Finally the review I've been waiting for! I backed the 8-bay and recently even added the 6-bay version to my pledge. As soon as I saw the specs of the 8-bay, I knew it was the NAS for a data hoarder like me! 🤪 I was still a little hesitant though because of their lackluster software but as soon as I found out that it is possible to install 3rd party OS like TrueNAS, unRAID, OMV, etc. and that the hardware is still covered by the warranty, I couldn't resist anymore and backed their Kickstarter campaign! 😅 I'm also hoping they soon add multi-factor authentication too and the option to change the MTU to around 9000 to be able to fully utilize the 10GbE connection. I'm not too worried security-wise though as I plan to place this NAS behind a hardware firewall and not open it directly over the Internet (as any security conscious person should!). This is even more important since their software is very new and is at high risk of 0-day attacks and vulnerabilities. Another feature I'm hoping they add is options for data checksum for advanced data integrity with data scrubbing in UGOS software since this NAS doesn't support ECC memory. Having this feature will make this NAS more resistant to bitrot and have the ability of self-healing corrupted files when doing data scrubbing. Btw those are some awesome noise levels! It's much more silent than I anticipated. But I doubt it will be that silent if you are using Seagate EXOS drives. 🤪 The power draw isn't that bad either! That's another one of my concerns. The power consumption they mentioned on ther Kickstarter page was much higher than your results. Maybe they have further tweaked both the hardware and software to improve power efficiency. Anyways keep it up! Great review as always! I'll be looking foward to your review of the 6-bay unit which I also backed on their Kickstarter page. 👍 Edit: UGreen replied to my comment in their Kickstarter page and confirmed that they intend to include both the MTU adjustment and the encryption feature. UGreen also said that these will be accessible via the dedicated app which I'm assuming their phone app.
Remember, re: noise. I was running 4 fairly small HDDs and 4 sata SSDs. If you run bigger drives (above 10TB) and in larger number, then you will DEFINITELY hear it!!!!
UGreen replied to my comment in their Kickstarter page and confirmed that they intend to include both the MTU adjustment and the encryption feature. UGreen also said that these will be accessible via the dedicated app which I'm assuming their phone app.
Thanks for the review, great content as usual. Fairly recently discovered your channel but I am a fan! Primarily wanted to write this comment because of your sweatshirt though. 😂 It gave me a hearty chuckle and I agree wholeheartedly. Rats of the skies, I call them. The average pigeons are well-adjusted by comparison!
I remember you mentioning that you basically lose money doing this UGREEN series so another tremendous THANK YOU! This is the model I backed so I’m looking forward to it even more. I’m sure UGREEN watches your videos so they should know that a lot of buying with confidence is due to your selfless work.
Ok, lose money was a bit dramatic of me. But yeah, sod all kind of profit at the end after the work, but it is beneficial I'm the exploration and meeting new users. I have to be fair and honest there!!! Thanks for being brilliant btw
Your effort to clarify Ugreen NAS innovations is fantastic. Thanks! Could you think of a video about the opposite view of the equation like “Best Ugreen NAS for content creators” (THE ULTIMATE WORKFLOW FOR EDITING AND STORAGE)”? or less dramatic lol… and compare the units
Indeed, I’d like to see a dual and or quad NVMe to PCIe adapter card (bifurcation and non-bifurcation) just to see if it would work. If it were to work, it would have four or six NVMe SSDs respectively not including the hidden OS NVMe SSD.
@@octaveanaugustus307 thats a great idea for this system, i would also be interested to see how that works and what kind of speeds you get with those drives.
@@mmrk_At this point I’m guessing that the UGreen BIOS won’t allow for PCIe bifurcation. Therefore the NVMe to PCIe card would have to be non-bifurcation capable and those tend to be a bit more expensive. Also, it’s been reported by some that using the PCIe slot to adapt NVMe SSD’s works but the onboard M.2 slots are then disabled. While I can’t verify this yet, if true it sounds like some kind of limitation within either the BIOS or OS.
as someone who is OCD, the hdd bay sequence numbering 1,2,3,4,7,5,6,8 made me uncomfortable... lol. anyway, thanks for the great review. actually i have backed the kickstarter with 6-bay NAS.
I'm so, so sorry!! I spotted this in the edit (I was playing with drive bays for a 24TB video) and didn't spot it. Decided to ignore it whilst I edited..but I did wonder if anyone would spot. I'm sorry I'm the worst, man
I am glad that UGreen has blown away the status quo. Hoping we see a new generation of NAS units with more capable hardware and upgradability as the new norm.
