It's not the hardware that's the problem - Synology DS923+ Review

Grab yourself a Pint Glass or Coaster at craftcomputing...
Hi LPL... big fan. Hope I did the iconic voice justice.
Synology has a long history of creating NAS boxes and servers designed for businesses. And while I'm actually fairly happy with the hardware inside this one, it also opens up a whole new conversation about vendor lock-ins that plague the industry. Hardware Good, but I hope you like Synology...
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/ craftcomputing

[@tack-support]

Love the lockpicking lawyer reference, haha!

[@CraftComputing]

You can tell its bad because I picked the lock twice, and the entire gag is less than 60 seconds :-D

[@daltonschrader8328]

I also loved it lol

[@MindZye]

@@CraftComputing At least it'll keep a toddler from removing the drives, right? ... right? 😨

[@glenharrison8524]

I'd say the locks are there to avoid accidental removal, not to stop a thief from getting your drives. I mean, if someone wants to remove them, lock or no lock, they're coming out.

[@MrV1NC3N7V3G4]

⁠​⁠@@glenharrison8524I don’t think that’s the case. I heard they hired ASSA Abloy to design that locking mechanism.

[@PeterHonig.]

We are a commercial dairy goat farm and Grade-A compliant state-licensed creamery, and have a couple of Synology 720+ units. One of the units is used mainly as a surveillance server that connects to the dozen PTZ cameras in our barn to monitor the state of does while in labor. Their Surveillance Station application is a topnotch professional application that is head and shoulders above most of the other monitoring systems that are mainly consumer oriented. The other unit is our data repository and runs a number of Docker containers including our accounting system, AdGuard web filter, Zabbix network monitor, Git repository, and Guacamole for convenient remote access to our Linux machines. It also is responsible for nightly backups of our workstations, and the replication of those backups to our other NAS. As a business professional I really do not care that Synology charges more for their memory modules. What we care about is reliability and a company that stands behind their products. If we were hobbyists like yourself, we might split hairs over prices, but the business world is different.

[@tonys1558]

I am confused on the memory as well. You say the R1600 is not ECC compatible, but looking directly at AMD's website, they specifically call for ECC memory.

[@Beany2007FTW]

This review was, to be polite, "poorly researched" at best.

[@spyder000069]

Correct. Amd's spec page says "Memory Controller: Dual Channel w/ ECC". Amd is known for making most of their cpu/chipsets compatible with ecc.

[@mikecleveland823]

ECC was one of the reason's I ordered this NAS yesterday. Hearing him say the R1600 is not compatible had me scrambling, only to realize he was wrong. At this point, with this screw-up and the inability to work with cloud servers claim, I am really trying to figure out why this guy has 300k subscribers

[@engrpiman]

Synology has good products in my experience. They last a long time and get years of software support.

[@BlackICE1973]

You are wrong! There are torrent client (Downloadstation), sync with all file hosting (cloudsync) and you have also other services for home users like video station, photos, music etc. In fact Synology Diskstation Software does offer so many that it will fit almost all needs no matter if it is home user or business needs. As for memory expansion: CAREFUL not all sticks will work good in it. You need to stick to sticks, which have EXACTLY same specs. And no, you are not stuck with Synology services. You can sync and use other services as well and can integrate Synology devices with any other cloud service and or Linux server.

[@tonys1558]

As you verbally stated there is no way to sync with cloud services, the video had the image of the "Cloud Sync" icon in the center of the screen. It is an amazing app allowing bidirectional or unidirectional sync options to a ton of cloud services. I have it syncing my accounts for Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive which took the load off my computers at home but kept all those files instantly available and up to date.

[@boehmb]

I came here to say the same thing. He clearly didn't take time to learn about the available packages.

[@KurtisWhittington]

I was going to say the same thing. They have "Cloud Synch" for synching with Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS buckets, etc... There is also their own cloud "Drive" app for desktop and mobile file synching and access. They also _DO_ have a bittorrent (and CURL/etc) client called "Download Station" , and if you enable the community repo, you can get a native compiled version of RuTorrent and a few others. On top of all that, Synology DSM 6.x and 7.x support both Docker containers and full VMs (though you would likely want to upgrade your RAM). So you can run just about anything you want. Many of the hardware complaints and closed OS ecosystem stuff is still valid, but his complaints on feature set for personal users is ... not on point.

[@Beany2007FTW]

Oh, well if he didn't take the time to check something that basic, then I think I'll add this to the 'do not recommend' list on my youtube recommendations. Also, "if you want to install TrueNAS" - the device itself *is* a NAS.....

[@Beany2007FTW]

Clearly didn't look at Package station which covers concerns about bittorrent clients etc. They literally have a software package to offline backup your GCloud/O365. Also, I have a DS723, with Sonarr and Plex running as well as the usual NFS/SMB services, and it's using, er, 1.2gb RAM of the 2gb RAM while playing back in Plex and barely more when using tdarr to transcode offline - it's the CPU that's the limit and I'll accept that given it hums away quietly in the corner. I've also run an RS815 with 2gb of RAM to run a small office network of about 20 people while it was also acting as an iSCSI and NFS backend to a few VMs. Synology uses a very customised (I believe) debian variant, which makes TrueNAS look flabby in comparison when it comes to resource usage, and it's not TrueNAS is a particularly 'heavy' distro in and of itself - TrueNAS is just a different platform with different expectations. Also, WRT to RAM, oooh, don't go for single Rank DIMMs. ALso, the R1600 is *explicitly* supports ECC RAM just like the Ryzen Pro CPUs, why on earth does he think it's supplied with it??? Did he think to even check AMDs website? The RAM is intended for vertical integration - closer to what the big SAN vendors do; if you try to throw regular RAM into an EMC SAN (or, lets not beat around the bush here, any mid-range branded server with an on site next day support system etc) it'll flat out not support it. The Synology will, but they recommend Syno RAM if you're using it in a small business environment where you expect support from Synology in the event of problems. This is particularly true for the higher end systems, where having vendor supported disks with vendor support firmware upgrades of those disks is the expectation; the high end devices require this, the home user oriented devices do not. Pretty poor show, all in all, for this review. It's borderline misinformation and I doubt Synology will send him anything else for 'review'.

