The video thesis is extremely limited. If there was weighting on features then an AMD 7600x ($200 ), Asus b650 motherboard ($130), and a 64 GB DDR5 UDIMM ECC memory ($310) along with a 10Gbps network card (QFly for $70) , a 4 port M.2 card, ($40) and a Darkrock NAS case ($90) would be competitive. That build is sitting at $830 (maybe another $100 to finish it), it has 4x more memory, 2x more 3.5 drive space, 1.5x more M.2 drive space, 2 open PCI gen 4 x1 slots, a PCI Gen 4 x16 that could be bifurcated to add in more networking or M.2 drives. Now, let's talk about the processors. The AMD V3C14 is a great embedded processor, but it is lacking for doing all the requirements we expect from a NAS that costs > $1000. It does not have the processing power of a 7600x (roughly 2x slower), it will not handle these tasks well: a plex server, a security cam system, a router, or even a VM with the lack of an iGPU, along with only having 16 GB of memory. Lastly there are 2 areas you didn't really address. The first being that the DIY NAS can be easily upgraded. More memory, more CPU, more… can always be added in a few years. The second point is with regards to software, will the company continue to add features (is there any features that could even be added with the low of spec HW), will they fix security issues, will they test for security issues, how many people do they have working on features, and maintenance of their SW. What is their actual commitment to support? That SW point you brought up actually "cuts both ways". There are a lot of pros for Unraid, TrueScale, and even just running Ubuntu server (learning valuable skills, access to experts and others that have used the software for years, shared experiences in forums, etc.) Maybe I am just a DIY guy… It is awesome to see NAS finally bring ECC to the table along with 10Gbps networking, those are really promising features. I love the rpoduct, I hate the price... :)
We always support our devices with feature and security updates until the end of the CPU's support lifecycle. This is usually 7-10 years. The AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 series has a commitment of being on sale and supported until at least 2032. We do not believe in the upgrade every year model.
@@ASUSTOR_YT that's really nice but Truenas has support as long as your hardware life. With Truenas i could use hardware from 2010 when i want. The truth is, your hardware is not that bad but the price is way to high for a system which is not really upgradable and the buyer has to trust you that you really support your systems for than a couple of years. Personally i would never ever pay more than 600$/€ for a 4 bay system.
@@iPain3G I think the problem is that Asustor has to find a price-point that enthusiasts will impulse-buy at. Perhaps as a dedicated NAS to _compliment_ their existing homelab setup. It's just that at $1300 you've got yourself kind of in no-man's land. Your average enthusiast would rather spend the same or less for more, and your average non-tech person is probably more interested in a thunderbolt enclosure for an NVMe, or maybe plugging a cheap USB HDD to their home router. Assuming they care about local storage at all. What saddens me is that I really doubt Asustor is 'gouging' anyone on this product. It's likely a standard mark-up when you consider the R&D and everything that went into developing this. I'm worried that the market response will be weak due to the cost necessary to make a profit, and then companies like Asustor will stop producing gear that is remotely targeted towards us. It's just more evidence of how the economy is doing if our immediate reaction is that this thing is crazy expensive. In the 90's I knew tons of people who had $4,000 laptops, and here we are freaking out over $1200. Not a good sign. -- one man's perspective.
@@iPain3G Well. No. Actually. TrueNAS working doesn't mean it's supported. TrueNAS is open source software maintained by contributions. Support for us, a company means something completely different. We support our products in the sense that we continue to provide software updates, feature updates, security updates as well as providing technical support. TrueNAS does not have a technical support department and iXSystems is not able to provide support for a Nehalem i7 first generation. If there is a bug that breaks things and causes data loss, there is not much they can do. If you have the programming skills, you could fix the issue yourself, or wait for another contributor to find and fix the issue. We pay our developers. We don't have the luxury of free labour like TrueNAS has, but with us, you're not on your own and we're here to help.
Thank you for translating the video into Spanish. You are right when you say that the extra price is due to the convenience of having the entire system installed and easier software installation. I also agree that this NAS should have been Lockestor PRO and not Lockestor Gen3 since the big difference is that the processor does not have IGPU and for many NAS users it is indispensable. Greetings and of course I leave a big thumbs up!
Thanks for doing this, I had loads of people argue with me they could build the same as zimacube pro, (in the comments on that video you did) they couldn’t. It’s like they are saying y’all are stupid for buying a car because a bike is cheaper. SMH .
Thanks for the follow-up video and highlighting my comments 😅 in your video. Yep still not convinced. I think it is also wrong to compare retail prices for build your own with the retail price of this NAS. The NAS will certainly not be using retail sourced parts and will be buying parts in bulk at wholesale prices, likely significantly lower than retail prices. Of course the NAS must also pay for profits, labour, shipping and assembly etc. Some people will have a need for this NAS’ features and will pay the high price, but not me. Looking forward to your Black Friday videos. 🎉
@@mateuszempi Very good question. To get everything into a box as small as this, it just simply costs more to engineer. The parts like the CPU are much more expensive than we traditionally put into our NAS. We have to use Embedded CPUs in our NAS. Some are explicitly labelled as embedded, others are considered embedded internally by the companies. We don't follow the traditional business model of supporting a product for a couple years and push people to upgrade quickly. This means we need to buy parts that will be supported, like embedded CPUs, for a long time. For example, this Ryzen Embedded CPU will be supported at least until 2032. That's eight years of support, driver updates, bug fixes, security fixes we can pass to the consumer. This costs money. Eight to ten years of support is unheard of for most tech products. That means the software costs money. We had to redo the motherboard and making it this small and ensuring its top notch performance costs money. The 10GbE ports, the USB4 ports, they're not cheap. The ECC RAM in SO-DIMM form, also more expensive. DIY is always going to be cheaper because you become the IT guy. We also want to make sure that the hardware and software is engineered so that it's keeping your data safe. We're not abandoning other types of people. We want to have options for many different types of people. But this NAS is for people who want uncompromised speed and energy efficiency in a NAS box that doesn't give them fuss. Content creators, photographers, tech enthusiasts, small/medium-sized businesses with small IT departments that want speed and capacity. There are many tech youtubers that like DIY and fiddling around, but there are many who just get a turnkey NAS solution that's fast so they can get back to talking about their favourite things like CPUs and GPUs because DIY networking can be fussy. Hope this helps!
