UGREEN NAS Released - Should you buy?

[@wittywilla]

When these were on kickstarter - I immediately purchased the 2 bay, the 4 bay plus, and the 6 bay. These gave so much hardware for the price - and they were 40% off retail for early bird buyers like myself. If anyone is interested in these NAS devices but don't have the cash, keep an eye on the second hand market to snag a deal! Also, TrueNAS and Unraid work flawlessly on these machines, so even if the main UGREEN NAS software drops support, you'll have ways to still make use of the hardware.

[@sometechguy]

Real bargain at that price, if you are happy to wait. The products are still available in limited regions, but would hope that they start to appear elsewhere and deals might be available. And the second hand market as you say.

[@igordasunddas3377]

Thanks for the video! Very informative. I want also to point iut, that at 12:39 you say "10 gigabytes per second", but what you mean is 10 gigabits per second, which is rather around 1,25 gigabytes per second.

[@sometechguy]

It’s possible, with networking you refer to Gbps (Gigabits) but with PCIe bandwidth it’s documented in GBps (Gigabytes per second), when you are talking about using the network to access the PCIe, I could have misspoken.

[@toseltreps1101]

you fucked up, just admit it you manlet

[@avishai0258]

I have the dxp2800 for home use The build quality is outstanding! It also working very well the fan was very noisy some times because shitty fan curves the last update was fixing it Their phones is amazing weyyy better then qnap for my experience I love the way they working

[@maxsteal1982]

Great video, thank you. I also bought the DXP6800 Pro at the discounted kickstarter price but have not set it up as yet. Soon I will be populating with (3) 22Tb HDD, (2) 4Tb SSD and 64GB DDR5. I am a first time NAS owner and I want to get everything right. I'm looking forward to all related videos before I set up the device.

[@sometechguy]

Sounds like a nice setup. 👍

[@paressh]

Are you a millionaire?

[@jimholloway1785]

Are you going to use 4800MHz or 5200 MHz memory. I know it stats to use the 4800 MHz but I see the faster memory. On your SSD's did you order them with Heatsinks installed(I am seeing more and more heatsinks being sold with NVMe drivers). Thanks and it sounds great the way your are upgrading the NAS.

[@maxsteal1982]

1) Crucial RAM 64GB Kit (2x32GB) DDR5 4800MHz CL40 Laptop Memory CT2K32G48C40S5. 2) EN705 SSD 8TB (2x4TB) PCIe Gen4, NVMe M.2 2280, 3D NAND TLC, Up to 5000MB/s, Internal Solid State Drive, Dynamic SLC Cache. These don't have heat sync, but I don't think I'll need them. 3) Western Digital 66TB (3x22TB) WD Red Pro NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 512 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD221KFGX

[@maxsteal1982]

Travel/Photography Hobbiest

[@nadtz]

From talking to a few people who own units and general chatter it seems like with a few changes (to address cooling mostly) in the short term and software in the long term this could be a contender given the price.

[@aznhomig]

Thank god these NASs are using 12th-gen Intel processors. If they were using 13th and 14th gen laptop processors, it would be affected by the defects plaguing those Intel chips right now.

[@sometechguy]

The lack of transparency from Intel about this issue is a serious issue. They have said laptop processors are not impacted, but they said a lot of things that lack credibility and I have seen reports at least that mobile chips are having issues. Not great is it….

[@jodajackson4489]

Yeah that wouldn’t be ideal. However, these things happen from time to time. In such a case, the issue really becomes one of how robust their technical support is and whether or not there is a recall (for the chip and or devices using said chip). The Intel Atom C2000 SoC errata was similarly problematic and Synology accepted RMA’s for their NAS models using it. You had to request the RMA though because there was no recall.

[@DJCray8472]

I think, I would buy it to install truenas. But for that: It's too expensive. Using the software from China, without knowing, access to my device? Yes Synology and QNAP could do the same... So staying with truenas makes more sense...

[@DJSammy69.]

Holy smokes that is expensive.

[@nadtz]

Compared to Synology it's not for the hardware you get. The software still needs work and the hardware some tweaking but it's honestly not bad for what you get if you don't want to DIY.

[@frankwong9486]

​@@nadtz I wish they sell as hardware solution only and don't bundle that half baked OS along Sells as a turkey solution but it still raw out of the box (put Gordon Ramsay voice here)

[@nadtz]

@@frankwong9486 At least you can install another OS on these units. I agree though, they could have made the units a little cheaper if they sold them barebones.

[@SomeOne-p6f]

Qnap want roughly £2200 odd for a 12Gen 6core i5 with 32gb.

[@jodajackson4489]

Synology doesn’t have a Thunderbolt 4 supporting NAS IIRC so there is no direct comparison. QNAP has Thunderbolt NAS models and Thunderbolt upgradable models but those typically are in the ~$2000 USD range and I paid under ~$1000 for my UGreen DXP8800 Plus 8 bay NAS via KickStarter.