[@BunkerSquirrel]

That cloud sync app is for setting up the NAS as a cloud server, not for syncing data on the NAS to offsite services.

[@CorrosiveMatter]

Synology is the Xbox/PlayStation of NAS's, don't buy one if you want to forever hack'n slash your NAS, buy one if you just want it to "work". I have been running large Synology products for about 10 years now for my Plex library. Switching out from a cheap little NAS like this DS923 and moving up always also "just works" I am now up to about 150TB of storage on my current Synology with the ability to add 10 more drives to my current hardware and the ability to add 1 more external expansion unit for another 12 Drives. Synology is far from perfect but it's pretty good, I had to login to check my current drive space and open slots to make this comment and I realized it's the first time I have been in for months. If you like to buy hardware (like I see on this channel alot) and see if it works the Synology isn't for you. If you want to buy hardware that for sure will work the Synology eco system might be right for you. I don't buy drives from Synology or the RAM because you are correct, they charge way too much but I do buy the NAS and expansion bays and as long as I look at their compatibility lists it works and works for years.

[@TayschrennSedai]

You're missing a ton of accuracy here. Yes, they allow torrenting right in their download app. They allow SSD cache read and write in these as well. You can easily drop more RAM in it. There's also a 3rd party app 'store' that opens up a ton: and it has docker, so you can do whatever you want on it. You completely misrepresent what this solution is for and the target audience (which isn't generally people who build their own systems) Here's a few other things you ignore: the built in surveillance system is amazing and it has BUILT IN free backup software including vmware and hyper-v, or workstation. It also supports built in free M365 or Google workplace backups including OneDrive (which you said otherwise) I do agree that their hardware isn't great, it's not good and they're behind others in it. But I highly recommended you talk to actual users of these and see what you either ignored or didn't know existed.

[@TayschrennSedai]

And I'll note that I generally love your videos but you totally missed it on this one.

[@TayschrennSedai]

And the key isn't for keeping criminals out it's so you don't bump the tray and accidentally open it, and stop people from playing with it if it's in a small office without a server room locked down.

[@DavidM2002]

Spot on

[@danieldougan269]

The point to me of Synology is that it's EASY. If you're the type of person who wants to run Linux and tweak all kinds of settings, buy something else. This is for people who just want something plug-and-play. I am one of those people. I have another old Buffalo Terastation NAS that is running Debian and Webmin (because I couldn't get the original OS to install on it after I bought it used), and I'm always having problems with it. The TeraStation is the more powerful of the two, and it has eight bays instead of four on my Synology. So, I use it as my primary server even though it regularly drives me crazy. I'm honestly still trying to get Samba to work correctly so I can read from and write to the network share instead of just reading from it. When the Synology was all I had, I didn't have these problems. It just worked. I only knew I needed a second server for backups, and the TeraStation is the one I found on the cheap.

[@-thrasher6977]

I totally get the use case, though why not just ship it with DSM and allow the end user to flash their own OS? I definitely see the easy side of it but at a certain point it just seems like you're getting less and paying more. They wouldn't even have to offer support for people who use their own OS, that seems entirely reasonable if they are building DSM specifically for their hardware. Plus, DSM works great, in my experience, on 3rd party hardware. Why not allow it to work the other direction? It just seems entirely arbitrary.

[@romevang]

The problem with the current consumer NAS market is that there's only vendor locked in solutions but are easy for the end user to setup and then there's 100% DIY solutions that aren't user friendly at all. There is no middle ground. I think this was one of the underlying points Jeff was getting at.

[@philiprobar]

@@romevangHP MicroServers, DATTO, SuperMicro, etc. sell prebuilts that you can install your OS of choice on. They’re especially attractive when purchased used.

[@jimbo-dev]

@@philiprobar True, but even as used they’re expensive compared to devices like this

[@GrishTech]

6:46 there is synology drive, which is what you’re describing. There is also cloudsync, a bi-directional sync cloud that can sync most popular cloud storage solutions like google drive, onedrive, etc.

[@spearheadconsulting5144]

Hyper backup will also allow you to backup to S3 services like Backblaze

[@GrishTech]

@@spearheadconsulting5144 yes, that’s true. But in this case, he was talking about file sync services to the likes of onedrive and google drive.

[@maxherman11]

Been with Synology since 2015 and been through 3 models. Running a DS1821+ with 8x 8TB IronWolf Drives, dual Samsung 970 EVO 2TB NVMe drives, and a quad port SFP+ card. I use it for general file storage and sharing. I use TrueNAS for my Plex Storage, Video Editing storage server, and a few others. Synology also runs my VM Backups and hosts the storage for my VM’s as well. I absolutely love Synology and their reliability but also love TrueNAS. I use each device to where it fits in my stack.