You dropped the ball on this one @Asustor_YT - no igpu, what a mistake at this price, bought a terramaster instead and installed unRaid, built in igpu on yours and I've have bought one despite the cost.
I do heavy editing and was wondering if I can get by with the Gen2 version, can i use an NVMe drive for caching and be able to saturate both 2.5 Gbps ports? also does it support Docker containers? I currently have a TrueNAS scale remote server and need a good one to sync files with it and edit from that local Gen2 one
Once you take SMB usage into the calculation, the price overhead is reasonable. DIY will always be cheaper because of options, but as a single product this asustor is very lucrative. We were planning to get a Synology ds1522+, but having this on the market with all its connectivity and RAM, the choice have gotten increasingly difficult, especially considering the software suite Synology is offering. Now the choice has boiled down to between software features and hardware features... choices, choices... competition is always great to have IMHO. Cheers!
You could have put Fractal design node 804 on the table to make the point. A neat concise unit for 1300 vs. a Massive Frankenstein monster for 1000... It would be more obvious 😀 Lockerstor is totally worth its hardware. Those who challenge the price just don't need ECC, tens of Gb LAN, Thunderbolt, numerous SSDs and alike. I don't either. For me it is 4 bay NAS which I will soon need to replace because I will run out of bays 😁
You pay a lot for the compact size and the 10Gbe ports. If you don't mind a standard ATX case, with a 4x drive cage in the front, you can build something better for less money. If you also don't need 10Gbe, you can pretty much cut the price in half, and still have a more powerful machine. So I think the bottom line is (in my opinion), that the Lockerstor is a premium priced product, for people who just want something that is plug and play. For the HomeLab or DIY people, there are other solutions that better fit the purpose. The 2 systems I put together ran between £750 and £915, depending on if you need 10Gbe or not. They were both based on AMD R7600, 32GB ECC 6000MHz memory, ASRock X670E Pro RS with 5x M.2 slots and 6 SATA ports and one 2.5Gbe. 550W Seasonic PSU 80W Gold, and then either 4x 10Gbe Card or 4x 2.5Gbe card.
I think everyone understands the convenience factor, but there are so many ways to build up a cheap NAS, and learning how is only a single YT comment or video tutorial away. If Asustor was able to do an 8-bay with an i7 and at least 32GB of RAM for $1500, it think it would sell. As very much an enthusiast, I would have a hard time justifying not buying that versus something else. I just put together my MS-01 i9 with 96GB RAM, 3TB of NVMe and 8-bay QNAP TL-D800S for just under $1,700 to add as a 3rd proxmox node for a ceph cluster of 390TB raw storage. My 4th proxmox node for backups just has two USB3.1 gen 2 4-bay enclosures attached to one of the cheapest N100 minisforum units on the market. The PC was $200, and the Mediasonic HF2-SU3S3 enclosures are $100 each. There are cheaper ones out there. I don't know how the N100 compares apples to apples but you can have a fairly competent 4-bay NAS for $300, or an 8-bay for $400. Mine is hosting home assistant, turnkey file server, and proxmox backup server without breaking a sweat
27 วันที่ผ่านมา
Well, maybe it is better to buy the bigger version that cost just a bit more but offers more disk storage. To build a NAS is not only to find a good hardware but to be able to master the software. I'm on a Synology DS718+ that I'm looking to exchange but haven't figured out yet what I will get instead. Synology have as I can see a good software solution but I dislike their way of trying lock customers into their own brand of extras and their NIC only offers 2 set of 1GB is a bit dated this days. It's not easy to chose from all those different brands and modell that is available. Maybe it would be good to have a checklist of things my next NAS should have. I will have this NAS on my maybe list. When talking about NAS with 2,5, 5 or 10GBit, then we also need a router that can feed such bandwidth. What options do we have there?
Closest one in size will be inwin ms04 Build am5 itx , pcie bifurcation for nvme storage ,a m2 to 10 g or USB/TB 5/10G network Lack of ecc support but you got more options on the processor And a few hundred hours of man power on learning , configuration and security setup /etc Cooking or buying ready to eat food
For the multiple nvme drives it probably would have been more cost effective to have them in 10g usb enclosures into a multi port usbc card, seeing as you were considering those 5g ethernet dongles, and used the main slot for a big nic or one of those multi slot breakout boards you have shown for a few nases
Thank you for your story. You have made a good analysis and I think that the Lockerstore as a turnkey solution is worth the requested amount. In particular, the combination of a powerful Processor max memory capacity and a decent OS make this machine attractive for NAS use along with virtualizations. Synology, in particular, may be scratching its head because they no longer offer what the SOHO market demands. But there are more factors than just a powerful machine when it comes to small business use. Read on. For my own use, I opted for a DIY solution based on Proxmox. I don't see that as a solution for my customers. Here you have to think about things that go beyond warranty: Damage claims, for example, but also the reputation of a brand. You want your customer to trust your solution. For my clients, I would choose a brand that has a long good reputation in the small business market. Then I come to Synology for a simple NAS and for a more powerful and flexible solution on an HP Microserver. Yust the name already is a selling point. Anyway: Thank you again for your always good work!
