Terramaster F4-424 PRO NAS Review

[@mjcharlton71]

Had one delivered last week. Runs unRAID perfectly! 4x12TB spinning rust plus a couple of 512GB NVMe for cache. Very happy with this after downsizing from a Fractal R5. Gonna see if I can get a couple of heatsink shims on the SSD, as they can get a little toasty at times when downloading saturates the broadband link (1 gigabit).

[@dryounas]

How hot do they get?

[@mjcharlton71]

@@dryounas 45c so far

[@mjcharlton71]

Got a couple of shims on order now, hopefully cool things down a bit @@dryounas

[@simoneatough6391]

​@@mjcharlton71 That is not hot at all for a SSD, but still curious to see your results. Love the UnRAID compatibility, big selling point for me

[@onuponedown]

Yes, can confirm that it works OOB with my previous UNraid install which was un a N100 Mobo from ASrock. Simply plugged in the 2 drives and the 1TB nvme Cache and replaced the TOS-Stick with my UNraid Stick. Took a few minutes to get all going but then it booted like before! But best of all: i bought a 48GB Ram Module and replaced the 32GB Module from Terramaster. WORKS!!!! Fantastic! Next: Removing UNraid and installing Proxmox, it’s just so much better for my needs and with the 48GB RAM i might have enough Headroom for most of my Homelab needs! Great Device, thanks Terramaster and apologies that i not even tried your TOS Software.

[@bobbymoss6160]

$700 for the unit. This would cost $1400 if sold by Synology.

[@SrSilverstars]

Completely agree

[@nascompares]

They would definitely charge a lot more, but in fairness, the % cost of hardware vs software on a Synology always is more about DSM. They would charge more, but for a 4 bay? I'd say $999 and a cent for your trouble!

[@feimingau]

You're right. Synology has put a lot of effort into the software to block hard disks that are not its own brand, which solves the problem that I want to buy synology.

[@feimingau]

Is there any difference between 99 hardware and 3000 hardware DSM? How much is DSM worth?

[@SrSilverstars]

@@feimingau hard to say how much it's worth... but I would say it is not worth 300€

[@realfarfoxache]

Absolutely loving mine running TrueNAS Scale 24.02.2 and I have a jail where I run my things in docker. It's a mean machine and handles anything for plex especially now that plex has fixed the single CPU thread transcoding for subtitle burn in!

[@BigBoxLittleBox]

Hoping that Terramaster release an 8 bay version (F8-424 Pro?) with 64GB of RAM support. Together with the dual NVMe slots - this would be an ideal box for my uses (unRAID).

[@nascompares]

Way, WAY more likely is a 9-bay version (i.e. T9-424, as they have released 9 bay versions of the previous Intel versions (and a recent 10Gx2 Atom 8 Core version too).

[@BigBoxLittleBox]

​@@nascompares hopefully!

[@wiedapp]

64GB depends on if there will be 64GB SO-DIMMs available. Currently my go-to price comparison site tops out at 48GB. The N-Series Alder Lake are limited to single channel RAM, so you're stuck with one module. Unless they double that up like on a normal motherboards with its two slots per channel. But with Intel officially supporting 16GB on that CPU and Terramaster already doubling that from the get go...

[@realfarfoxache]

Not sure if you'll get 64GB RAM as technically it isn't supposed to be running 32GB RAM. Someone says they are running 48GB in theirs though!

[@DarkMatterForge]

Very nice review of this unit. I picked one up from the Amazon link. I have heard a lot of people say not to use the m.2 for caching but instead to setup one or both of the m.2 slots with drives for running the TOS and applications. If I did that, then what setup would you suggest? One or two m.2 drives? What size drive(s)?

[@azzznar2486]

Would this unit be a good option to use as a nas server for video editing?

[@KmonCentz]

This guy is such a nerd...... and I love it!! I think he'd be fun to hang out with

[@TwistedMe13]

10:26 I would say it may be a question of pearls before swine. Could a N300 Celeron-class really handle a full 10G with 4 Sata drives & Nvme drives or would it bottleneck long before? If it was at least a Core i3 (or even a Pentium from the same generation) I would be a lot more sanguine.

[@clivegeary4587]

I enjoyed this review. The problem now with this and other NAS drives is the price that HDD's have reached to put inside them. HDD's have now become ridiculously expensive. Will they ever come back down in price. Even external desktop expansion drive prices have gone through the roof.

