Lincplus Lincstation N1 SSD NAS Review - A Silent, UnRAID NAS?

[@nascompares]

*Update* , Lincplus reached out to respond to my comments on choosing Indiegogo for their crowdfunding: "The reason why we chose the Indiegogo platform is that Indiegogo has a customer support team in our country while Kickstarter does not. We have always invested a lot of energy in R&D and production, but marketing is our weakness. This is our first time using crowdfunding for promotion and producing a product, so a local support team is very helpful to us. We will offer the same after-sale service to customers who buy from Indiegogo as Amazon customers, and we will offer the best price on Indiegogo. We will also collect feedback from the first batch of customers."

[@VeryLoki]

i've been scammed on kickstarter before, and kickstarter basically can do nothing and won't do anything so it makes sense to go with Indiegogo

[@alanpaone]

its good to see a NAS aiming for people who want all-flash because it's quiet & small, and not because we need a blistering fast dual-socket 40gbe monstrosity, tbh, 10gbe would be nice, but then I'd have to pay for it, and maybe hear them cooling it

[@paulwoodward8265]

I want a nas that sips power and is silent. Nearly all clients use WiFi, so 2.5gb Ethernet is sufficient for my requirements. People obsess about how fast the nvme drives can be pushed, or how fast the networking is, but that’s not important to me. It’s faster than my current hdd based storage, lower power and SILENT.

[@nascompares]

*Update 2* - The Lincplus N1 IndieGoGo campaign is now live and you can follow it here - www.indiegogo.com/projects/lincstation-world-s-1st-unraid-6-bay-all-ssd-nas#/

[@thomasm.5806]

Could you maybe measure the idle power consumption without any drives installed to get a baseline for the power draw?

[@BrianDavids]

Great review. Price is great. I do wish all NAS manufacturers would provide 10GbE out of the box.

[@nascompares]

It's a cost and lanes thing tbh..but even then, 1x 2.5G is a hell of a pain

[@Bytional]

Yea, the price is good here, but the ports are a big letdown, 10G should be standard if you are running NVME SSD, and preferably more than one if it has a more expensive version. Don't blame all of this on devs, they use intel low-end CPU, n5105, n6005 or n100 are all great for low-power NAS, but their PCIE lanes are so few you really can't do much about it.

[@nascompares]

Lack of failover/LAG/Multichannel here is pretty much the killer for alot of the market. Even at that price point, it serves as quite a low glass ceiling in many ways

[@Bytional]

@@nascompares I won't expect much at this price point, cuz if they want to solve most of the problem, they need to add an extra control chip or go with AMD or a 12th gen Pentium CPU, and they can't keep it fanless.

[@PaulMuston]

My IndieGoGo Lincstation N1 turned up at lunchtime today. I added a couple of m.2 SSDs and got the included unraid up and running in no time. I even got Jupyter Notebooks running as App. Thanks so much for the heads up on this. BTW the SSD temp warning level had been tweaked upwards.

[@nascompares]

Great stuff. I did NOT expect such a quick turnaround!

[@hostile_1866]

I just got mine today. Everything is great, apart from maybe the fan noise. This is my first NAS but I was surprised my 4090 gaming PC is quieter. How is yours noise wise? Honestly from the marketing I was expecting silence from 2 meters away, perhaps I was unrealistic in my expectations?

[@PaulMuston]

Returning, after a day away from my desk, the fan does make its presence felt in an otherwise silent room. It is a similar volume to when I separately run a modern 6w TDP mini PC. It is however much quieter than the Synology NAS it will replace. I also have a desire for a silent workspace, I suppose the answer is just to locate it a little further away.

[@hostile_1866]

@@PaulMuston Thank you for the insight. Yeah the way I looked at it is that I've spent so much on SSD's to compromise it with a cheap fan/constant noise isn't ideal (I spent a decent amount making my 4090 gaming rig silent as well). You can tell it isn't Lincstations intent to hide it away either, as the rest of the parts are very premium/attractive looking. I'm going to sell/refund mine, I have got the parts here to build my own silent NAS as we speak :)

[@PaulMuston]

@@hostile_1866 I looked at the Lincstation as a price performance experiment - it had the m.2 slots I desired for storage. I have a couple of the cheaper (fanned) N100 mini PC I am also experimenting with as "home labs" which lack storage slots, but could host limited shares. Amazing price performance. Sounds like you have moved on, but did you have any thoughts as to a retro fit Aluminum Heatsink Cooling Fin and disconnecting the fan. Those lovely but more expensive fanless mini PCs are built around a large heat sink case. May I ask which case/cpu did you decide on for your build?