Hello Asustor! I bought the 6-Bay / Lockerstor Gen 3. Have Seagate 530 M.2’s for it. I cant get heatsinks to fit, because the M.2 NVME’s are so close together. What heatsinks are we supposed to be using for the M.2’s?
If we wanted to fill all those those Gen 4x1 NMVe slots, which NVMe drives do you recommend we put there? I suppose things like Samsung 990's would be a waste because they are too fast. Sorry not an expert with hardware. There's a very good chance I will buy this product, probably the 6 or 8 bay version. I might also get the upcoming Flashtor Gen 3 too. Give us a follow-up announcement about that too!) BTW If Asustor keeps up putting out strong releases like this, it might just pick up the ball that Synology is so badly dropping.
Thank you for your support! We recommend anything that is in our compatibility list. A lot of people forget that SSDs are not only fast in sequential speeds, but also random speeds too. Yes, with the USB4 or dual 10GbE, you are capped at about 20 Gbps, when copying large files, but the random speeds, like copying many little files or doing things like video editing is where the SSDs really shine. And our Flashstor Gen2 series will be out before the 19th.
I think part of the issue is that a lot of the components are an overkill for the majority of NAS usecases, even among those who want ECC - and this causes a significant jump in value of components without matching it in value in the eyes of potential customers. At the end of the day a product that suits a niche, is going to get scoffed-at by the majority - this is inevitable.
I don't think you were fair when you were talking about warranty. You covered the pro's of being under Asustor's umbrella warranty but it kind of ended there. If a component goes bad how long will will you NAS be down before Asustor identifies the problem and gets a solution to you? The best case scenario is they ship out a replacement via next day shipping. Your NAS is still down for at least a day. On the DIY side if your PSU goes out (probably the most common problem) you can have a replacement and be back up and running in less than an hour. Another point is all the components in a turnkey solution are proprietary. What happens when the unit is out of warranty? I know from experience sourcing a new motherboard for an EOL Synology is pretty much impossible. Replacing a motherboard on a DIY solution is a nothing burger. You will probably pay less and get more features. I'm not picking on Asustor. These points apply to all brands. I just feel like it should have been mentioned. Before anyone says I shouldn't be running an EOL NAS let me say in my opinion an EOL NAS makes a great backup for your primany NAS. You can fill it with old drives that would otherwise sit in a drawer. As long as you take the proper precautions. Put it on it's own VLAN so nothing else can connect to it if you are worried. I personally think the $1299 price would be more palpable if it had (6) 3.5" drives instead of just 4. For me that is the systems achilles heel.
Not everyone lives near a Micro Center sadly. If I need a part I pretty much have to order it online and wait. Too bad CompUSA, etc all went the way of the dodo. Still, I agree the price tag is pretty steep for a 4-bay. 6-bay I might give it a second look but you simply can't put enough storage in this thing to justify the cost IMO.
@@-C3S4R- USB4 cards are not platform independent. The motherboard has to be specifically designed to accept USB4 and even then you have to use the same manufacturer. The B550-A does not accept USB4 cards. This is an extra $130 for the card, and $100 for the 10GbE card.
If Zimbabwe still hadn’t issued a new “dollar” it would be multi trillions in the old one. It’s about 108 million Lebanese pounds, in the new country with absolutely out of control inflation.
these videos are always so misleading, these vendors dont play by ordinary rules, the most glaring issue is that they receive huge discounts because the buy in bulk and that factors into their profit margin. a more fair comparison wouldve been buying used or combo deals.
We'd also love to know where these huge discounts are found because as a company made up of 80 people, we certainly haven't found one with a low enough MOQ.
Yeah, I think your shopping list is ... OK. A little better a little worse, whatever, so let's say for a NEW parts build there's $350 average on the table. Wait for sales, etc, then drop back another $50 - but whatever. But, let me start from a similar set of assumptions as you did, but let's go with USED. I can say with 100% certainty that I can get a used Supermicro server with 8 SAS bays and 4 nvme bays, 128GB ECC RAM, A dual Gen 1 or Gen 2 Intel Xeon Scalable processor at 3.0Ghz (total about 48-72 cores depending), dual m.2 gen 3 x4 slots, and quad 10GbE NIC ports. What did I pay? $635 + $80 for the RAM. Yup, not desktop, and yeah it's going to burn power, but not as much as you think - with lower power settings I see less than 100W at idle. Apples to Eggplants comparison, sure, but if you're willing to think laterally then you get all kind of cool results. Oh and I still have 4 x16 pcie 3 slots open for future use - GTX 4070 super anyone?
Everything what ASUSTOR should do with Lockerstor Gen 2 , just update CPU l(like to i5) and add maybe one 10G NIC to make better its like $200 ... But instead they added 10 - USBs , 10 - 10G NICs what's the point if you're not gonna use them all anyway... just to increase the price ?!?! JUST STUPID IDEA!!!!!!!
This review has serious issues. USB4 connectivity is not currently supported. Asustor Tech Support has confirmed that the following, "IP over USB4 does currently no [sic] support cross platform functionality. This means, it will only work between AS68/FS68 devices. We will add that information to our ADM changelog." Also, there is a serious bug in ADM 5 that is not allowing MacOS to connect via SMB. This unit is shipping with what is basically beta software to get the hardware out the door. Buyer beware.
