extend it with a DAS over USB-C ? This thing looks good!!
Yes, although maybe better if the USB-C port was USB3.2 gen2 10Gb/s. Sabrent sells some rugged toolless 4- and 5-bay USB DAS enclosures that should work with Proxmox or TrueNAS Scale, at least according to the Level1 forums. The later USB-SATA bridge chipsets seem to have better error handling and reliability for support of RAID and ZFS, compared to earlier chipsets (so says Wendall). I bought a Sabrent 5-bay but I haven't gotten to testing ZFS on it yet.
Was that power bank Power delivery able? I have run plenty miny PCs from my 65W PD powerbank, add a 5W portable screen and you have an overcomplicated notebook
i have a little question. Can you set the SATA ports in the bios as a ESATA port, then they are hot swappable. i mean yea it disables the cache on the drives but who needs this feature anyway in a nas with no power loss protection.
@HardwareHaven: how did you configure pci passtrough for this one? I'm seeing two SATA controller entries, but if I add both, proxmox complains that I added it twice. Is it enough to add the .0 entry to see all 4 disks? (2 of my disks have yet to arrive, so I can't really test myself..)
I passed through both 0000:07:00.0 and .1 and all 4 SATA drives are visible.
@phar2010 If you select "all functions", then it won't let you choose both. I removed that checkbox and it works now
Add in an Oculink port (even if it shares PCIe lanes with one of the SSD slots, and disables one if something is plugged in) and you've got my perfect mini NAS. The ability to get an AMD 8c/16t CPU & 64GB RAM and still plug in an external Intel or NVIDIA GPU for transcoding would make this absolute perfection for me. Right now, I have an AMD 5900X for my VMs and an 8th gen Intel mini for my Jellyfin server/transcoding. Oculink on this baby would allow me to replace both of those devices. Might be worth trying one of those M.2 to Occulink adapters and YOLOing this thing.
Is there a reasonably priced nas that can do AV1 transcoding, or would one need to custom build a system for this purpose?
Not a bad option. I have a DAS with an N100 mini PC sitting on top acting as my primary file server. This would serve (no pun intended) the same purpose in a single unit. Swings and roundabouts though, slightly improved performance at a slightly higher cost (the N100 version due to fast direct interface), lack of upgrade or similar flexiblity if a single unit goes down but this isnt a big deal for most people in a similar way as mentioned about hot swappable.
I will have to keep an eye out for deals towards the end of the year.
You can buy 5 and 8 bay hot swappable external enclosures for around $200 or less. So, I really don't have any interest at all in any more expensive prebuilt NAS that doesn't at least match that. I'd much rather buy a Zimablade or similar and pair it with an enclosure or two.
The fact that 5 + 8 bay enclosures match with Snapraid parity numbers makes that combination the chef's kiss of low power, compact NAS devices.
I've yet to see any prebuilt NAS that can match a Zimablade + 5 bay enclosure for features and price.
FYI, I know some people will be down on this combo for doing stuff like transcoding and such but I'd rather keep my NAS pure. Having multiple purpose built devices for a range of tasks just works so much better than trying to cram all of that into a single, disappointing expensive box.
Chances are, if you are looking at a device like this one, you are already on board with the idea of multiple low power devices rather than one giant expensive all in one server.
Having different devices for different software tasks will usually be less efficient, and also more clutter. This box is small, low power draw, and has more than enough CPU power.
Thanks for the video. I'm moving to the mountains and will likely take a dip in internet speeds, thinking a NAS will be a great option for a plex server