Fantastic review, as always. I've backed the six bay, so its nice to see the larger form factors with increased capabilities. I wonder whether the performance on the second m.2 drive would still be downgraded if PCI slot was empty? Which also begs the question: What is the R/W performance on a PCI based storage card in the system?
Been thinking about picking up a second 1821+ but the DXP8800+ is very tempting. Even if UGOS sucks can just install TrueNAS. Price is actually really fair.
@@nascompares True! I've been using Synology NAS since 2012 and I was about to get the next 8-bay from them but with their decision to push "their" own drives (other drives are not "good" enough) and the underwhelming network speed support over that last couple of releases it's finally time to leave even when I love DSM (and the Synology Active Backup solution). Synology really should think again what they are doing. Do they really want to let their customers go because of this sh***y decision? As the Ugreen hardware looks very good and they have really thought things through I did go for the 8-Bay NAS. The option for an alternative OS is a plus.
Thanks for this. I always appreciate your attention to detail on these reviews. I wouldn't buy a piece of NAS hardware you hadn't made a video on at this point. :) I'm a bit stunned on the lane difference between the two slots. I'd expect that on an AliExpress demon board or something, but that is clearly not how the product is marketed, and it's not acceptable for a machine at that price point targeted at creators, IMHO (he says, having backed the 8 bay model). I wonder if the 6 bay model does the same thing with its lanes. If that's a hardware restriction that can't be fixed, I'm going to seriously consider cancelling my pledge. For that price, those slots should run at full speed. Thanks for taking the time to follow up with UGREEN. :)
Thank you very much for this review and the whole UGreen NAS Series! For the noise, I guess I would buy some Noctua fans before buying extra RAM :) Exchanging built in fans with Noctua fans on brand new device became a normal practice for me. At the moment, pairing the hardware with TrueNAS Scale is the winning combination. I'm really like how UGreen handles the constructive feedback and how they are improving the software. Let's see what will they deliver when they start shipping devices.
Looking forward to the 6-bay. That's the one I backed. Just now to decide how much storage I want to shoot for next. Should hopefully arrive before I go on a cruise in your region from London to Bergen
At the very least UGreen is shooting over the bow of the established NAS manufacturers which offers us better value/hardware in the long run - competition!!!
Yep, exactly this. I just wish they hadn't opted for crowdfunding to kicks things off. As it undermines comparison with established brands that are available via traditional retail.
I have not played with Docker's and such is a little outside my current skills....(Home Pro-consumer / user) Not that I am against learning... just not on the top of my current project list :)
I'm mostly interested in serving files and media; I want to clean off a lot of things on my hard drive, and the accumulation of USB drives in the house is getting to be a bit much. I backed the 6-bay. Probably more than I'll need, but I figured having the better processor and more bays doesn't hurt, and future-proofs me to an extent.
Another reason I just realized that they went to kick starter is to build a customer base. That way they don’t have to get the software perfect out the gate. And then they will have a base to attract others once the software is good.
Indeed, let us also hope that UGreen opts for accessories like NVMe add in cards, 10GbE / 2.5GbE NICs, SFF-8088 cards, USB 3.2 Gen 2 RAID enclosures, Thunderbolt RAID enclosures and more,…..
I joined the presale today of the dxp8800+. Seen them for awhile but looked at the costs vs other Nas . I really think this will be a good buy for a media server for plex. I plan on loading it all with 18TB drives. Upping the memory to 64gb and 2 2tb m.2s. Should be a beast.
PCIe devices can readily downgrade their link speed when not in use. It's entirely normal to observe a "downgraded" link when the device is idle, although this capability also depends on BIOS and OS settings. Recently, one of our clients was puzzled by why their GPU was showing only a 1-lane link speed, but it turned out to be in an idle state. There was a recent lspci output from the 6-bay system that caused some concern because, in that specific test unit (although it's uncertain about production units), they used the same 4-port SATA chip as the one used in the 4800 Plus model. Since this chip is a 4-port SATA chip, it implies the use of port replication in that particular unit, which could potentially cause issues with TrueNAS. I'm not requesting a check of TrueNAS compatibility on this device, but if you have a moment, could you please look into the SATA chip used for the backplane? I would greatly appreciate this information.
So both NVME are PCIE 4.0 x4 but for some reason the second nvme slot on your unit is operating at x1? Do let us know what they tell you the issue is… I backed the 6 disk model which I think is the exact same board just 2 more sata
I got a DX 4600 . A previous generation product. It was quiet in the first place. But it become much noisy because the losen hdd rack. I hope this product line will be better.