[@nickdaniels5892]

Synology has file sync, its called Cloud Sync and it is bidirectional

[@DavidM2002]

My thought exactly. If data can't be pulled from the cloud provider of his choice, then maybe he's using the wrong cloud provider.

[@nickdaniels5892]

@DavidM2002 no it does the services he mentioned, no cloud change required

[@tudalex]

The page for the R1600 says that it is ECC compatible, what am I missing?

[@mikecleveland823]

He didn't properly research that right after his research claimed it can't be synced with g-drive or Microsoft 365. To be completely honest, he didn't properly do his homework prior to producing this video and, considering this is the first time I have ever watched one of his videos, ensured that I will not consider him to be a viable source of reliable information and not search out his videos in the future.

Being honest, Synology NASes are better than most people think there are, but after some time of usage because of something very important - everything just works. Every update is well checked before public release and also packages are quite well tested. Synology "office package" - I mean Synology Drive, Chat, Calendar, Contacts and even MailPlus Server is something that is unique for this vendor and what's more, these packages run really well on hardware that not seems to handle them all.

[@RobHoffman83]

We use them at work so I bought one for home mainly to learn. I love the ease of use! I just upgraded to a 920+ because of the GPU for a Plex Server.

[@stevevuoso8411]

Um the lock isn’t there to prevent theft. It’s to prevent accidental opening.

[@justinknash]

Love to see you fill it with 4x 7200rpm 256MB cache drives and see how close to 10 gigabit you can get. Also upgraded memory to 8 GB.

[@MartinRojas]

Synology has been my first NAS as a house solution and it's software was the selling point. The mobile apps let me stop paying for Dropbox and backup full quality photos and videos from my phone

[@smileymattj]

12v barrel jack isn't good (aka safe) for 8A. 4-pin Kycon is a standard connector and can handle more power than a barrel jack. It's not proprietary, and it's not a DIN connector. PicoPSU, Cisco, Dell, and many others use it. Reputable makers of DC barrel jacks only rate them up to 60 watts. the Kycon 4 pin jack is rated up to 150 watts. The kycon connector also has a detent which gives it a positive more secure feeling connection over a DC barrel jack that feels like a bump will yank it out.

[@joerogers7011]

Hmmm, I use cloud sync to sync my google workspace drive and I use active backup to completely backup my whole companies GW instance. I think you missed a lot of killer features of this product.

[@TechTimeWithEric]

The LPL bit at the end was just perfect

[@mistakek]

Unless I didn't understand you correctly, the cloud sync app does offer you a way to pull, push, or sync to office 365 or google or various cloud storage solutions.

[@popejohnny5]

Given the 10Gb and NVME ports I am a bit disappointed that you didn't spend a bit more time seeing how much this could push with more platters and using NVME as cache if supported. A lot of these sorts of devices usually have some auto tiering. Or at least if the CPU could even keep up with an NVME mirror over 10Gb. As well as with more RAM in this scenario as well.

[@tudalex]

There is a torrent client, it’s called download station. And there is alos a Synology Drive app that can sync files, including a simple office suite inside it.

[@EmilePolka]

majority of known torrent trackers blacklisted download station, probably because of its hit and run tactic. missing a transimssion client app on synology app store is going to be a big flop for most people there, even if they are only hoarding linux isos.

[@Beany2007FTW]

@@EmilePolka Transmission is available in the Synology Community packages, which you can add to the Software Station repos and install in the same way as a regular package - something I don't think the reviewer even looked at given that they don't think there's a way to sync it to cloud services (Despite 'cloud sync' being shown on the screen as they said it...). Must admit I've not seen issues with Download Station but I can believe if it's default values are a bit leechy that it'd get blacklisted - I might have to try it and see if it makes any practical difference to my Linux ISO download speeds ;-)

[@majoryoshi]

Man, Even MasterLock holds out better

[@adrianteri]

1:52 Confused... Ryzen faster in single threaded tasks(23%) but slower by upto 40% on multi threaded ones?

[@CraftComputing]

Two cores vs four cores.

[@SB-qm5wg]

These no display devices should have some sort of uart or serial connection to unbrick.

[@glenharrison8524]

Pretty sure they've got a TFTP boot option for when $h1t really hits the fan.

[@Brandon3055]

I was so confused for a second there, I wasn't paying attention when the video 'ended' and I don't have autoplay enabled. So I was rather confused when I thought I heard a Lock Picking Lawyer video start xD

[@RaimaNd]

I bought a 923+ and love it. Got myself 32 gb of ram for 140 euro. Synology says it can handle only 32 gb but 64 works aswell. So currently I have 36gb and can upgrade to 2x32 if necessary. I always liked synogoly and already have two rack systems. It's still sad that at this price point there isn't a 4/8 core/threat cpu and 10gbit lan aswell as 16gbit of memory. They could've done a lot more. Either way. This will be the NAS I use for 10+ years easily no matter what.

[@veteran35th]

Hi, I'm looking at the 923+ and the only issue I have is the RAM amount. Can you please tell me what RAM you bought that worked in it?

[@ScruPiaN]

Cloud Sync integrates with GDrive and OneDrive.

[@leexgx]

8:57 so why does Synology supply it with ecc module (what I find intresting is ryzen data sheet says it doesn't support ecc but but every other source says it does support ECC functionality) 2400 is the max support for ECC, but 3200 for non-ecc

[@Tarkhein]

AMD spec page for the R1600 says it does support ECC. The memory controller spec literally says "Dual Channel w/ECC". Having said that, it also only states official support for "DDR4@2400 MHz".