[@phanter344]

For those of us who have extensive 1Gbps networks and hosts that would be difficult to upgrade to anything faster than 1Gbps and not hosting a massive amount of people 1Gbps is fine. I rarely copy TB's of data across hosts so can live with it. Really interesting product, especially for a mobile lab which is what I'm looking at it for.

[@Psoewish]

This looks really promising, but just having the one 2.5GBe on an all flash system seems like a very odd choice to me. Even if stepping it up wasn’t possible for some reason, I feel like it should have at the very least a second port here.

[@North3rdMedia]

Great review. Has Unraid changed their recommendation of not using SSDs for the Unraid Array (disk or parity drives) due to no SSD trim support? I understood that without this, the SSD performance will degrade faster than it should.

[@JohnPob]

I believe SSD array is still not supported as of the latest version

[@nascompares]

THAT is a bloody good question!!!! I know that this solution was passed to UnRAID officially for testing and approval (Spencer mentioned it in the forum's and I o messaged them about it after my first video a while back). Will look into this and maybe make a follow up vid if justified

[@akurenda1985]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but a normal array in Unraid DOES NOT SUPPORT TRIM. Therefore, full flash arrays are not recommended. If you're going to use full flash with Unraid, you'll need to use ZFS to get TRIM support.

[@berndkemmereit8252]

That was exactly what I was looking for. Wifi 6 build in and silent as it will be placed in my Living Room and the Modem is in another room. That little item is perfect, I hope they market it well as it will be a clear winner.

[@nascompares]

+going UnRAID MASSIVELY reduces the brand's overheads for software maintenance. Not to 'zero', but certainly allows much more creative pricing...kinda staggered that it's taken this long to happen!

[@jimcallahan448]

Agree that video editors (especially one's using Apple Macs with limited data storage) probably want the 10gbs ethernet, so they might want to looks either the Asustor Flash 12 or the Black Magic NAS products, but at the DataKind event or even most coffee shop collaborations just use WiFi or vanilla ethernet cable.

[@nascompares]

If this gets developed through crowdfunding to feature USB-C power...then that 2nd group you mentioned would be BEYOND HAPPY

[@empessah]

thoughts on putting 2.5 hardrive in the drive area to give large storage something like a hot and cold storage system

[@wafu6058]

I've been looking for a flash NAS for so long Every time, they skip 10gig and every time I move on. There is zero justification for not having 10gig on flash storage.

[@tomschi9485]

*Apparently, Unraid's disk and thus network performance should be much slower than that of Qnap and Synology,* for example, because Unraid does not work with the usual RAID, but has invented something itself. *Is that true?*

[@nascompares]

UnRAID uses a different parity system yes. But also, they recently embraced ZFS pools support and that results in massive performance boosts and parity with Q/S performance

[@tomschi9485]

​@@nascompares Thank you *very* much for your great reviews and your answer!, I was hoping that another viewer of your videos would see my question - so I'm very happy you replied. Now I'll compare your suggested NAS enclosures and configurations for 8 or if possible 12 bays. Then I'll install Unraid 🙂

[@thomasm.5806]

Just noticed that the breakout animation show on the Indiegogo product pages shows a fan running inside the case! So it the NAS using an active cooling solution and thus isn't really a completely silent or passively cooled device?

[@TonyHiggins]

When I think of "6-bay", I think of all six bays supporting the SAME architecture, and allowing a RAID array that includes ALL 6 drives. The real gain here is meaningful - drive space lost to parity is 1/4 in this device, and is only 1/6 in the Flashstor. If you're using 4TB NVME, that means you lose 4 out of 16, leaving 12 (10.5 in the real world) vs 4 out of 24, leaving 20 (18.7 or so, in truth). The usable capacity of the Linkstor is, in this scenario, less than 2/3 that of the Flashstor 6. Add to this the UnRAID SSD limitations, and I have to see the result as an interesting, but limited solution for those with rather modest needs and budgets.

[@Abhisheksth]

I am a bit confused, where are the thermal pads supposed to be? I see it on the top of some M.2s but also at the bottom.

[@nadtz]

I'd love for someone to work with AMD or Intel and bring either low power embedded Epyc or a D Xeon to this market. U.2 in smaller capacities can be almost as inexpensive as M.2 and even a mixed use gen3 drive cost/performance will blow the pants off consumer gen 4 M.2 for this kind of use in the long term (and there's always the option of buying used). I'd rather pay more and get a device with more PCIE lanes, U.2 and 10gb support (not to mention hot swap and higher RAM capacity support) than something like this or the Flashstor. Something like the QNAP TS-h1290FX but with say 8x bays and 1 1gb or 2.5g port and 2 SFP+ (or let the user add in a 10/25gb NIC) for maybe $1000ish. Hell, if they could make it around the price of a used R730XD even better. Worst case if Synology can get away with charging ~$2k for their 8 bay devices I guess the price could go that high but give me modern hardware with U.2 support.