I backed this project at the most save money time, and they actually offer to get any of the other units at the same time for the same savings. I did not as I was unsure of the unit. On paper they look fantastic though.
Yep, not jumping through hoops to get one and not paying double when they release it, especially considering their ideas on warranties and forcing you to use their software.
Would buy one immediately if not region restricted. Can get one shipped from Germany but warranty etc.. their bad. Another customer lost. I'm building my own.
Hey! fantastic review and I am setting mine up as we speak! I am curious what 2 port 10G card you used with it? I want to buy that one or one you would recommend!
Robbie what are your thoughts on using those Dell X540 T2 cards without the typical 200lfm required airflow? I've been looking at these and HBA cards which were designed to live in a rack unit with Delta screamers forcing air through the chassis.
Great reviews as always. I'm new to the NAS scene and have ordered the DXP8800 Plus and wondering what hardware you'd kit this machine out with. I'd like 6 HDD's maybe 20TB each in Raid 6 and 2 SSD's and 2 M.2's. Finally upgrade the RAM for virtual machine scenarios. How would you fully utilise this hardware from Ugreen and what brands and models of components would you use? Cheers 🙂
Thank you!! Looking forward to the 6 bay review. Excellent review as always :) I agree the hardware is very impressive. Looking to upgrade from a ~2015 WD system. QUESTION:: A make-or-break item for me is the (1) using one NMVE as a cache (possible?) (2) using the other NVME as a drive that is mirrored into a folder structure of the warm storage of the magnetic SATAs. Is this viable on this system??? @NASCompares
Yes, that could be done. Though tbh, in the software currently, it would be a little clunky to arrange your latter need. They have said they are improving the sync tools, so by launch (in theory) it will be possible much more efficiently. Hope that helps man
Could you try installing Windows 11/Server or a Linux distro with a GUI, plug in a monitor to that HDMI port and see what happens? I’m surprised no one has tried it yet 🤷🏻♂️
Becaus uou can run third party software it is much more time proof then the others were software is nit getting updates and force you to use online connections. This could be my new truneas server replacement (now use a old xeon pc) that i bought in parts, it was very very cheap.
I've been watching your reviews on this NAS and I feel like from what you said, im going to risk it and get the 6 bay from them. I have no real need for a NAS but I want one to have a network at home to stream movies. Great stuff, i hope they continue to improve the software. Would anyone know if you can run emulators off of it like NES so i can play old games from a TV?
I keep wanting/attempting/almost finishing a video on this, but it's the whole 'legal rom' stuff that keeps killing it. I even got as far as building a retro arcade server on a QNAP TVS-872X - but I kept hitting walls with YT. You can 10000% run something basic like retroarch on a VM, but there are much, MUCH better ways to do it
There is a non-technical reviewer who had close to 10gb transfers from the 4-bay after upgrading to 64gb and making sure that the drive the utility moving and accepting data was running on their their nvme and not their sata ssd. You can definitely get faster speeds.
I tried to reserve this model when it was announced, right after you started posting about them. the $5 payment didnt get thru. Now with it up about $80 I'm not sure Im going to risk it.
UGreen had the super early bird pricing of 40% off for the first 48 hours after launch before bumping it to 35% off. I backed the 8-bay after their 1st day of launch securing my 40% discount. I knew UGreen will be releasing a new line of NAS'es a few months back when they announced it on CES but I never paid too much attention to them as I thought they will just be another TerraMaster and 'coz I own a couple of Synology NAS'es already. The awesome NAS specs and the ability to install 3rd party OS while still retaining hardware warranty changed my mind though so I went ahead and backed it up. 😅
If I am editing 4k CDNG or 6k BRAW video files in davinci resolve, would i get essentially the same performance with this NAS wired connection than with a Thunderbay8? It looks like they have the same USBC thunderbolt ports and the price is even cheaper to the TB
Can anyone tell me what is the clearence hight for the M2 NVME (if for example it will fit the : MP600 PRO LPX 4TB PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD or the MP600 PRO XT 8TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen. 4 x4 SSD) ?
at this point, i'm just hoping for a solid software with many apps and features, aside from this, ugreen got my money straight away, i almost bought a synology nas for backing up my photos mainly, but ugreen came at the best moment
Cool air is headed out the back. I didn't mention it on the vid, but I definitely remember feeling it several times whilst connecting different devices in the testing
@@nascompares Be better if it was back to front, positive pressurizing the case, and having it leak out the front keeping dust away from the hard drives.