[@marcogenovesi8570]

pretty much everything from AMD apart from the non-PRO APUs supports ECC in hardware (actual support also requires firmware in the board so not all boards enable it), embedded CPUs from AMD supported ECC even before Ryzen. Someone done goofed on that datasheet

[@VeronicaExplains]

3:06 "not even a serial output" Oooo, I love a good challenge.

[@Iceever]

Have they got rid of idea only running there hdds? Previously i have seen complaints that there where errors if you try to run other ordinary hdds on those nas box`es

[@DavidM2002]

Only certain units have that HDD issue. And I believe they are the higher end models.

[@derekstone9715]

I have an older DS418 (Non-plus). It technically has link aggregation on the two 1gb ports, but no matter which enterprise switch I plug into it (and set up), the clients always seem to share resources as if it were one port. Other than that, it's a pretty solid unit. It has never given me trouble. I run four 10tb exos drives and it's been rock solid. I have a nice home server at my house so I don't really need many of the services my synology has to offer, but their mobile connectivity is unmatched. I watch movies and shows on my phone all the time. I'm always swapping episodes to my phones SD card for trips out of town and that kind of stuff. Their DS file app is the most handy feature, I don't think I'll ever abandon synology for that reason alone. My wife and I also use the DS Note app for grocery lists, "to do" lists, gift ideas for each other and kids, ect. A super handy feature for a Synology home user is the fact that you don't need any firewall rules to login to your nas from outside your network. You can set up a unique login name and you can get to it from Synology's outside servers. I don't use the feature often because I run a dynamic dns, but it has come in handy when my ip addresses significantly changes from the normal ip range my ISP uses, then freaks my dynamic dns out. For a normal household that just needs a secure way to dump files with almost no knowledge of NAS's, Synology is the way to go! 👍 👍

[@marcogenovesi8570]

that's how link aggregation works. Each connection is still using a single port so with 2 ports you can connect more clients (some will be using one port and some will be using the other), but each client can go at most as fast as a single port. These are limitations in the TCP/IP protocol

[@derekstone9715]

@@marcogenovesi8570 you didn't read what a wrote. "clients seem to share resources as if it's one single port". Meaning one single gigabit port. Even with 2 or more individual clients pulling data, my synology does not give me full LAG speeds. If I pull one port or the other everything still stays up with failover. Trust me, I know how LAG works and how to set it up. I work in IT 😉. I've set it up on countless servers, Cisco, unifi, and Juniper switches. Again, it does not work correctly on my specific synology, not all synology's, my synology. I still love my synology and the features it has for a "no fuss" and "ez setup" for my main repo at home. I deal with insanely cool networking and complex storage / raid setups at work, it's really nice to have my little Synology manage everything at home with only minor maintenance from me. Edit: At my work, we have a rackmount Synology (don't remember model) we use as one of our many backup servers/target locations. The LAG I set up works perfectly on that rackmount Synology.

[@Qosmio1955]

I stopped using proprietary hardware back when DEC still existed. I refuse to be locked in to anyone's business model.

[@xolinxyfe]

10:23 the synology Cloud sync addresses the issue you outline. It's right there onscreen as you say there is no cloud sync feature.. I feel in no way locked in to Synology for file sync or Sharepoint backup as the NAS performs snapshot backups of my Sharepoint cloud data.

[@gurugamer8632]

I have a synology RS3614xs+ NAS connected via iscsi to a Windows Server running Veeam for backups. The synology NAS is raid 6. The synology NAS is showing used space 29.8 TB / 33.4 TB 89% used space. The windows veeam server is showing 12.3 TB / 27.3 TB used space. Why the discrepancy ?

[@paulbrooks4395]

They are designed as general purpose storage without any fluff. They work, but expectations should be at the basic level. As a starter device, these do well. The prime feature of these units is their price, and I personally have no complaints about the cost.

[@jttech44]

They're fairly competent devices to use for rotated off site backups. Take a couple of them, buy cheapo pelican cases for them, backup stuff, send it home with the big boss, he brings back the spare to re-sync, repeat weekly and presto, sneakernet enabled, data secured.

[@nadtz]

I'd argue the prime features are the form factor, power use and software. For the price ($600ish) I could easily buy or build something that would be more robust and hold more drives if that was needed, but it wouldn't be as small and it would be running Truenas (which is nowhere near as user friendly) FreeBSD or Linux and unless I was trying to match power use it would probably have a higher TDP. For the average user/small business that needs this kind of device I've recommended Synology over other NAS vendors (and my own dislike of some of synology's practices) mostly because the software is slightly less to much less terrible than the rest, not because of the price.

[@fhunter1test]

4:11 Barrel jacks have current limit on them, and it is actually relatively low.

[@CraftComputing]

My 12V 20A bricks with the same plug beg to disagree.

[@fhunter1test]

@@CraftComputing If I didn't have personal experience with cheaper plugs melting and burning... DIN connectors usually have better and more rigid connection. Most of the barrel jack connectors are rated at around 5 amps. Do you feel lucky? PS. China-made power supplies may have 'interesting' technical solutions in them, but 20amps is definitely way above the usual rating.

[@goddessofwar4955]

Is this one that is still requiring the Synology branded drives or it keeps giving alerts? The drives that are ridiculously expensive in comparison to regular NAS drives?