@@dbyolton Thank you for your patience! Our testing indicates that currently, the AMD implementation of USB4 works well with Intel Thunderbolt client systems. We are investigating and co-operating with AMD to raise awareness of the bug affecting MacOS hardware. I apologise for the inconvenience. This seems to be a bug with AMD's drivers and we are working to try to obtain an updated driver to make it work. Please accept my sincerest apologies.
@@ASUSTOR_YT I can't currently use my Lockerstor6 Gen3 due to numerous issues. When authenticating via SMB it hangs. The unit shows a SAMBA panic error in the logs, so I can't use SMB to access the unit. So with USB4 not working, the alternative way to access 20Gb speeds via SMB Multichannel also doesn't work. AFP support is incredibly buggy. If I delete 500 files, it hangs with lock errors. AFP also keeps file locks open for no reason and on one occasion after coping 10Tb, had troubles with long file names. MacOS QA seems to have be nonexistent at Asustor. Plus your help desk hasn't been helpful at all. On top of all of this there is not documentation for ADM 5.0. So, I currently have an expensive piece of hardware that I can't put into production. MacOS users should stay away from this product. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, CAN ANYONE TRUST ASUSTOR WITH THEIR DATA, IF THEY SHIP PRODUCTS WITH A "SHIP IT, THEN FIX IT" APPROACH. The Lockerstor6 Gen3 is sadly a bleeding edge, not leading edge product. Clearly, ADM 5.0 development took longer than manufacturing the hardware and so a product manager green lighted shipments of the unit before ADM 5.0 was fully debugged.
I'm confused. Why not use AMD zen 3 or 4 chipset to get ECC and plenty of pcie lanes for storage, networking, and USB. Neither would have great plex server performance, but that makes it an apples to apples comparison.
Price is just part of the story, I mean, I don't catch the use of this device. Who need this device, with this performance,at this cost, with this form factor? Consumer? really we need 40Gbps for our photos and home assistant, plex? 40Gbps? Enterprise? please ..... Office, maybe ... but I think I'll go with Unifi NAS just for the form factor. I think is just for content creator tha has to edit his videos 8K on the LAN .... so we can see this crispy image on silly 100€ phones. These are just my feelings, probably wrong for many.... don't care.
Next would be a NAS in the same price range comparison? It seems like it has alot of I/O's, question is, would the processor handle the multi tasking or it'll become a bottleneck? Looks like it. Unfortunate collaboration with Adobe. Let just say I wouldn't be subscribing and pay annual subscription. The way Adobe handling their paying customers is a no no! You pay top dollars and in that process steal art you make with their AI generator.
Fun fact that most aren't aware of and some will try and counter- Every DDR5 mobo supports ECC Memory, as every CPU that supports DDR5 also has ECC support in its Memory controller. You can just put ECC Memory in any old mobo that supports DDR5. You're welcome.
@0:48 to you, oh earth and sea For the Devil sends the beast with wrath Because he knows the time is short ... 🍻 666$ is the most they can expect out of me for a 4 bay unit.
so instead of building a better or equivalent you specifically went with the exact same, which often cost massively more since its specialized, seems you've been paid to specifically make it look like the price is similar, if you had done what would have been the right thing and make a equivalent system or better you could do so for about $600 less, why would anyone spend more money for less of a product?
Hi there. We have paid nobody and we never pay influencers to say nice things about our products. We stand by our products and listen to customer feedback. We have no reason to be deceptive. We don't feel our product is lesser. We are cognisant that our product is not for everyone and we are fine with that. We sell our products according to the demands of many of our customers. We have heard from youtubers and numerous commentors that they'd like to see powerful hardware that breaks the speed of light and many have demanded USB4/TB, ECC, over 10GbE and Ryzen CPUs. We still have to make sure we engineer our products in a way that they are stable and trustworthy for your data. We don't doubt that DIY and used hardware is likely going to be cheaper, but as a company, we can't be as blasé with thousands of customers and their important data. So we take on other markets. This NAS is the culmination of those demands. And for many of the reasons stated in this video, our products are being purchased. We don't need to pay anybody and engage in deceptive tactics.
That’s the point, if you don’t compare a self build with the same spec it’s an irrelevant comparison as they are different things. It’s like saying a bike is cheaper and better than a car because both get me from a to b.
Than synology overpriced tags is also valid because of convinience. The same goes apple products. Inferior unrepariable harware that comes with ecosystem.
The video thesis is extremely limited. If there was weighting on features then an AMD 7600x ($200 ), Asus b650 motherboard ($130), and a 64 GB DDR5 UDIMM ECC memory ($310) along with a 10Gbps network card (QFly for $70) , a 4 port M.2 card, ($40) and a Darkrock NAS case ($90) would be competitive. That build is sitting at $830 (maybe another $100 to finish it), it has 4x more memory, 2x more 3.5 drive space, 1.5x more M.2 drive space, 2 open PCI gen 4 x1 slots, a PCI Gen 4 x16 that could be bifurcated to add in more networking or M.2 drives. Now, let's talk about the processors. The AMD V3C14 is a great embedded processor, but it is lacking for doing all the requirements we expect from a NAS that costs > $1000. It does not have the processing power of a 7600x (roughly 2x slower), it will not handle these tasks well: a plex server, a security cam system, a router, or even a VM with the lack of an iGPU, along with only having 16 GB of memory. Lastly there are 2 areas you didn't really address. The first being that the DIY NAS can be easily upgraded. More memory, more CPU, more… can always be added in a few years. The second point is with regards to software, will the company continue to add features (is there any features that could even be added with the low of spec HW), will they fix security issues, will they test for security issues, how many people do they have working on features, and maintenance of their SW. What is their actual commitment to support? That SW point you brought up actually "cuts both ways". There are a lot of pros for Unraid, TrueScale, and even just running Ubuntu server (learning valuable skills, access to experts and others that have used the software for years, shared experiences in forums, etc.) Maybe I am just a DIY guy… It is awesome to see NAS finally bring ECC to the table along with 10Gbps networking, those are really promising features. I love the rpoduct, I hate the price... :)
We always support our devices with feature and security updates until the end of the CPU's support lifecycle. This is usually 7-10 years. The AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 series has a commitment of being on sale and supported until at least 2032.