I've started seeing more and more established companies using crowdfunding to pre-load their R&D or manufacturing spend. This includes the unofficial crowdfunding methods like pre-orders with a 30-day or longer lead time before the product is actually released. I not really a fan of this mentality. In the case of ugreen I also think this is inappropriate as it shifts a lot of the risk to the customer.
Just need to point out that all Macs have for years supported Thunderbolt networking, even the old Intel Macs - and that Thunderbolt is at this point from Intel and not exotic. Just because the NAS sector treats it that way, does. It means it actually is - and I would argue Thunderbolt is far more common than 8k (and far more useful) and so deserves at least as much attention as 8k. I would appreciate if you would stop making it sound exotic in order to help normalize TB for your community and to normalize it as a product expectation for modern NAS units. If it is desirable enough for storage transfer to eat the hardware engineering costs, then it is also desirable for peer to peer for the same reasons.
Any data surveillance or security concerns based on the company’s location and known oversight of it's companies? I wonder if anyone’s done a network analysis to see if the NAS establishes any unknown outbound connections, opens listening ports, or transmits any data outside of your home network (either from the NAS itself or from other interconnected devices on your network).
I saw you touched on the thunderbolt ports, but I did not quite fully understand you explanation. What do you mean when you say it will only be a host? Would I be able to connect a thunderbolt compatible computer and transfer files back and forth using the cable at full speeds?
You can only currently use those ports for external drives. A 'host' is the device that is in control of a connection, whereas a 'client' is a device that is being controlled/managed.
Tho use network performance numbers look terrible - and they are far below what Storage Review showed on the 6 Bay. At one point they showed 2x10GbE saturation on one of their results (flashed on the screen).
Can the software expand the raid pool by adding disks on the fly (5 drives in raid 6 -> 6 drives for example)? I would love to get the 8-bay and add drives as I need them, rather than purchasing all at once.
Please do a test with a 3rd party OS and jumbo frames. That hardware should easily saturate a 10 GBe link even if it's just full of spinning rust with an NVMe cache. I get better transfer speed going to a 2 bay Synology over 2.5 GBe from my desktop than you were going over 10 GBe. It has to be the overhead taxed from the lack of jumbo frame support in the OS. Let's be honest, not a single person backing this product gives a shit about the native OS, as a matter of fact, the selling point is that I can put anything I want on it, even if it voied the warranty I wouldn't care. How would they know? I can just plop the original NVMe back in and send it back for repair. If people really care about product support from a software level, they're barking up the wrong tree buying anything funded by a crowdfunding campaign.
I actually think the access door on the bottom side should have been designed to reduce the space between it and the NVMe SSDs. That way those massive thermal pads could be a more conventional size. I mean, good god, those things are huge,………..(that’s what she said).
For anyone wondering about the ECC support - DDR5 ODECC is not true ECC - "While traditional ECC ensures data integrity by handling memory errors while data is being moved, on-die ECC ensures higher reliability of higher-density memory and protects the data that is in the memory chip." All the Ugreen NAS support ODECC, which is great,... but it is not full ECC... so,.. e.g. ZFS will not benefit for data in transit.
Hi bud, just published a vid on this ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hpQuSRBprxk.html ). Apologies for the delay, been away covering computex
I just want an enterprising case manufacturer to build an mATX case in the same vein of the DS3615xs. The market has been ruined by catering to gamers.
Orico has a new 8 Bay USB DAS (I bought one for 144 $ on Alibaba). Which could be paired with a 250$ mini pc to basically get the same results as this 1000$ unit. I wish you had a video comparing them :)
key word there is *basically*. Think of the bottleneck and having your storage pool connected via a USB. I definitely see your point though. I've added Mini PC + DAS VS NAS to my 'to do' pile, as you are utterly right, there is definitely a question to be answered there! This is the closest thing I have done (usb part at the end) - m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hGGK4St-c4A.html
I used to have a 5-bay Orico DAS running in raid 5 and it was fine for a while until it started corrupting my files. I thought it was just a fluke so I restored everything and run it again but after a month or so it happened again. I won't trust Orico again with my files. It's not worth the cheap price for the potential of loosing all your data. I have long replaced my 5-bay Orico DAS with a 5-bay Sabrent DAS and it has been great! 👍
@@nascompares I dont think the bottleneck would be that bad as a SATA HDD would use around 2GBPS and unless youre doing a 10Gigabit NAS you would be bottlenecked by the network first. I think raid 5 or 6 would be great. In that video consider Orico NS800U3, which uses a VIA Labs VL716 (USB to SATA bridge) controller, which is a USB-IF certified chipset.