[@jamerperson]

Thanks for this. It's been sitting in my cart and I've been waiting for better reviews

[@oldhedders]

The thing about Synology kit is that you pay a significant premium for the (excellent) software and ecosystem, something which this review doesn't really touch on. Basically if you're buying a Synology, you're doing so in order to have DSM. If you don't want/need DSM, you'll get higher-specced hardware for less money from other brands. I say this as a happy owner of a DS920+ (this unit's predecessor).

[@marcogenovesi8570]

Yeah with a NAS you aren't buying overpriced hardware, you are paying for the OS and interface and ecosystem too. This isn't a barebone system it's a turnkey appliance

[@magoostus]

maybe its possible to crack it open and get access to some serial or TTL pins to run debian on it?

[@_SR375_]

I gave up on "consumer" NAS devices a long time ago do to OS limits and in Drobo's case very poor customer support and a lack of options, im running a small ITX-based Supermicro today with Debian and ZFS, IMO don't waste your money on a consumer NAS. At this price point you are far better to build your own.. (if you know you're SH*T)

[@Darkk6969]

DIY is always the way to go if you have the time. Most people just want to plug and play without much tinkering. If the unit breaks and still under warranty they can call for support. I love building my own servers and desktops from bit and pieces that I pick so wouldn't get stuck of vendor lock in.

[@MattKurkowski]

If I know I am shit?

[@Caddy666]

is there no uart on the board at all? not even a blank header? thats weird....

[@memphis-lm6so]

Hey guys! Can you help me with a recommendation for a 4k streaming/decoding NAS and some general phone/computer back up please? I just bought the DS224+, which I will returning now. Had my sights set on the DS923+, then debated with DS1522+, DS423, and now I’m looking at the QNAP TS-453E-8G-US. Any suggestions.

[@QsTechService1]

They don't support their products With manufacturer defects Of the CPU Just Soder A resistor In line Good to go To bring the clock signal up Data 😮

[@wolfpoker]

You are able to backup cloud drives to it just not easily. The main issue I have with these is that you can only use the nvme bays for caching not for storage pools unless you use their x500 price markup synology disks.

[@HliasPontioSsS]

because I have been using Synology for years I would like to inform you that download stasion you can also download torrents. And with 10gbe it sucks something has gone wrong. why then buy 10gbe when you can join 2 1gbe and have exactly the same speeds?

[@wolfstarone294]

Why not try a m.2 video card adapter

[@Egidiusdehammo]

Or directly an m.2 VGA like the asrock's one

[@alpenfoxvideo7255]

I have a 920+ with a hacked 5GBe adapter that usually does ~250MB/s file transfer. shall I upgrade this thing? It only serves files to 2 editing workstations, no media server, no applications, everything computing-related was moved to a micro server. Disks are recent Exos 18TB

[@JgrahamPhoto]

Thanks for the great review. What would be the next model above this one that you would recommend?

[@metalwolf112002]

Out of curiosity i looked up pictures of the mobo for this device. It appears there is a header labeled COM5 or COMS, not sure which. I wonder if this header could possibly be a serial port. Failing that, it looks like the drive backplane and the front usb port are actually connected to PCIe slots. I wonder if it would be possible to get video out working by using one of those pcie x1 to pcie x16 adapters you might get for a bitcoin mining rig. I would test this out but i dont have anywhere near the amount of free funds that would allow a test like this.

[@jerrywatson1958]

You said the cpu can't use ECC memory. Why use it then? What are the benefits of using ECC with a cpu that use error correction?

[@leexgx]

It can unsure why ryzen spec sheets say it can't when it does support ECC (the r2000 or V series are significantly more intresting, the r3000 has integrated 2x10gbe network built Into it)

[@JarrodCoombes]

Can you do a video on better alternatives for smbs?

[@catalystguitarguy]

so for $20-30 less than the synology unit, you could build in a Fractal Node 804, have 8X the ram on a B550 Matx board, running a 5700G powered by a fairly nice fully modular 750w Gold Corsair ATX power supply. with space for 2 m.2s, 8 x 3.5" sata drives, and 2 x 2.5" drives. and run whatever NAS OS you want? with the option of adding whatever additional networking or GPUs or extra storage? I'm not seeing much for upsides on the synology. I'm guessing all the cost is based on their OS and services in maybe half the volume with the sleds?

[@johnarnebirkeland]

The price of the Synology expansion bays was why I left the brand.

[@event-zero]

Does it run docker ?

[@bacsomartonkaroly]

Yes, it does.

[@elmeromero303]

For full power you certainly will put 4 Drives in a Raid or SHR. Also put 2 MVME's as Cache Pool for the HDD Pool. You can also use Synology branded MVMEs only for a separate Fast Pool. RAM: 2x 16GB or even more works but are not supported. I like the Syno Software, but QNAP is far ahead when it comes to Hardware. The perfect match for me would be QNAP Hardware with Synology Software 😊

[@JessicaFEREM]

Btw those hex nubs can be turned with a precision screwdriver with no bit installed.

[@Bob_Smith19]

They aren’t for people who like to tinker. They’re for the average person who wants backups and a media server. Or a small business who wants backups w/ little complexity. You are stuck in Synology’s ecosystem but it’s not a bad place to be if you just want things to work and to last many years. And they do it w/ low power draw.

[@CarlKettler]

I like to tinker, but I also need basic and simple storage accessible from my tinkering and production platforms. I've had several Buffalo Terastations, but they have caused increasing headaches since the software hasn't been updated in years. I went with the DS1522+ for the flexibility and growth to 6 bays. Considering how many years the Buffalo drives met my needs, I should be set for years to come. I also like the convenience of the small footprint of the Synology drive.