We do not believe in the upgrade every year model.
@@ASUSTOR_YT that's really nice but Truenas has support as long as your hardware life. With Truenas i could use hardware from 2010 when i want.
The truth is, your hardware is not that bad but the price is way to high for a system which is not really upgradable and the buyer has to trust you that you really support your systems for than a couple of years. Personally i would never ever pay more than 600$/€ for a 4 bay system.
@@iPain3G I think the problem is that Asustor has to find a price-point that enthusiasts will impulse-buy at. Perhaps as a dedicated NAS to _compliment_ their existing homelab setup. It's just that at $1300 you've got yourself kind of in no-man's land. Your average enthusiast would rather spend the same or less for more, and your average non-tech person is probably more interested in a thunderbolt enclosure for an NVMe, or maybe plugging a cheap USB HDD to their home router. Assuming they care about local storage at all.
What saddens me is that I really doubt Asustor is 'gouging' anyone on this product. It's likely a standard mark-up when you consider the R&D and everything that went into developing this. I'm worried that the market response will be weak due to the cost necessary to make a profit, and then companies like Asustor will stop producing gear that is remotely targeted towards us.
It's just more evidence of how the economy is doing if our immediate reaction is that this thing is crazy expensive. In the 90's I knew tons of people who had $4,000 laptops, and here we are freaking out over $1200. Not a good sign. -- one man's perspective.
@@iPain3G Well. No. Actually. TrueNAS working doesn't mean it's supported. TrueNAS is open source software maintained by contributions. Support for us, a company means something completely different. We support our products in the sense that we continue to provide software updates, feature updates, security updates as well as providing technical support. TrueNAS does not have a technical support department and iXSystems is not able to provide support for a Nehalem i7 first generation. If there is a bug that breaks things and causes data loss, there is not much they can do. If you have the programming skills, you could fix the issue yourself, or wait for another contributor to find and fix the issue. We pay our developers. We don't have the luxury of free labour like TrueNAS has, but with us, you're not on your own and we're here to help.
Thank you for translating the video into Spanish. You are right when you say that the extra price is due to the convenience of having the entire system installed and easier software installation. I also agree that this NAS should have been Lockestor PRO and not Lockestor Gen3 since the big difference is that the processor does not have IGPU and for many NAS users it is indispensable. Greetings and of course I leave a big thumbs up!
Thanks for doing this, I had loads of people argue with me they could build the same as zimacube pro, (in the comments on that video you did) they couldn’t. It’s like they are saying y’all are stupid for buying a car because a bike is cheaper. SMH .
Thanks for the follow-up video and highlighting my comments 😅 in your video. Yep still not convinced. I think it is also wrong to compare retail prices for build your own with the retail price of this NAS. The NAS will certainly not be using retail sourced parts and will be buying parts in bulk at wholesale prices, likely significantly lower than retail prices. Of course the NAS must also pay for profits, labour, shipping and assembly etc. Some people will have a need for this NAS’ features and will pay the high price, but not me. Looking forward to your Black Friday videos. 🎉
Happy to answer questions!
Why so expensive ? Who do you think is the target for this product ?
@@mateuszempi Very good question. To get everything into a box as small as this, it just simply costs more to engineer. The parts like the CPU are much more expensive than we traditionally put into our NAS. We have to use Embedded CPUs in our NAS. Some are explicitly labelled as embedded, others are considered embedded internally by the companies. We don't follow the traditional business model of supporting a product for a couple years and push people to upgrade quickly. This means we need to buy parts that will be supported, like embedded CPUs, for a long time. For example, this Ryzen Embedded CPU will be supported at least until 2032. That's eight years of support, driver updates, bug fixes, security fixes we can pass to the consumer. This costs money. Eight to ten years of support is unheard of for most tech products. That means the software costs money. We had to redo the motherboard and making it this small and ensuring its top notch performance costs money. The 10GbE ports, the USB4 ports, they're not cheap. The ECC RAM in SO-DIMM form, also more expensive. DIY is always going to be cheaper because you become the IT guy. We also want to make sure that the hardware and software is engineered so that it's keeping your data safe.
We're not abandoning other types of people. We want to have options for many different types of people. But this NAS is for people who want uncompromised speed and energy efficiency in a NAS box that doesn't give them fuss. Content creators, photographers, tech enthusiasts, small/medium-sized businesses with small IT departments that want speed and capacity.
There are many tech youtubers that like DIY and fiddling around, but there are many who just get a turnkey NAS solution that's fast so they can get back to talking about their favourite things like CPUs and GPUs because DIY networking can be fussy.
Hope this helps!
You dropped the ball on this one @Asustor_YT - no igpu, what a mistake at this price, bought a terramaster instead and installed unRaid, built in igpu on yours and I've have bought one despite the cost.
I do heavy editing and was wondering if I can get by with the Gen2 version, can i use an NVMe drive for caching and be able to saturate both 2.5 Gbps ports? also does it support Docker containers? I currently have a TrueNAS scale remote server and need a good one to sync files with it and edit from that local Gen2 one
We're in November : where da Flashstor Gen 2 at ?!