[@Yandarval]

Sadly, HDD price will never drop like SSDs will. Whether its a 4TB HDD or a 20TB. There is the base cost of the motors, actuators and drive chassis. So thats a "fixed" cost to manufacture. SSD's on the other hand are still benefiting from node improvements from smaller manufacturing processes. So more Gb's per wafer means lower prices. HDDs are a very mature technology. With little room left to really improve.

[@macrobinson5457]

I would like Robbie to add a piece in EVERY NAS product review in the future. Immediately before the ‘Review Verdict & Conclusion’ section, what are the close peers to the NAS being reviewed. That is, if you like the specs of this NAS, also look at ‘these models’ from ‘these manufacturers’.

[@nascompares]

I'll look into this, but realistically that would be tough to do without making the vids longer, or being a little minimalist on the details. I tend to make comparison videos on most popular systems vs their peers/comparative units as separate videos and I'm 1000% already scripting vids for this system vs the Synology DS1522+, QNAP TVS-h474 and possibly the new UGreen system or ZimaCube (still both in development)

[@richardabagley]

​@@nascomparesI would like to echo this sentiment. I am looking into getting our first NAS and your content has been really great and informative. Having a simple comparison to what you consider the current overall "best in class" would be great context to have as a summary to your videos.

[@realfarfoxache]

Hello, CPU is Intel® Core™ i3-N305 NOT N300, this is important, better iGPU for Plex hw transcoding, uses more power as well

[@tokelahti]

Does NASCompares always miss real world transfer speed tests or do I always miss them in these videos?

[@frankwong9486]

Terramaster with unraid is very good Got one of the compact 6bay model running unraid which is super good and also slient (because how unraid work)

[@sentinelnor7982]

I purchased this machine. I will install 48 terabytes of HDD in the F-424 Pro. With 32 gigabytes of RAM, what is the optimum SSD capacity recommended to enable the best performance from the NAS?

[@SGTTEMPEST]

Is this that much better than the qnap ts-464? Or does the processor in this just outclass the qnap?

[@lipvandip6480]

Using a larger power supply is helpful as they run more efficiently somewhere around the middle of what they're rated for

[@Yandarval]

An over specced PSU will also run cooler, so should last longer

[@MezPahlan]

I'm torn on waiting for this to become widely available in the UK (Amazon say they sell it but they don't) or get the regular F4-424. I would like to use it to watch 4K video to a TV and massive backups. Nothing more than that. No other streaming, no surveillance, no web server stuff, etc, maybe some Docker stuff later on but for now just back up and watching videos. Should I wait or get the regular version which is available right now? Will the lower CPU and Memory matter?

[@pat9080]

Bought the F4-424 to use as a plex server. Works perfectly. The pro version would be overkill.

[@EViL3666]

They've definitely stepped up their design game over the past 12-months, their 9-12 boxes look 👌🏻 unfortunately though, both main contender-brands (TerraMaster and ASUSTOR) have failed to pay attention at the higher end, which is, people want PCIe and other slots..

[@mdd1963]

My sincere compliments for your correct pronunciation of 'Celeron'....well done! :)

[@mdd1963]

17L38 "Beta", however, is still pronounced "Bay-tuh"....; 'BEE-tuh' sounds, frankly,.... ridiculous. :)

[@Yandarval]

@@mdd1963 Well, both ways are not how it is pronounced in Greek, which is Vee-ta. The US is just being their usual member of the Awkward Squad by changing the English pronounciation. An ancient Phoenician would wonder what all three are on about. As Beta is from them.

[@chrisrange2343]

Great review as always. Agree with you on the 10Gbe omission…. Whilst talking about new releases, do you have any info/predictions for the Ugreen nas? Thanks Rob.

[@Egon3k]

Ok it is called "pro" series, but synology still uses 1Gbe for the same price - I don't know why you could expect 10Gbe from that price point

[@th3r3v92]

