Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen2 (AS6704T) NAS Review

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Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

Other NAS brands are on the market in a saturated fashion; Asustor is a legitimate top-tier manufacturer. The hardware and software stacks are of the highest quality. My workplace has used Asustor NAS servers for years; therefore, I know what I'm talking about since I am familiar with them. NAS servers are no about energy-efficient hardware that bring you the most in features and performance; the software package may aid with comprehensive solutions, whether you want corporate capabilities or home and streaming. This is where the frosting of the cake's topside is located. NAS devices can service anything; you could make it a KODI or PLEX movie player NAS.

SSDs or HDDs?

SSD prices continue to stabilize, and they are currently as cheap as 10 cents per GB. Suppose you do not want large volume sizes. In that case, I would choose SSDs, not only for durability and the elimination of mechanical moving parts but also because these devices use far less power and will save you energy. Remember, this hardware is active 24/7 all year round. You should constantly remember that a NAS is likely to be on all the time. TLC and QLC NAND-based SSDs are ideal for NAS storage since it is typically cold data, which means it will remain there for a long period without dramatically overwriting important NAND cell cycles.

I'll show this again, energy prices have risen, say 35 Cents per EUR/USD.

  • If you keep adding HDDs at 8 Watt per HDD that's 31 EUR per year for each HDD.
  • If you keep adding SSDs at 2 Watt per SSD that's 6 EUR per year for each SSD.
 

Hardware

The Intel Quad-Core 10 nm Celeron N5105 CPU  (Jasper Lake) quad-core CPU can turbo to a 2.9 GHz Turbo clock frequency, deliver plenty of performance and easily cope with the performance 2.5 Gbps jacks. The 4GB memory is also a sweet spot but is upgradeable to 8GB in dual-channel or even 2x 8GB. But again, that ADM software stack is just incredibly efficient with memory. We like that we can add 4x HDD or SSDs to the unit; the tray caddies take both. We do love our four NVME M.2. slots, though. We're at a clipping point where NVMe storage is getting cheaper than SATA3 SSDs (I know, weird, right?). It will be interesting to see what the future brings, as I can imagine NVMe M.2 based NAS units solely for best performance and value. I have to say, though, that we love M.2. NVMe units, you can use them as SSD cache or just as the main volume cluster. Concerning all that, we feel the one gripe this NAS unit has is the 2.5 GigE connections; 5 GigE or 10 GigE, of course, is a better match for such fast M2 Units.

Pricing

When writing, the four-bay variant with a quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM, four NVMe M.2 drives, and twin 2.5 Gbps connectors was $689. For a customer, it is a significant amount of money to spend for any SOHO/business. However, from where I sit, it is well worth the money. Of course, the additional expenditures for HDD/SSDs must be taken into consideration also. If you wish to make your LAN infrastructure multi-GigE compliant, you'll need a 2.5/5/10 Gbps switch. However, in the long run, it is an investment that will continue for many years. If not all, motherboards already feature an Intel/Marvell/Aquantia/Realtek 2.5, 5, or 10 Gbps Ethernet connector, reducing the extra expense of a 10 Gbps Ethernet NIC on the client-side.

 

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Energy Efficiency

In a single SSD/HDD setup, the NAS uses about 15 Watts of power, which is good for a NAS that can last this long. The Celeron (Jasper Lake) quad-core CPU is a nice match for the environment; that chip alone uses 10 Watts of power at full load. When you add in your SSDs or HDDs, you will have a pretty good idea of how much power your computer uses. If you don't use your hard drives for, say, 30 minutes (or however long you set the sleep time to be), they will go into sleep mode and not use a lot of extra power. The unit also has a hibernation mode. When in hibernation, the unit goes to sleep and uses less than one watt of power. To wake it up again, you can press a button or use a WOL app on your smartphone. This means that you can wake up the unit from outside your network. This is very helpful if you are traveling and don't want your NAS to be on all the time. ASUSTOR's NAS units use very little energy, it's the storage and how you use it that is responsible for the rest. Especially HDDS can use of a lot of energy when powered on and active 24/7/365.

 

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Final Words

The Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen2 /  AS6704T NAS easily is a win over any NAS we've recently tested. The SoC is powerful; with four SATA3 SSDs/HDDs, you can create big volume sizes and then add four NVMe M.2. SSDs as primary, secondary storage, or even caching.  Accumulated, you can house eight storage units. If we may make one remark, we do feel that the Lockerstor 4 should have gotten a faster ethernet jack, though, as the performance of NVMe SSDs is limited this way. Then again, at almost 300 MB/sec who are we to argue that thesis? Apart from that, we have nothing to complain about. Remember that you will need a Multi-GigE ethernet infrastructure, which means that your switch and client-side PC, for example, must support at least 2.5 GigE. 10 Gigabit switches with a sufficient number of ports are difficult to obtain, and if you can find them, they are quite costly. NAS should offer a bundle package or sell energy-efficient 10 Gigabit switches at an attractive price, which would undoubtedly increase NAS sales to new heights, given the performance these devices can deliver these days (if you have that fast LAN infrastructure). For the time being, you should expect this NAS to provide performance in the 250-300 MB/sec range across your LAN. The AS6704T is undoubtedly one of my favorite NAS devices this year, owing to a strong SoC, 2.5 GigE connections, quad 2.5" SATA3 slots, and quad M.2. slots HDMI, and an exquisite software suite provided by Asustor. We recommend it wholeheartedly, as this might be the best NAS we've ever had our hands on in years.

Give ASUSTOR a visit here.

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