Robbie remember uj prices are with 25% vat and us prices are without an sales tax (that’s better around 5% and 10% depending where you live)
NGL, I just skipped to end😅. Might return later a listen to the whole thing.
Once you take SMB usage into the calculation, the price overhead is reasonable. DIY will always be cheaper because of options, but as a single product this asustor is very lucrative. We were planning to get a Synology ds1522+, but having this on the market with all its connectivity and RAM, the choice have gotten increasingly difficult, especially considering the software suite Synology is offering. Now the choice has boiled down to between software features and hardware features... choices, choices... competition is always great to have IMHO. Cheers!
You could have put Fractal design node 804 on the table to make the point. A neat concise unit for 1300 vs. a Massive Frankenstein monster for 1000... It would be more obvious 😀 Lockerstor is totally worth its hardware.
Those who challenge the price just don't need ECC, tens of Gb LAN, Thunderbolt, numerous SSDs and alike. I don't either. For me it is 4 bay NAS which I will soon need to replace because I will run out of bays 😁
You pay a lot for the compact size and the 10Gbe ports. If you don't mind a standard ATX case, with a 4x drive cage in the front, you can build something better for less money. If you also don't need 10Gbe, you can pretty much cut the price in half, and still have a more powerful machine.
So I think the bottom line is (in my opinion), that the Lockerstor is a premium priced product, for people who just want something that is plug and play. For the HomeLab or DIY people, there are other solutions that better fit the purpose.
The 2 systems I put together ran between £750 and £915, depending on if you need 10Gbe or not. They were both based on AMD R7600, 32GB ECC 6000MHz memory, ASRock X670E Pro RS with 5x M.2 slots and 6 SATA ports and one 2.5Gbe. 550W Seasonic PSU 80W Gold, and then either 4x 10Gbe Card or 4x 2.5Gbe card.
I think everyone understands the convenience factor, but there are so many ways to build up a cheap NAS, and learning how is only a single YT comment or video tutorial away.
If Asustor was able to do an 8-bay with an i7 and at least 32GB of RAM for $1500, it think it would sell. As very much an enthusiast, I would have a hard time justifying not buying that versus something else. I just put together my MS-01 i9 with 96GB RAM, 3TB of NVMe and 8-bay QNAP TL-D800S for just under $1,700 to add as a 3rd proxmox node for a ceph cluster of 390TB raw storage.
My 4th proxmox node for backups just has two USB3.1 gen 2 4-bay enclosures attached to one of the cheapest N100 minisforum units on the market. The PC was $200, and the Mediasonic HF2-SU3S3 enclosures are $100 each. There are cheaper ones out there. I don't know how the N100 compares apples to apples but you can have a fairly competent 4-bay NAS for $300, or an 8-bay for $400. Mine is hosting home assistant, turnkey file server, and proxmox backup server without breaking a sweat
Well, maybe it is better to buy the bigger version that cost just a bit more but offers more disk storage. To build a NAS is not only to find a good hardware but to be able to master the software. I'm on a Synology DS718+ that I'm looking to exchange but haven't figured out yet what I will get instead. Synology have as I can see a good software solution but I dislike their way of trying lock customers into their own brand of extras and their NIC only offers 2 set of 1GB is a bit dated this days. It's not easy to chose from all those different brands and modell that is available. Maybe it would be good to have a checklist of things my next NAS should have. I will have this NAS on my maybe list. When talking about NAS with 2,5, 5 or 10GBit, then we also need a router that can feed such bandwidth. What options do we have there?
8:24 No probs Robbie!
Closest one in size will be inwin ms04
Build am5 itx , pcie bifurcation for nvme storage ,a m2 to 10 g or USB/TB 5/10G network
Lack of ecc support but you got more options on the processor
And a few hundred hours of man power on learning , configuration and security setup /etc
Cooking or buying ready to eat food
For the multiple nvme drives it probably would have been more cost effective to have them in 10g usb enclosures into a multi port usbc card, seeing as you were considering those 5g ethernet dongles, and used the main slot for a big nic or one of those multi slot breakout boards you have shown for a few nases
Thank you for your story.
You have made a good analysis and I think that the Lockerstore as a turnkey solution is worth the requested amount.
In particular, the combination of a powerful Processor max memory capacity and a decent OS make this machine attractive for NAS use along with virtualizations.
Synology, in particular, may be scratching its head because they no longer offer what the SOHO market demands.
But there are more factors than just a powerful machine when it comes to small business use.
Read on.
For my own use, I opted for a DIY solution based on Proxmox.
I don't see that as a solution for my customers. Here you have to think about things that go beyond warranty: Damage claims, for example, but also the reputation of a brand. You want your customer to trust your solution.
For my clients, I would choose a brand that has a long good reputation in the small business market.
Then I come to Synology for a simple NAS and for a more powerful and flexible solution on an HP Microserver. Yust the name already is a selling point.
Anyway: Thank you again for your always good work!
What RAM can we use to upgrade it to 64GB?
Hello Asustor! I bought the 6-Bay / Lockerstor Gen 3. Have Seagate 530 M.2’s for it. I cant get heatsinks to fit, because the M.2 NVME’s are so close together.
What heatsinks are we supposed to be using for the M.2’s?
Hi there! We sell heatsinks that mount directly to the board.
@ - What specific product is that? I dont see heatsink listed for the “AS68” models on Asustor website.
Please clarify.