[@SaidM-g8j]

I’ve been watching your content and that of other NAS enthusiasts on KZbin for a while. I’m thinking of getting my first NAS, but the array of choices is a bit overwhelming. Despite months of research, I’m still undecided. Can you help me decide? I’m looking for an efficient, reliable, and future-proof NAS for home use, with a focus on both performance and energy consumption. My main applications will include running Plex for personal and family use, a home network VPN, an adblocker, and storing private photos and videos. My budget is around $1000. Any advice on selecting a quiet HDD for my room would be great. If you recommend any upgrades like RAM or SSD caching, could you suggest compatible models? Your guidance will be much appreciated.

[@ericjodoin7682]

I agree with their pricing, but at least they don't bar you from using standard memory, unlike Lenovo ST series Workstations/servers. You can't use regular dimm that is non-Lenovo TruDDR4, the bios shows an error and shuts down after a few seconds. What I really like about these units are the Backup tools (Active Backup for XYZ) to backup my customer's M365/Google business as well as their Surveillance Station.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

HPE stuff also has that, if you don't use their "Smart Memory" sticks they refuse to boot

[@christopherwood2290]

@@marcogenovesi8570 When you get proprietary ram solutions you know you have hit rock bottom.

[@thudtheace]

I look at these boxes as a storage solution(and media server), not a VM solution, I have big boy hardware for that. I have a DS220+ which works fine for my use with a pair of large HDDs in it (Raid 1). It does what is supposed to and that is all I want it for.

[@Der089User]

Why the heck doesn't Synology offer an SFP+ port card?

[@jb2590]

@CraftComputing Maybe you could try a USB 2.0 frame buffer display adapter? the DisplayLink DL-165 has built in linux kernel support and is very inexpensive.

[@CraftComputing]

That wouldn't allow pre-boot display.

[@dolphhandcreme]

There are m.2/nvme to pcie adapters outthere. Maybe you can fit a gpu that way? Most of the times, there's also a serial connection hidden on the board. But all this depends on wether there's a generic bios and not some locked down thingi like cisco uses in their routers.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

NAS with x86 cpus usually have a normal bios because it's far cheaper to license that instead of doing full custom stuff like Cisco

[@Wirenfeldt1990]

No DownloadStation?

[@maniacaudiophile]

I think all the old bittorrent and stuff are part of the file station function, which is always available on my Synology through many many OS updates. I think you might have missed it because it didn't specifically say bittorrent. Me and my friends buy Synology hardware because for the same money, we couldn't build anything close to what they sell. Any money on the hardware we save will surely be spent on the bottles of Tylenol we need, while we work through the headache of building a comparable NAS for cheap. I do agree it is pretty ANNOYING that expansion chassis costs about the same as a whole NAS on a per drive bay cost basis. Other than that, I'm a happy Synology NAS user since 2013, with one DS412 II+, DS415+, and a DS1815+. The continued software updates absolutely amazed me, this is will worth the money if you want something that is set and forget...

[@ATGEnki]

Love the LPL gag.

[@sunnythepooh77]

There is a bittorrent client with Download Station

[@SP-ny1fk]

NAS with embedded GPUs should be the standard - for transcoding video. This can be achieved affordably today, yet these manufacturers don't seem to be willing to pass on the price/efficiency to the customer.

[@glenharrison8524]

The DS-920+ had this. This is why I won't consider upgrading to the DS-923+.

[@DiemerDavid]

One of the HUGE benefits of Synology over TrueNAS and unRAID is that in a RAID-5 array, the parity is spread across the drives, not dedicated to a single drive. Not only that, the NVMe cache (I have a 1 TB mirrored cache) is automatically managed unlike TrueNAS whose cache needs to be committed to disk. The Synology handles it like a pro, and handles it automatically. I have a 6-drive device with an integrated 10 GbE connection and I routinely transfer 1 GBytes/sec to and from my NAS over my 10 GbE network. I would *never* run Plex on a Synology NAS because it cannot properly handle Blu-ray subtitles (PGS) without a significant impact to viewing. I'm using my Synology to store my movies and set up my Plex and Emby servers to use SMB to access the movies. Their best feature, IMO, is Synology Drive, which synchronizes files and folders between my desktop and the NAS. So my NAS is a backup of my desktop.

[@joebleed]

TruNAS using ZFS does NOT store parity on a single drive. I'm not sure what you're talking about in terms of the cache needing to be copied to disk. I'm not aware of any of their cache needing to be written to disk (i'm guessing you mean during a shutdown). It would go against ZFS being a copy on write file system.

[@DEJ915]

I'm assuming you do but please remember sync is not a backup, make sure to back up your data elsewhere off of the synology. I had a client that had the misfortune to use their garbage cloudstation software which would randomly delete all user's data off of the NAS and clients and they never provided a reason or solution even after months of ongoing support tickets from 2015-2016.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

there is no way you can make a TrueNAS system have the parity in a single drive as it runs RAID5 or RAID6 (or RAID10 or whatever), and I'm not sure what does the "cache needs to be copied to disk" means. ZFS does not do that, it's a cache why would it need to copy it to disk. What you are describing is specific of unRAID maybe, but that is using its own raid thing and is NOT related to TrueNAS

[@christophergilmer8267]

195 MB is 1,560 Mb/1.56 Gb... not just under 2 Gb. multiply by 8 not 10

[@thedeejlam]