Is this version quieter than the previous F4-423 model? I have one for almost a year now, using it with TrueNAS, so there is no fan-speed control and I think it is a bit too loud for my taste. Also, the full metal chassis is just resonating with the drives sometimes. I would be happy to switch to one of the newer versions if I knew that it would be quieter than the current one. Also, can that one big fan cool down 4 "normal" disks? I mean, the non-Exos/non-datacenter, simple NAS drives like Ironwolf or Red series. 32GB RAM is not an issue with that chip. Intel has been playing this game for a while now when they handicap these lower-end chips with arbitrary limitations (like the 1 DIMM channel only...), but the supported memory configuration on the Ark site is such a joke sometimes... Even the older N5095/N5105 chips were able to handle 2*16GB RAM, while the Ark page states the max supported memory size is 16GB. I have an i7-1360P mini PC at home, originally the Ark page stated that the max memory config is 32GB, but it later got updated to 96GB (I have a 2*48GB config in it, and it works like a charm...). I also have an N100 machine at home, which handles a 48GB DIMM, and it has the same memory controller as the N300/305. Heck, dmidecode reports that even 64GB is supported, although as far as I know, there are no 64GB DDR5 SODIMM modules available as of now, so we will see some time in the future. Also, I found it quite interesting when you said that it would be good to see their solution instead of VirtualBox. While I hate that software, I would love to see a NAS software that leverages popular open-source solutions. Like for example, every brand has its own Docker app. But why? I had a Synology NAS, and that docker interface is horrible IMHO. So they spend a bunch of resources to develop something, that could be entirely replaced by simply pre-installing Portainer with Docker. It is an open-source, well-known solution, that is miles better than anything that I have ever seen on any NAS. But this way, they had to develop it, and now they have to maintain and support it, which uses a bunch of resources instead of simply using something popular with a good reputation. I don't think that Portainer is the only docker UI that should exist, but even if someone has other preferences, they would still probably agree that it is way better than any one of the "custom" NAS solutions.

[@akirsch76]

It would be interesting to know if they still have an internal USB Drive for the NAS Software installation, like the previous models. That can open the door to alternative NAS OS like TrueNAS Scale. The Hardware looks decent. The memory recommendation from Intel does not mean that 32GByte ran unstabilly. I ran my SandyBridge Intel i7 Mac for 7 years with 16GByte, and 8GByte was officially supported by Intel. No problem at all! Just a better performance.

[@nascompares]

They 100% do. The written review I almost done and highlights this usb and location

[@michaeljorgens2493]

yes they have

[@mjcharlton71]

Internal USB is a little easier to get at than the x23 models, but still needs a stubby little USB stick. Works a treat.

[@itsJules8]

@@mjcharlton71 Nice that's awesome!!! Thanks guys for the info. Gonna order one then.

[@mikedunn3226]

Don’t suppose you could offer some info on ee’s new 5g router. I can’t find any info on it at all. It’s model is hh20c

[@aleckfedorkiw4005]

Can you tell me where u found the dual 2.5gb ethernet usb c?

[@edutun265]

Does anybody know what is the SATA AHCI controller used on this one? @NASCompares ?

[@LacayoDe]

How much wattage does it consume in idle?

[@Yandarval]

Depends on what you have in it. HDDs use more. SSDs use less. A fully loaded four 7200 16TB HDD and two 1TB NVME SSDS. Ballpark it as 50-60w idle and 75w+ when awake but not doing a massive amount of IO. Slower 5400-5900 rpm drives will use a bit let juice. I have previous, none pro verson of this. I have the F4-423.

[@greggrivera8458]

Need some help here. Looking to trash my WD My Cloud Home Duo and get a Terramaster F4-424 pro or synology. Mostly used for multimedia and IOS backups. What would you recommend….desperately seeking direction here

[@timmbcy3639]

Thank you for the information! I have a question after reviewing it. I have: 1. Synology DS-920+ NAS with four 4TB HDDs (currently in use). 2. TERRAMASTER F4-424 Pro NAS (new). 3. Four 8TB HDDs (new). -- And I have an idea: To replace one by one all four disks in the Synology DS-920+ NAS with the new 8TB ones. After that, take the old four 4TB disks from the Synology DS-920+ NAS and install them in the new TERRAMASTER F4-424 Pro NAS, first disabling the boot from USB in the BIOS and setting it to boot from HDD. -- QUESTION: Do you think it's possible to use DSM 7.2 on the new TERRAMASTER F4-424 Pro in this way?

[@Egon3k]

Can you please say something about the fan noise compared to the QNAP 464?

[@nascompares]

I'll include this in the comparison next week

[@AndySomething]

Great review! Do you think Synology will release a 4 bay NAS with equivalent CPU's in 2024? I'm looking at getting my first NAS (mainly for Plex) but I'm put off by the old CPU's Synology rocks at the moment. The F4-424 looks pretty strong for Plex - I'm not sure if it's potentially overkill for 4k remux etc...

[@nascompares]

Plex vid on this one will drop in about 4 days, but in short...it smashed it!!