[@Warriorsito]

Does anyone know if you can use a different os on this machine?

[@wallyinwa700]

Is the 2.5" drive bays 15mm in height to allow drives larger than 2TB? There's no mention that I can see and even Lincplus mentions 20TB maximum which would be 4x4TB NVME+2x2TB SATA.

[@wallyinwa700]

Looks like 7 or 9mm height from what I can see. Will be much more desirable if able to use larger cheap 2.5" SATA storage.

[@nascompares]

Unfortunately, I didn't have a drive bigger than 9mm to test, but looking at the photos I took in my review blog post, I'd say 12mm max. Will check tomorrow and return to the comment if I'm wrong

[@wallyinwa700]

Thanks. I guess the point is pretty much moot is what they're are trying to get at. The price of 2.5" Sata 4TB vs NVME is about 2x for a good drive and even lower for a lesser tier one so by the time this is readily available, it won't make sense to go SATA. I paid about the same for a 1TB NVME a year ago as the same 2TB are now. Hopefully the prices of Flash memory keep dropping the way they have been.

[@MichaFita]

​@@nascompares Iwonder if it would work with 2,5" HDD... I trust them more as archive media.

[@nascompares]

It's a 12mm height drive bay. Just about to film a "Before You Buy" (before you back?) Video and measured it for you. Shame really, as that's the different between 3TB and 5TB

[@chromerims]

👍 Lincstation N1 NAS is attractive. Hope it is not vapourware. 16:15 -- a Sata DOM port. Nice! Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.

[@LluisLazaro]

Just received my unit 😍

[@OwtDaftUK]

Do NAS have to be connected to the router directly with ethernet all the time or can they be fully wifi to the router?

[@AidenPryde3025]

As far as I'm aware, Unraid doesn't support WiFi natively. How is this OEM getting around that?

[@peterdestination]

"Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 features are not compatible with Unraid right now. Users need to run a VM to use these functionalities" What is VM?

[@piratesfort]

Hi Can you help me please ? My problem in DSM that I can’t review the file there except the pictures, all other files like pdf , vid , doc ..act can’t review I have a lot of pdf files and I have to open one by one find what I want also the other files So what shall I do ? Thank you

[@nascompares]

Might be a lot of factors, tough to call without knowing more (browser access? Native client tool? etc). Use the free advice section on the NC site, as it's fairer for all that way. Hope we can help man

[@urmommawasfun]

Would you consider reviewing your unit compared to the model they are shipping out to their backers? The units everyone are receiving, have very loud fans. This isn’t the model you reviewed.

[@nabbe63o]

Hi, I tried activating the provided unraid license without disks installed. I think Unraid asked me my credit card info and i had to pay 49 USD to activate it. Am i doing something wrong here or linkplus provides a free unraid license? how does this work.

[@derekbush6340]

There's a scratch card in the box I just got with an activation code.

[@nabbe63o]

@@derekbush6340 I asked the linktec and they said its not a perpetual license and is for 1 year. Also they said they are working on their own NAS OS and will be released soon.

[@TechDadAdventures]

has anyone tried to install truenas on this particular device?

[@simonsonjh]

I wonder if I could put TrueNAS on that internal USB device.

[@nascompares]

You definitely could, but it's a very tight fitted USB (angle wise) and can imagine you'd most likely have to use that specific one (i.e format it), so you'd lose your unraid license that's on it

[@milenamarguenski2518]

Hello, recently I suffered data loss from an external drive (mostly because of my stupidity :), I am desperate for a portable NAS solution! I stumbled across your video, and I am excited about the Lincplus. Do you think it will be reliable, keeping in mind that it is just coming out on the market and there is no user's data and which drives would you recommend buying for such a system? Thank you in advance, Milena

[@JGoose-oy9qo]

To bad the price on their shop now is 450€ is it still worth it than? Or is the Asustor better value?

[@kevinrtres]

Great to see such an innovative product. Good for us consumers ( especially those still looking to get a NAS )! Lack of another ethernet port is not so important for home use - if you really need anything more you are into high performance territory anyway and this is n't for you. Just use another USB-Ether adapter if absolutely required.

[@nascompares]

All very true!

[@andyfoster9038]

Fins on the m.2 heatsinks is a great idea. Perhaps on version 2, they will put them on the outside...