Oh no no no no... the hardware is also problematic, especially compared to its competition. The USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports are anemic, and the lack of 2.5GbE ethernet ports serves mainly now -- Jebus, it's mid-2023! -- to push buyers toward swallowing the cost of an overpriced, proprietary 10GbE add-in card. And it's taken ages for the company to unlock NVME slots for storage pools, though they castrate bandwidth to x1 speed over alleged heat dissipation issues (why not build a better box, maybe?). It's as if Synology looked at the Ryzen 1600 spec sheet and asked its staff to find ways to castrate it. The worst-kept secret is the company leverages its reputation for software security and ease of use to lure buyers from QNAP, etc. options. Edit: I missed the DSM 7 lockdown of USB device opportunities like network adapters, printers and the like without workarounds. Oh, and I own and use an 1821+ and 918+ where the latter really doesn't feel that far back from today's offering in many ways, er, five years later.

[@johnpaulsen1849]

I have a ds1515+ but have no plans to replace it with another Synology. I built a true nas scale for less with drives and 16GB of ram. That includes 3*10TB drives with a r3 3200g.

[@manslayerdbzgt]

One thing that sucks is you're not going to be able to do any transcoding on the fly hardware transcoding gosh darn it

[@Tandy625]

Friendly correction, download station is their BitTorrent solution. Unsure what you meant by file sync services. If your talking about just syncing your google drive or a google shared folder, that exists Synology has an app called cloud sync that they develop that can be installed through package manager. Over all your videos are thorough, but these two things are well known. Ad blocker on a NAS? Good idea, but I don’t see any other company advertising an ad blocker built in off the shelf. Did you mean AV? Synology has free antivirus, feel like that’s an honorable mention..! Thank you for all your content Jeff.

[@CraftComputing]

Completely missed that was in there. I was probably looking for Transmission :-D

[@spurgeonrj]

@@CraftComputing Also Download Station has a built in Bit Torrent Client

[@Tandy625]

@@CraftComputing haha respect. My BT of choice is Deluge. If your keeping that DS and prefer Transmission, I believe you can run Transmission as a container, container manager is their rebranded docker..! YRMV.. Personally using virtual machine manager to run docker detached from my NAS.

[@av_oid]

@@CraftComputing​​⁠Download Station is a custom wrapper around Transmission. Transmission is what does the actual downloading (can be seen by looking at running processes). Download Station can be controlled remotely by a number of smartphone apps (or just the web interface).

[@pjasonq]

Jeff...I wish you would have thrown in 2x NVMe SSDs and tested how fast it can perform over 10G. Can 2x NVMe SSDs be setup as its own share pool? I would consider buying it if that was possible as I'm still running a DS214+ and may want to upgrade at some point to get some nice transfer speeds.

[@deividxyz]

Synology devices are high quality with good software, however, for a home user it lacks support for hardware transcoding and 2.5 gigabit lan out of the box. For the same money you can purchase a QNAP NAS (although with a Celeron), but for most use cases should compete with the Ryzen 1600. I have a QNAP TS-464 and it works flawlessly.

[@s.i.m.c.a]

TS-x73A - same Ryzen CPU, with memory up to 64 GB, 2 M2. slots and 2 PCI-E slots for GPU or Network 10G cards or additional M2 slots. Synlogy just a garbage in comparison

[@Cooper3312000]

No Plex hardware transcoding igpu.

[@DJaquithFL]

Synology needs to start only using 2.5GbE ports even under most basic models and in addition particularly for the home or enthusiast models like this one only Intel processors. Most people, I'm not one of them, use them for media servers. An AMD Ryzen is total garbage in this category without something like QuickSync.

[@dog_knight]

Thanks for the review of this. Planning to upgrade my unit next year and looking at options. Currently have a DS 918+. But mainly want to upgrade to get 10gbe. I use a 5gbe USB adapter currently which has me limited to DSM 6, as they removed support for any USB device that isn't storage in DSM 7. I also have a couple of NVME cache drives which does help with performance and it will usually sit around 230-250mbps speeds. On the topic of NVME drives, I am using a couple standard WD Black drives. They tend to last about a year before they die. But WD provides a 5 year warranty. So I keep a cold spare lying around to rotate in when one eventually dies. As I am only using them for caching, it doesn't risk any data loss. While Synology offers their own NVME drives, the price is much the same as every other expansion option they offer. Good to know that any standard RAM kit will work, that will surely save quite a lot. Suprised about the RAM usage though and wondering if it has become worse in DSM 7. I have 8gb of RAM in this unit but it sits most of the time below 2gb of memory in use even with a decent sized Plex library.

[@sbv-zs7wz]

I'm aware of people that use the tcrp bootloader to utilise dsm on any hardware and for 599 can build a much higher spec device, albeit with no 'warranty' and not for commercial use.

[@bikerchrisukk]

Nice one Jeff. I wonder if the hardware upgrades are so expensive because they have to recover the cost of software dev through hardware? I've been told they do have some software, like PC backup, that would otherwise cost a great deal of money if done separately.

[@JulienRoyal]

Small error: Download Station is also a torrent client, it has a web app and Android APKs for your phone.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

1:41 4GB ECC ram!?! You had my curiosity, now you have my attention

[@edcochran714]

If you are familiar with Servers, the referbished Dell 730xd or 740xd is the better choice. This should be used only for people who are not familiar with servers, and for a small office with a maximum of 5 users.

