Labthrift Labthrift Buy the boring upgrade. Skip the rest.

Notes / First NAS

Editorial, 22 Aug 2026. Specs from maker pages and named street reports. We have not burned these units in. Affiliate tags are not live. Confirm the diskless SKU before you click — Amazon is full of drive bundles.

Asustor AS5402T review: four NVMe slots on a 2-bay NAS

The first-NAS that is actually all-flash-capable. N5105, dual 2.5GbE, four M.2. SATA RAID is 0 / 1 / JBOD only.

Nimbustor 2 Gen2. Official datasheet: Intel Celeron N5105 (4C, 2.0 / 2.9 GHz), 4 GB DDR4-2933 (max 16 GB, 8 GB × 2), two 2.5" / 3.5" SATA, four M.2 2280 NVMe, dual 2.5GbE with ADM SMB multichannel, three USB 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.0b. 170 × 114 × 230 mm, 1.71 kg. 65 W brick. 3-year warranty. Volume types on two SATA bays: Single, JBOD, RAID 0 / 1. That is the 2-bay lid — no RAID 5 here.

Power table on the same datasheet: 22.9 W operation, 12.7 W disk hibernation, 0.71 W S3 sleep. That S3 number is why this chassis shows up in the bedroom watts note. Maker lab, not our wall meter.

Use M.2 for VMs and apps. Use SATA for bulk CMR HDD. Do not fill SATA with old laptop disks. Skip WD Red EFAX, Blue EZAZ, BarraCuda 3.5" 4 / 8 TB SMR. IronWolf 1–6 TB is 5400 RPM; ST8000VN004 is 7200. Asustor lists the Samsung 870 EVO on the AS54 compatibility page if you want a 2.5" SATA SSD in a bay — still a client SSD, not a NAS-endurance SKU. Details: 2.5 vs 3.5.

ADM is not DSM. App Central and Portainer are real. The restore muscle and the boring package list are still Synology’s. If you want sleep and Hyper Backup more than four M.2 slots, DS224+. If you want 2.5G without Asustor, DXP2800 (one 2.5G, two M.2) or F2-425 (one 2.5G, no M.2).

Street, 22 Aug 2026

PathWhat we foundNote
B&H diskless$369.00 listed at research fetch.1792956-REG.
Amazon disklessASIN B0C5MB5MTSB0C5MB5MTS. Confirm the US diskless card. A CAD listing is not the US price.
Newegg14P-0016-000T8. Third-party snapshots $406.99–$437.27.Those are dated. Check the live seller.

Skip

Skip if you need RAID 5 on spinning disks — buy the AS5404T or a 4-bay. Skip if ADM is a worse Sunday than TOS or DSM for you. Skip SMR in the SATA pair. Skip treating this as a 10G box; dual 2.5G plus SMB multichannel is the story, and it still needs a 2.5G switch.

Sources

Asustor AS5402T product page. Nimbustor 2 Gen2 datasheet (power 22.9 / 12.7 / 0.71 W). B&H 1792956-REG. Amazon B0C5MB5MTS. 2025 Asustor comparison PDF. We have not sat with a unit.

Also in this lane

Asustor AS5404T review: 4-bay, dual 2.5GbE, four M.24-bay, dual 2.5GbE, four M.2. TerraMaster F4-424 Pro: 32 GB DDR5 4-bay for Docker or TrueNASi3-N305 and 32 GB. TOS in the box. x86 people actually re-image. DS224+ vs DS423+: 2-bay or 4-bay Synology PlusSame CPU. Same 1GbE. Bays and M.2 decide.