[@paressh]

I'm from Ireland and it's not available in Europe yet

[@sometechguy]

I understand it’s available in Germany only in Europe initially. I couldn’t get a timeline for other countries.

[@paressh]

Thank you. You should sell on your channel.

[@SomeOne-p6f]

Surely a universal power brick would be better than an internal psu for cooling?

[@sometechguy]

I am personally not a fan of external power bricks, just for neatness and cable management. And there may be a power draw limit where they are not the best approach. But yes, there are some benefits.

[@steffengerlach8395]

As for the software side: is it possible to install e.g. TrueNAS instead?

[@sometechguy]

Yes, it is. There are a couple of ways, and this something I am going to look at and I may make a guide on this. I do mention this in the video as well as the statement on support for UGreen if you do this. Basically, they won’t support that software (obviously) but it doesn’t affect the hardware warranty as long as you don’t damage the hardware in the process.

[@jimholloway1785]

Did your unit come with a 13th gen i5, I see in the specs on the Ugreen site it states a 12th gen processor, not really important, I ordered this model last week and should get it on Sept 5th, 2024. I really have no idea what the difference is between the two processors.

[@sometechguy]

I think I talked about 12th Gen but I had a typo in a table where I think it said 13th. It’s 12th Gen.

[@jimholloway1785]

@@sometechguy ok thanks, thanks for clarifying it, I was hoping they might be updating the hardware a bit.

[@sometechguy]

@@jimholloway1785 not sure how impacted the mobile chips are, but given currently unclear issues related to 13th14th Gen Intel chips and quality issues., maybe be better with 12th anyway.

[@danieldelfuoco9139]

4:46 the 6 Bay would suit my needs and then some…. But being double the price of the 4 bay… it’s a really tough sell. I really want thunderbolt, but I don’t wanna cough up another $600 if I could just use the 4 Bay and live without it. Sucks man

[@Tri-Technology]

Thunderbolt is not that great on a NAS and I say that, because I wanted the 6-Bay because of thunderbolt ports. Thunderbolt 4 gives you only 10 Gbit/s Ethernet Mode so you can achive that with other solutions. A HDD raid can write ~ 1 Gbit/s and if you use the SSD caches as mirror write speed is limited to 2 Gbit/s as explained in the beginning of the video. So why would you need thunderbolt 4? eGPUs are killing the power efficiency and have a performance loss of 10 to 20%, while daisy chaining is a handy feature on docking stations, but not needed on a NAS that is accessed most of the times via lan/network interfaces.

[@Tri-Technology]

Thunderbolt 4 is not worth it. You are limited to 10 Gbit's in ethernet mode, ~1 Gbit's write speed on a HDD raid, 2 Gbit/s if you use your SSD cache drives in mirror mode as explained in the video. eGPUs are killing the power efficiency and daisy chaining is not really needed on a NAS, that is accessed via lan/network most of the times. I thought it's nice, but I never use it on my DXP 6800.

[@Norbea]

The console on HDMI running on 4K is just ridiculous. I had the same issue, just trying to get the IP address from Truenas install on Nasync.

[@sometechguy]

I am not sure what the issue is there, maybe it needs a deeper look. But touching the interface config can be a bit of an issue. Won’t affect most people I imagine as once it’s configured, most would leave it alone. UGreen do need to get that addressed though.

[@rogerhalt3991]

I’m torn between building my own Jonsbo N4 server or this. Now the kickstarter is over, it’s pretty expensive.

[@sometechguy]

The 6800 especially as it went up also from $1000. They seem to be releasing in specific countries first, but I guess as it ships more broadly and becomes available on 3rd party sites that there may be deals to be had.

[@maxsteal1982]

Got an email from UGreen this morning and it says some of their NAS are on discount. Definitely will not be Kick-started discount but still....it's money off.

[@mateuszw.812]

still not available in Europe.... why, for fuck's sake...

[@sometechguy]

I don’t know and it’s frustrating. I believe it is available in Germany but I asked UGreen if they would be shipping from Germany to elsewhere in Europe and it seems not. I hope it’s temporary while they get their logistics nailed down and that it will be available direct or via other channels in other countries soon. I am sure they would want to sell globally, but they may be verifying their support snd sparing capability first.

[@thmalex]

As a Hong Konger I will never trust any software made in China as I am not sure if there is any backdoor there. Also based on the price and software and hardware provided, I would prefer Synology or QNAP this moment.

[@sometechguy]

Either back doors or vulnerabilities, I personally limit NAS access to the internet, and to other things on the network, and limit access to the NAS. And this isn’t specific to any vendor, it’s just about risk management as the NAS contains important data and I don’t implicitly trust devices. Several NAS vendors got hit by things like deadbolt ransomware, so it’s always something to think about. And of course, backups. I come from a network and security background however, and have the kit to do this. It isn’t easy for most users. But I will do a video in the future I think on how to implement this kind of security in a small network as some of those who buy things like NAS will have more than just a home router. Some vendors provide things like immutable snapshots also, which UGreen are yet to implement. But the btrfs file system seems the go to choice now and supports this, so I am sure it will come.