[@nascompares]

Also, no word on Synology, but pretty unlikely atm

[@10hitscombo]

Im curious how is the hdmi out put looks like? Just a command prompt? No gui? I never use nas before but. Can we access the nas like pc anywhere/team viewer? Where u can access the nas from primary computer and orginize the files between nas drives and you can turn off the primary computer and leave the nas to finish copy/moving files between the drives?

[@Yandarval]

Currently, with the TNAS OS. HDMI is just for a console output. Other OS's can use the HDMI, if supported, as normal. A hyothetical Windows install should utilize it as a display out, just fine.

[@DreaMeRHoLic]

I have to say that I encounter the problem of your reviews beeing to good. I thought about getting this and now that you said that Qnap (that i dont get because of security) would let me start a virtual machine using the HDMI (what i wanted to do with this Terramaster) I'm angry once again, because the system is almost perfect besides this point. I just want a NAS that i can hook up to my TV to maybe play some SNES emulator or old games on it. I would like a OS that doesnt tell me that my HDDs are about to fail after 2 years (hello synology), forces me to use their own SDDs (synology again) or is a security risk to get hacked and host my movies on the internet from my IP (QNAP). I mean i could deal with the extra price on the SSD and ignore the HDD warning on a Synology, but they dont have the HDMI port and the slow connection makes SSDs pointles. So i guess i wait a bit longer to see if terramaster rolls out a "HDMI Gui" or hope that synology releases a product that doesnt have limits from the start to indirecly force to be willing to upgrade to the next model? But well... i still respect Terramaster for this release and hope that QNAP gets their security done to force Synology out of their comport zone.

[@JorgeTeixeira]

I been thinking i purchase one to run my home lab, proxmox with truenas, home assistant, and other things.. i think would work fine right? That way i can remove my old qnap and my nuc and replace with just onde device.. The only downside i can find is number of usb ports, i will need to had a hub, to connect my 3d printer and ZigBee dongle. I don't think i can diy a nas with same hardware for the same money.. Or i am wrong?

[@nascompares]

You will much later in 2024 (there's a decent Erying one using the N95/N300 chips on the roadmap. Plus, the Erying i9 board we covered here a couple of weeks ago is insane value anyway

[@10hitscombo]

Can you recommend me a NAS or DAS that allow me to host a website and allow me to access the website publicly? Does it have a built in DDNS to access the website or I have to sign up a with a 3rd party Free DDNS?

[@ITAlpaka]

Great Review, i think iwould put Unraid on it, it is aroud 60 Euro and so much easier ....

[@nascompares]

Fair point!

[@derred723]

i think for the normal nas home user 10gbe isn't important and the overwhelming majority won't have 2.5 gbe either. I know nobody I know uses it at the moment. I think for people running some high end network it might be a big deal. I think for most people it's an after thought. I don't think most people want to buy all new gear, switches, routers or whatever at like triple the cost to get those speeds.

[@EraYaN]

Hence the note about this being the pro line compared to the normal line.

[@michaeljorgens2493]

Is there a possibility to use it as a DAS to one computer via the 10GB USB Port and as a NAS to the network? Thanks

[@spoonest]

Is it possible to install XPENOLOGY to it?

[@nascompares]

Ummmm..

[@Boburto]

Does it support ECC? I know it officially doesn’t but sometimes they unofficially support it. Also just because the CPU doesn’t officially support 32GB, it doesn’t mean it won’t work reliably. Because it could just be a soft limitation.

[@RedMarsupial]

Does Terramaster have a virtual machine option that runs Terramaster OS? - Similar to a virtual DSM (synology)

[@nascompares]

Afraid not. Just VirtualBox for standard VM images

[@spoonest]

And what about docker? Is it still 6 years old?

[@realfarfoxache]

Just run TrueNAS on it and make your own jail with docker

[@simen9485]

37:30 i wonder when the tower of nases is going to crumble

[@nascompares]

I do wonder that too...you'll know it's happened when I'm offline for a good long while...

[@chriscardwell3495]

Raises the customer's hardware expectations . . . Will new products from Synology have more powerful processors and 10 Gbe adaptive network connection?

[@Nerdamania]

Any word on when these will be available?

[@nascompares]

tbh I thought they were 'now', as me and Ed found out about these one by accident mid December. Maybe only through the Terramaster site directly ATM though

[@mjcharlton71]

@@nascompares there were 10 on AMZ UK last week or two, so they’ve sold fairly well I’d say. I ummed and ahhhed a week or two back, then ordered 8th and it arrived 9th.