The x540 is only pcie 2.1
If we wanted to fill all those those Gen 4x1 NMVe slots, which NVMe drives do you recommend we put there? I suppose things like Samsung 990's would be a waste because they are too fast. Sorry not an expert with hardware. There's a very good chance I will buy this product, probably the 6 or 8 bay version. I might also get the upcoming Flashtor Gen 3 too. Give us a follow-up announcement about that too!) BTW If Asustor keeps up putting out strong releases like this, it might just pick up the ball that Synology is so badly dropping.
Thank you for your support! We recommend anything that is in our compatibility list. A lot of people forget that SSDs are not only fast in sequential speeds, but also random speeds too. Yes, with the USB4 or dual 10GbE, you are capped at about 20 Gbps, when copying large files, but the random speeds, like copying many little files or doing things like video editing is where the SSDs really shine. And our Flashstor Gen2 series will be out before the 19th.
I think part of the issue is that a lot of the components are an overkill for the majority of NAS usecases, even among those who want ECC - and this causes a significant jump in value of components without matching it in value in the eyes of potential customers.
At the end of the day a product that suits a niche, is going to get scoffed-at by the majority - this is inevitable.
I didn’t know this video would assign homework. I’m just going to say it can’t be done, pencils down 😅
I don't think you were fair when you were talking about warranty. You covered the pro's of being under Asustor's umbrella warranty but it kind of ended there. If a component goes bad how long will will you NAS be down before Asustor identifies the problem and gets a solution to you? The best case scenario is they ship out a replacement via next day shipping. Your NAS is still down for at least a day. On the DIY side if your PSU goes out (probably the most common problem) you can have a replacement and be back up and running in less than an hour.
Another point is all the components in a turnkey solution are proprietary. What happens when the unit is out of warranty? I know from experience sourcing a new motherboard for an EOL Synology is pretty much impossible. Replacing a motherboard on a DIY solution is a nothing burger. You will probably pay less and get more features. I'm not picking on Asustor. These points apply to all brands. I just feel like it should have been mentioned. Before anyone says I shouldn't be running an EOL NAS let me say in my opinion an EOL NAS makes a great backup for your primany NAS. You can fill it with old drives that would otherwise sit in a drawer. As long as you take the proper precautions. Put it on it's own VLAN so nothing else can connect to it if you are worried.
I personally think the $1299 price would be more palpable if it had (6) 3.5" drives instead of just 4. For me that is the systems achilles heel.
Not everyone lives near a Micro Center sadly. If I need a part I pretty much have to order it online and wait. Too bad CompUSA, etc all went the way of the dodo.
Still, I agree the price tag is pretty steep for a 4-bay. 6-bay I might give it a second look but you simply can't put enough storage in this thing to justify the cost IMO.
Asus ROG STRIX B550-A GAMING + 4650G pro + 32go ECC KSM32ED8/32HC = ECC support, iGPU and 20W idle👌
The board doesn't come with USB4. This has been a highly requested feature.
@@ASUSTOR_YT You can add USB4 pcie card, or 10G nic or wifi 7...
@@-C3S4R- USB4 cards are not platform independent. The motherboard has to be specifically designed to accept USB4 and even then you have to use the same manufacturer. The B550-A does not accept USB4 cards. This is an extra $130 for the card, and $100 for the 10GbE card.
@@ASUSTOR_YT You right for the USB4 cards compatibility 👍
Only Millionaires can afford to get one in Indonesia. The Lockestor 4 Gen3 would cost 18.7 Million Rupiah in Indonesia.
If Zimbabwe still hadn’t issued a new “dollar” it would be multi trillions in the old one. It’s about 108 million Lebanese pounds, in the new country with absolutely out of control inflation.
New Mac Mini and a das will do the job for cheaper
these videos are always so misleading, these vendors dont play by ordinary rules, the most glaring issue is that they receive huge discounts because the buy in bulk and that factors into their profit margin. a more fair comparison wouldve been buying used or combo deals.
We'd also love to know where these huge discounts are found because as a company made up of 80 people, we certainly haven't found one with a low enough MOQ.
Strange video indeed. Still watched it till the end of course
Yeah, I think your shopping list is ... OK. A little better a little worse, whatever, so let's say for a NEW parts build there's $350 average on the table. Wait for sales, etc, then drop back another $50 - but whatever. But, let me start from a similar set of assumptions as you did, but let's go with USED. I can say with 100% certainty that I can get a used Supermicro server with 8 SAS bays and 4 nvme bays, 128GB ECC RAM, A dual Gen 1 or Gen 2 Intel Xeon Scalable processor at 3.0Ghz (total about 48-72 cores depending), dual m.2 gen 3 x4 slots, and quad 10GbE NIC ports. What did I pay? $635 + $80 for the RAM. Yup, not desktop, and yeah it's going to burn power, but not as much as you think - with lower power settings I see less than 100W at idle. Apples to Eggplants comparison, sure, but if you're willing to think laterally then you get all kind of cool results. Oh and I still have 4 x16 pcie 3 slots open for future use - GTX 4070 super anyone?
MS-01 and Truenas and external storage
more than double ? it is quadrupled 😮💨😮💨😮💨
Everything what ASUSTOR should do with Lockerstor Gen 2 , just update CPU l(like to i5) and add maybe one 10G NIC to make better its like $200 ... But instead they added 10 - USBs , 10 - 10G NICs what's the point if you're not gonna use them all anyway... just to increase the price ?!?! JUST STUPID IDEA!!!!!!!
This review has serious issues. USB4 connectivity is not currently supported. Asustor Tech Support has confirmed that the following,
"IP over USB4 does currently no [sic] support cross platform functionality.
This means, it will only work between AS68/FS68 devices.