I backed this, but I think before the campaign ends I'm probably going to cancel it. If I do a build with the W680 chipset I get QuickSync AND ECC, which seems like the gold standard for a NAS build. Those motherboards are pricey, but it doesn't seem like it's worth saving a bit of money to miss out on ECC. The problem is basically every NAS chassis I can find pisses me off in one way or another. I wish there was a NAS chassis in this shape and style with full ATX support and hotswap bays.
@@brodriguez11000 I know, and all the ones I know of have some glaring flaw like poor thermals, poor ventilation, poor airflow, something. I couldn’t find any mATX W680 board with both QuickSync and IPMI, but as I’ve done more research it seems like that’s a crapshoot anyway as you normally have to choose between one or the other in the BIOS. So I got a BliKVM 4 to replace IPMI and I could probably get away with mATX, but the best non-rack case I’ve found, the SilverStone CS382, is a tower.
@@brodriguez11000 I didn't mention size, because I don't care if it's a little bigger to accommodate ATX. Just shape and style. I wanted full ATX so I could have QuickSync AND IPMI on a W680 board, but upon further research it seems like that's a real crapshoot, as you normally have to pick one or the other in the BIOS. So I bought a BliKVM 4 to stand in place of IPMI, and therefore all I'd be losing by going to mATX is PCIe slots. I just find it silly that they won't just make a case like this but 2.4 inches wider and maybe a tad deeper for full ATX support.
Yea it kind of sucks this NAS doesn't support ECC RAM but I'm not too bothered by it since I'll be using it mostly as a media server. I instead have my Synology DS1621xs+ NAS with ECC RAM for storing my critical important files. 😚
@@xellaz I wouldn't be as concerned about it as I am, but I'm going to do ZFS and it's even more helpful there. I plan to just build a bigger badder NAS for my main one and repurpose my Synology DS918+ to hold local backups.
@@xenonlp9189 No worries at all. That was the answer UGREEN gave in the comments section, however after looking at a recent DXP6800 Pro teardown I’m not so sure that’s right. They didn’t look larger than 120mm fans. Possibly smaller?
@@xenonlp9189 I stand corrected. I asked ElectronicsWizardry since he has a 6 bay review unit and he said it’s dual 92mm x 25mm fans which sounds right from what I saw. I hope this helps. You should checkout his review.
I am looking into buying this unit for PLEX. Would you recommend it, and that kind of optimization would do for that? Or is there a better option out there for 4k streaming?
Depends on your clients. If you have clients that support HEVC you can run Plex on a potato (or pretty close). If they don't and you require transcoding you would need a GPU to do the transcoding efficiently
I backed it at the $899 but as soon as it arrives I will be installing unraid without ever launching ugreens software. Is it possible to use the OS nvme slot for Plex meta data?
Is it possible that adding the PCIe card is what throttled the second NVMe card? I just built a new desktop and had to make sure I used the right PCIe and NVMe slots so my OS SSD wouldn't get throttled and also wouldn't kill access to two of my SATA ports.
I am new to this and many people recommend buying Synology or QNAP. They say Synology is more consumer grade whereas QNAP is more business grade. Is that true? What are the biggest differences and which one do you recommend?
if one wants to simply play tv shows & movies via plex, is there any reason to get the plus version of the 4 bay instead of the non-plus of the 4 bay? thanks for your reviews!
Tough call, as media compression and scale differs (as does the res etc). Of you are watching 4k, without conversions, on devices that sully support HEVC - No need for the higher tier model. But if you have or plan on higher requirements and/or will need transcoding and conversions - pay the extra and get the future proofing. Hope this helps bud
I’m thinking of putting 3 20TB HDDs in RAID5 with a nvme SSD for caching and 5 8 or 4TB sata SSDs with a parity nvme SSD in RAID4 if possible. And because it’s gonna be an expensive hobby I’m thinking of setting up the HDDs and a year later the sata SSDs if the RAID array is not hard to change later
I wonder if you can fit an RTX 4000 ada in that slot? Load this with TrueNAS and you can bypass the still not ready native O/S. This might make a decent system to play with some AI models. I have been sold on ZFS for quite some time despite the limitations (old Solaris admin here). Bit rot is real.
Is it just me or is their OS looking a lot like a ripoff of DSM? Also, I find the Thunderbolt and SD card slot very gimmicky for a NAS. Your NAS should be somewhere hidden, and your thunderbolt port isn’t going to be reaching any speeds of use off a network.
@@Redlinehmf The maximum RAM speeds will be determined by the memory controller inside the CPU used. The fastest DDR5 SODIMM modules go to would be DDR5-5600.