[@darius6845]

Hi, Please i beg you to do plex performance without hardware transcoding, purely cpu transcoding

[@nascompares]

I mean, I've already done the Plex test vid and it has a lot of hardware transcoding and original content playback. But, why would you want 'pure CPU transcoding ' on aCPU that has int.gfx? Seems inefficient (maybe I am misunderstanding your question).

[@darius6845]

@@nascompares the tl;dr whilst hardware transcoding is the objectively better option, knowing how much better it is than just purely software is important + some of us do not have plex pass (cannot justify with how much or rather little I use plex) so the software performance is just as important.

[@Capricorn1475]

Привет дорогой друг! Подскажи, он действительно менее шумный, чем другие террамастер? Интересует, заглушает ли он шум дисков?

[@realfarfoxache]

My disks (IronWolf Pro) are a lot noiser than the fan! The fan is not really that noisy in my opinion!

[@handrzej]

i3-n305 works fine also with 48GB DDR5 module ! Someone should check it in Terra master.

[@onuponedown]

I have done exactly that! Ordered a 48GB crucial Module with my Terramaster 424 Pro. Works without any problems so far! Thanks for the Tip, it was your message here that let me try this. 🤗

[@RajBhatt]

I just put a 48gb DDR5 SODIMM in my Terramaster F8 SSD Plus with an i3-n305 and it works great! Corsair Vengeance 4800.

[@LivingEasy]

If only it was available for purchase. Not on Amazon yet.

[@nascompares]

Terramaster tend to list on their own site a good 2-3 months prior to general availability.

[@techclub8528]

It was on Amazon the other week, now it shows unavaible and you can only order the non pro version. The pro version was available to buy on Amazon in the UK for the last few weeks now gone for a while

[@mjcharlton71]

I bought a Pro last week and it’s no longer available today. I trialled an F4-423 last year and TM were in touch a couple of times, via Amazon comms, so it’s likely it’ll turn up again soon.

[@klauskohlfuerst]

If it comes as 6-bay - I will it buy ...

[@Lorondos]

Yeah, only real bad thing with these N chips, Intel still seems to be reserving features for their enterprise line of CPUs like extra PCI-E lanes.

[@nascompares]

I think it's more of a mobile SoC downsizing thing. I bang on about this (in a dull Samsung SSD video) next week.

[@Lorondos]

Yeah, it explains the single memory channel slot as well. @@nascompares

[@Act1veSp1n]

I mean, ports...thats more than any Synology - 2.5G + HDMI + USB-C People should really think about these units!

[@JamiKhan]

The new chasis looks like a slim down DS920+

[@nascompares]

I do genuinely dig the new case. Can't remember (currently on a limited Internet connection and can only dream of YouTibe levels of data!) Whether I show it in this video of the shorter version, the means to access the internal mobo and slots is 50x better now

[@alldecentnamestaken]

Is it possible to run Windows on bare metal with this system? This looks like it could be an ideal BlueIris system.

[@nascompares]

You can (this system boots off an internal USB and can be changed to a new source in bios, like any regular PC)

[@Avatar_EU]

I seriously hate all the bloat and BS that is included and ENFORCED by default with QNAP NAS's these days, which means it *can* take upwards of 10 minutes to shutdown, reboot and boot back up to a useable system. The Terramaster NAS's I've used so far, have been lightening fast in use, but is severely crippled by crap software. Local backup -> USB always fails. There's no way to have logs emailed. ISCSI backup is flakey. I terms of the N300 CPU, it's only listed as supporting 16GB DDR5 so that particular CPU doesn't take market share away from Intel's other low end CPU's.

[@GregoryCunningham]

Everything looks amazing, *except* that 2 year warranty. That’s an instant no go for me. I was ready to buy today otherwise.

[@LebanonDore]

I purchased on 12/30. I registered it yesterday and they extended it to a 2.5 year (30 months instead of 24) warranty instantly.

[@JohnPob]

Should have come in a six bay version

[@nascompares]

100% will, they know how popular this system is and they are seemingly trying to gazump the bigger NAS companies ahead of their own 2024/2025 releases

[@harrycee656]

Hard sell for the F4-424 when the DS423+ is also $499.

[@ІнженернаДумка]

👍 from Ukrainiane 🇺🇦

[@nascompares]

👋 from the United Kingdom! Fight on brother! We support you man

[@blender_wiki]

4 HDDs? In 2024. Really??? 🤦🏿‍♀️🤦🏿‍♀️🤦🏿‍♀️. What nonsense. And for those who don't understand why it is nonsense, please refrain from commenting back. Thanks.