[@id104335409]

Sata at this point? M.2 is the only standard you should consider.

[@nascompares]

Tbh it's a lanes thing I'm sure. Plus, 2 SATA could leverage affordable 5TB laptop drives for cold storage. Still, almost a shame it's not 6x m.2

[@aijokker]

Couple of days ago i was searching for some kind of 2.5 ssd nas solutions😊 and here we go)

[@nascompares]

Sorry I'm a pain in the wallet....

[@pvdgucht]

Well if the USB A ports are 3.0 5Gigabit then you could have “almost” (because USB protocol Overhead) 5 Gigabit per second with a cheap dongle but I think for 10 gigabit the CPU might not be fast enough 🤔 idk 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@fbartolini1222]

I don't understand how this product is launching on late 2023 and not using an N305 CPU instead. It seems like poor product management on their end. This is a system that will be pretty expensive to equip, being all SSD storage based. I don't think the potential buyers would have been turned away by the higher price needed to accommodate a more current CPU with still low TDP

[@meptalon]

If using UNRAID, definitely keep a usb drive or small dreive as array and create ZFS pool usin the NVME SSD drives... you are leaving so much on the table otherwise

[@nascompares]

Good shout mate!

[@xJI00]

Given the high cost of SSDs in decent sizes it’s hard to justify then limiting the performance of those drives you’ve just paid for.

[@nascompares]

The price might be justification enough for some, but it's still a bitter pill for many, yeah

[@picklerickle3871]

Given its size and ne fans, it would make a decent plex's server,

[@picklerickle3871]

I said tthis before the 19min mark, hehe, was wanting to save my E-waste but this nas makes alot of sense

[@marklewus5468]

Great review, as always! I’m surprised they’re launching a NAS in late 2023 with a single ethernet port. If I had to pick I would take a second 2.5g over a single 10g. That enables failover, LACP, multisession SMB, etc. You can add a second 2.5g port via usb but that is notoriously unreliable. This one’s a “no, thanks” for me.

[@nascompares]

THAT was a major hurdle when I first heard about it hope this will see change if the crowdfunding diversifies into different revisions.

[@hgelpke]

It would be nice if this channel only reviewed actual available devices. Promoting Kickstarter and Indiegogo launches only helps companies like Storaxa take the money and run

[@nascompares]

I dunno man. Look at it from the POV of backers of a project. At the very least a review like this can show that it's not just a diagram on a piece of paper. Plus, to use your Storaxa reference, I was one of the earlier detractors of Storaxa - saying it's near impossible to do what they are/were promising on such a tight budget to fulfilment...and I've never seen so much as a sniff of the hardware in reality...no one has! And that campaign has secured $3.4million of backing. Wouldn't you agree felt better in some small way if you saw reviews of a finished product or prototype, to know that it's not just wind and waffle? My continued coverage of Storaxa is to show it as a success story/underdog tale...or as a warning to others for the future. At least in the case of this Lincstation device...they were at 2 trade shows with samples, sent samples to be reviewed/previewed and now backers can see at least the tiniest bit of proof in the pudding? I'd really welcome your thoughts on this, as I plan on continuing to cover crowdfunding NAS campaigns, and would welcome the feedback for future coverage

[@Lorondos]

Another NAS crowdfund? Is this the year of the NAS? Storaxa, Zimacube, UGREEN (UGREEN series is going to be a retail release as far as I am aware) and now this? This should shake things up for the traditional NAS makers 😉

[@Lorondos]

And is Linc a Beneath a Steel Sky Reference?

[@weltschmerz88]

What's the UGREEN offering? Their products seem pretty high quality.

[@nascompares]

The UGreen NAS is looking increasingly like a "nothing till 2024" kind of solution, news wise. But I hope I'm wrong, as that one really peaked my interest...plus it's a 2/4/6/8 Bay range

[@redwolf_dane4672]

it looks amazing but in my opinion without a 10gig port its essentially worthless

[@nascompares]

I think "worthless" is a bit harsh. Yes, you lose the external performance of those drives (which in bunch of contexts is absolutely killer!), but for those looking at a fast data base on a tight budget, a genuinely silent Plex server, a low power consumptive solution that's still x86+16GB, and a UnRAID licence Inc NAS (remember, an unraid license would be $59 and this device will be just $279 all in)...it's got a lot of positives.

[@ShawnHartford]

As a flash based solution, it needs to have dual 10Gb links.

[@ChickenPermissionOG]

no reason you should have to use cli. That should all be in the gui. It should all be a choice.

[@Yandarval]

Listen to how silent it is. Whilst flapping his gums over it. Well done.

[@nascompares]

I'll re-address this in the next video