[@mspencerl87]

I love Synology software but they're hardware is a no-go for me anymore. A few years ago I replace a DS416+ With Dell R720XD The used server cost me $250 and had 96GB along with two E5-2680v2s With dual 10 gig in 10 spinners I was able to saturate a multi-channel link for half the price. I would love to buy another Synology but they overcharge and underperform

[@ghomerhust]

yeah these things are really being aimed at the "i dont know much about computers but i need a big ass storage brick" and they end up paying the price for it. im using an old T710 dell with a nice raid 5 in it (swapped to a newer perc so it would handle bigger drives) and it's a rocketship.

[@glenharrison8524]

yeah, but then you've got noise, as well as the running costs to consider. The Synology runs quiet, and very lean on the power front. A R720xd starts at around 200W and goes up for dual cpu, then for each drive...

[@mspencerl87]

@@glenharrison8524 My r720 idles at about 100 watts and the fan speed has been lowered to 15%. It's barely louder than a desktop computer but I understand what you're saying

[@MindZye]

Synology's products are attractive to me as a plug-n-play solution, but I've upgraded my computer a few times and basically have enough spare parts to build my own NAS at this point. I feel like I'd kinda miss having a discrete GPU if I want to use it for Plex or surveillance.

[@ccatania25]

I got the 2-bay version of this for Plex. 2x Seagate Exos 16tb HDDs and a 2TB NVME cache running Plex and docker containers for Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett, Ombi, Tautuilli and qBitTorrent as an all in one torrent and streaming device. Dual NICs allow me to torrent over a permanent VPN and have local network access. Honestly it's surprised me. Hit a max of 4 simultaneous streams and still has room for more. GPUs with Plex only have any real benefit in transcoding and all my content is 1080p or 4k. I've trained my users to always play in original quality. Highly recommend going the Synology route, but it is more expensive than building something.

[@MrTrilbe]

@@ccatania25 Kind of what this person said, Synology if you need plug and play, a warranty, and low power consumption with better specs than a SBC, your own custom build if you want custom, or want to play. Also don't forget with Synology you are also paying for that plug and play, warranty and the name too.

[@TazzSmk]

I got DS420+ with just 2GB ram running perfectly fine 4x12TB pool, just reliable SMB storage, nothing else fancy, for most services I use older DS918+ with 8GB ram and 4x4TB pool, for fun stuff I got Proxmox machine with i7-4770, 32GB ram and few SSDs, 10Gbe networking is still quite far from being affordable, and for vast majority of home and smaller businesses rather useless yet..

[@philosoaper]

I was going to get a synology, but tye lack of decent transcoding performance on the amd has made me keep looking. Sad because the DiskStation software is so good

[@huboz0r]

500 mb for a vpn gateway....is it really synology doing it wrong?

[@exthdd]

Love the end bro

[@GeoffHalsey]

Having tried the disappointing off the shelf NAS route, I bought an old stock, but brand new HP Proliant ML110 G7, for £25 with free delivery! Better solution, to run what I want.

[@marklewus5468]

Docker support is included, so you can run anything. I agree they’re stingy with memory. I upgraded mine to 16 gig third-party RAM. Synology is for people who don’t want to turn the TrueNAS or UnRaid learning curve into to another hobby. They are easy to use, reliable, and pretty much just work. They haven’t been hacked in over 10 years and that was mostly the fault of users not changing their default admin password.

[@veteran35th]

Hi, what third-party RAM did you install?

[@joeargyle]

WTF is this dude talking about? When he started saying it wasn't possible to install your own OS or truNAS I knew we were dealing with someone that didn't understand the primary use case for the product. Then he kept bringing up the issue of no video output. Who does that with a NAS? It's like being disappointed that your router doesn't include an HDMI port. His insinuation that the device barely has enough ram to do anything more than boot is nonsense. The 4gb ram will probably be just fine for most users. He also says that the device can't offer anything more than synologys own services. Utter nonsense. It includes non synology apps. He shows them in the video for hell sake. It's also possible to install a repo with additional third party apps. Then there is its ability to run any docker container you want. While synology devices are slightly more expensive the software included in their boxes if far and away better than their competition & easily worth the premium.

[@galxieranger8277]

Should have gone McNally on that outro - "you're using a Synology NAS, you can get into it with a Synology NAS" *smacks one NAS with the other*

[@CraftComputing]

LMAO, gotta break out the cheater square for that.

[@rockfreek13]

I stopped at “if you’d like to install truenas”. Why would I bother when I’m paying for Synology.

[@googleadministrator3994]

Integrated graphics giving you the shove in your new industry shoebox? No trouble here, for ASRock has you covered. Introducing their M.2 Silicon Motion graphics card. All you need is a VGA-compatible monitor/adapter and some sort of MOLEX PSU/power adapter and you're off to the races... as long as you only need up-to a 16:10 1080p display.

[@mychaelhouck2404]

I love Jeff, and I love this channel, but nobody who is interested in buying this device is interested in changing the OS. Totally not the point of this device. I own a 920+ with the Celeron and it is an outstanding 4 bay nas. I don't need huge processing power, since my Plex server runs on a different machine, and it's literally just a storage device.

[@CraftComputing]

That's actually entirely not true. There are many novice users, SMB owners, etc who need local file shares and basic services, but don't want or have the money to hire an IT Specialist at $95+/hr.

[@mychaelhouck2404]

@@CraftComputing Oh, I completely agree with that. I just can't see the 920+/923+ not being exactly what those users need out of the box. I will give you the point on the proprietary power supply. I'll never understand that as long as I live.