We will add that information to our ADM changelog."
Also, there is a serious bug in ADM 5 that is not allowing MacOS to connect via SMB.
This unit is shipping with what is basically beta software to get the hardware out the door.
Buyer beware.
Who said this to you?
@@dbyolton No problems. Let me investigate for you.
@@ASUSTOR_YT See Ticket 82814 in your support system.
@@dbyolton Thank you for your patience! Our testing indicates that currently, the AMD implementation of USB4 works well with Intel Thunderbolt client systems. We are investigating and co-operating with AMD to raise awareness of the bug affecting MacOS hardware. I apologise for the inconvenience. This seems to be a bug with AMD's drivers and we are working to try to obtain an updated driver to make it work. Please accept my sincerest apologies.
@@ASUSTOR_YT I can't currently use my Lockerstor6 Gen3 due to numerous issues. When authenticating via SMB it hangs. The unit shows a SAMBA panic error in the logs, so I can't use SMB to access the unit. So with USB4 not working, the alternative way to access 20Gb speeds via SMB Multichannel also doesn't work. AFP support is incredibly buggy. If I delete 500 files, it hangs with lock errors. AFP also keeps file locks open for no reason and on one occasion after coping 10Tb, had troubles with long file names. MacOS QA seems to have be nonexistent at Asustor. Plus your help desk hasn't been helpful at all. On top of all of this there is not documentation for ADM 5.0. So, I currently have an expensive piece of hardware that I can't put into production. MacOS users should stay away from this product. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, CAN ANYONE TRUST ASUSTOR WITH THEIR DATA, IF THEY SHIP PRODUCTS WITH A "SHIP IT, THEN FIX IT" APPROACH. The Lockerstor6 Gen3 is sadly a bleeding edge, not leading edge product. Clearly, ADM 5.0 development took longer than manufacturing the hardware and so a product manager green lighted shipments of the unit before ADM 5.0 was fully debugged.
I'm confused. Why not use AMD zen 3 or 4 chipset to get ECC and plenty of pcie lanes for storage, networking, and USB. Neither would have great plex server performance, but that makes it an apples to apples comparison.
Hi there! Ryzen Embedded V3000 series are Zen3 cores.
True NAS with an old PC and 10 drives. You just can't beat it.
Cool
yeah.. the warranty and support is absolutely worth the 200.00 difference in price.
Parts will have warranties. If you licence TrueNAS or UnRaid, there is support.
Its a custom case
Price is just part of the story, I mean, I don't catch the use of this device. Who need this device, with this performance,at this cost, with this form factor?
Consumer? really we need 40Gbps for our photos and home assistant, plex? 40Gbps?
Enterprise? please .....
Office, maybe ... but I think I'll go with Unifi NAS just for the form factor.
I think is just for content creator tha has to edit his videos 8K on the LAN .... so we can see this crispy image on silly 100€ phones.
These are just my feelings, probably wrong for many.... don't care.
Asustor Flashstor Gen 2 on the 19th!!! I’m so excited
Next would be a NAS in the same price range comparison? It seems like it has alot of I/O's, question is, would the processor handle the multi tasking or it'll become a bottleneck? Looks like it.
Unfortunate collaboration with Adobe. Let just say I wouldn't be subscribing and pay annual subscription. The way Adobe handling their paying customers is a no no! You pay top dollars and in that process steal art you make with their AI generator.
Fun fact that most aren't aware of and some will try and counter-
Every DDR5 mobo supports ECC Memory, as every CPU that supports DDR5 also has ECC support in its Memory controller. You can just put ECC Memory in any old mobo that supports DDR5.
You're welcome.
Conviniance without a video card. Comedy...
@0:48 to you, oh earth and sea
For the Devil sends the beast with wrath
Because he knows the time is short
... 🍻
666$ is the most they can expect out of me for a 4 bay unit.
so instead of building a better or equivalent you specifically went with the exact same, which often cost massively more since its specialized, seems you've been paid to specifically make it look like the price is similar, if you had done what would have been the right thing and make a equivalent system or better you could do so for about $600 less, why would anyone spend more money for less of a product?
Hi there. We have paid nobody and we never pay influencers to say nice things about our products. We stand by our products and listen to customer feedback. We have no reason to be deceptive. We don't feel our product is lesser. We are cognisant that our product is not for everyone and we are fine with that. We sell our products according to the demands of many of our customers. We have heard from youtubers and numerous commentors that they'd like to see powerful hardware that breaks the speed of light and many have demanded USB4/TB, ECC, over 10GbE and Ryzen CPUs. We still have to make sure we engineer our products in a way that they are stable and trustworthy for your data. We don't doubt that DIY and used hardware is likely going to be cheaper, but as a company, we can't be as blasé with thousands of customers and their important data. So we take on other markets. This NAS is the culmination of those demands. And for many of the reasons stated in this video, our products are being purchased. We don't need to pay anybody and engage in deceptive tactics.
That’s the point, if you don’t compare a self build with the same spec it’s an irrelevant comparison as they are different things. It’s like saying a bike is cheaper and better than a car because both get me from a to b.
Also not sure you understand the word equivalent, he explained why this is equivalent (it certainly is not exactly the same).
Than synology overpriced tags is also valid because of convinience. The same goes apple products. Inferior unrepariable harware that comes with ecosystem.
1440€... For this price at least it have 4 hard drive preinstalled, isn't it? Isn't it? 😶
No. Hard drives are expensive and everyone has different capacity needs.
Erm only got three languages to listen to French portugese and mexican????? Can't understand a word you saying
This video is no different than sales tv ads.