I have a 2 bay Synology from 2018 as my nas and am looking to upgrade to a 4-5 bay unit. My current one is end of life as of Feb 8th, and I have a friend who made me a fair offer on it, so I have been compelled to upgrade.
I mostly just use it as a NAS and a storage location for my plex server (external computer) but would like to play with some virtualization / docker stuff (I don’t have the horsepower in my current nas). My home network is a mix of 1g and 2.5g, but its mostly 1g. I will have all the 2.5g or up on a 2.5g switch. My budget is ~ 1k, I don’t need sata drives or NVME (I bought some on black Friday sale or have a few extras around)…
I have been playing around with some local AI models, nothing that touches my storage yet, but if you of any reason to link those two things, I would be interested in hearing about it.
Right now I am looking at the Synology DS1525+ 5 bay, as its less than a DS925+ with the 8g memory upgrade (plus it has a 10g nic option and a 5th bay).
I have been happy with my Synology so far, I don’t hate the interface and would be happy to buy another.
I’m also looking for something that sits on a shelf, not rack mount stuff. I also am comfortable with Linux and something like proxmox or truenas.
What other options do people recommend? I know qnap had some security stuff in the past, but I think they sorted that out.
I run some gen 1 and 2 Asustor Lockerstors and they’ve been the good kind of boring for schlepping files. Gen 2 6 bay pricing’s about the same as DS1525+ here, though pricing on the gen 3s has gone up quite a bit lately.
It’s unclear to me how much Synology’s backed off on their predatory pricing efforts with relabeled drives. Hurt enough they dropped it but will they try something else? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for the info, I looked up the gen 2/3 6 bay and they are over my budget of 1k (at least based on 2-3 sites I checked)… So that prices me out. I will look at their other products to see if there are any good fits.
Over the last few weeks I’ve played with the minisforum N5 Pro Nas and the Aoostar Pro. Both seem pretty good and would fit the bill in terms of cores n power for proxmox. They’re both pretty new, so time will tell on the reliability.
I should mention that a few folks here have had issues with the N5.
There’s a couple of Terramaster nas’s that may fit your drive and budget needs, and you could always upgrade the ram later.
With most (if not all) the qnap, tm, syn, etc, if they’re Intel or AMD and have video out, you can install other os’s easily, a quick yt search will explain how.
Personally, I use a 12 year old qnap ts-451+ running DietPi os for my files, feed a half a dozen Jellyfin clients, other things, etc, and it’s fine with it’s 4 piddly celeron cores.
All of these are designed to minimise power consumption, but you’re going to have to dig deeper to find the lowest energy consumption.
Oh, you may find helpful, this guy does check energy usage as part of his reviews. Can’t vouch for his accuracy but it’s a good place to just see nas’s.
That N5 air is on sale for 500, I have a extra 48g dimm I could slap in it, that would be way more power than that Synology I was looking at. I also like that I can run Linux on it, I like the idea of shifting away from priority software. I’ll have to dig more into this and the UGreen NASs later to see if they are a better option, thanks!
I put it in a K7 8 Bay NAS Case. I had a suitable old PSU already, along with misc cables, so that reduced my final cost, all in all a very solid and expandable setup that’s easy to work with.
Last year there were a bunch on eBay for ~$200-300. There’s less now but seem some still pop by as low as $300 Datto OCT-D1541D4U ATX Server Motherboard w/ Intel Xeon D-1541 16g Memory-tested | eBay (keep in mind, they don’t typically come with ECC memory, cables, PSU, or other hardware bits like fans to cool the fins of the onboard 10G and SAS chips). Any higher than that though, and I’d just start looking at a cheap ryzen board/cpu + whatever SAS and 10G cards I’d want to use.
After looking at the UGreen product line and some other options, I think the MINISFORUM N5 Air 5-Bay seems the most compelling. It has more CPU and connectivity than any other option, and its 500$ (I have a 48g sodim I can pop in).
I figure it would be a good way to play around with running docker and VMs from this device in addition to using it as a NAS. I like the idea of self hosting apps / services and potentially accessing them with tailscale… this might be the entry into a lot of fun homelab stuff
The AOOSTAR WTR PRO 5825U could be a good option, but I really like the features of the minisforum nas. Faster nics, full pcie slot, plus a 5th bay, occulink, etc. also, I have a ddr5 sodim, I don’t have any extra ddr4 lol… I know that’s silly but it’s a contributing factor.
That’s it, Aoostar WTR Max. 6 sata + 5 m.2 = 11 ‘bays’. Take a look at Wendell’s vid, there’s also a great side by side on NasCompares channel - including power consumption you mentioned.
The CPU isn’t as powerful at the N5 pro, but between the superior network connections, multiple 10Gb network speed, and the additional storage capacity, a very worthy option.
You said you’ve already got a ecc sodimm stick, and I assume it’s the ddr5 these units use…? You may want to google the nas model and your ram model numbers - compatibility issues can happen.
Wow that’s actually really nice, and a reasonable price too. Seems like it has an idle power draw of ~20watts (with just one ssd). I’m good for quite a long while, but if I was on the market that’d basically be what I compare all other options too.
I was in the same boat a month ago, for me it was going to be between the Ugreen DXP 4800 or just going the DIY route.
Learn from me, and don’t go DIY unless you can get reliable second-hand equipment. Definitely cooler, but do you really need to overspend on a storage / VM server.
It’s upside down because my last decent m.2 is a t700, the heatsink doesn’t fit and I’m too lazy to remove it.
The physical build is very nice, fits nice, works nice and quiet. Chuck in some decent DDR4, this is a pretty good Nuc. I’ve got it for ‘testing’ for a bit, it’s new ram is taking a while to arrive. I’m enjoying it.
This is probably going to be an offsite ProxMox backup unit, so I’ll get to see how it holds up over a few years.
Thanks for the recommendation, there is a lot in that platform that looks interesting. I am not sure i need that many drive bays though. 4 drives plus a NVME for caching is what I expect to require (maybe a second nvme or 5th bay for VMs). I think I would rather have the full PCIE x16 slot +10g lan over the SFPs, I feel like that would be more versatile, but I also like the idea of using ECC memory… As far as I know AOOSTAR is still a newer brand, I have seen a few generations of minisforum stuff, so from what I know they may be a little more reputable? (not that I am doubting AOOSTAR)… its going to be a hard choice to make.
I considered the DIY route but am looking for a pre-built platform to load linux on. Also, reliability is the big thing keeping me from using used hardware and going the DIY route (other than a somewhat limited storage space)… not that new hardware is perfect, but generally its more reliable than an unknown ebay part.
