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 AS5404T review: 4-bay, dual 2.5GbE, four M.2

Same N5105 board as the 2-bay, plus RAID 5 / 6 / 10 and a hot spare. Not Synology 1GbE. Not UGREEN 10G.

Nimbustor 4 Gen2. Official datasheet: Intel Celeron N5105, 4 GB DDR4-2933 (max 16 GB, 8 GB × 2), four 2.5" / 3.5" SATA, four M.2 2280 NVMe, dual 2.5GbE, three USB 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.0b. 170 × 174 × 230 mm, 2.26 kg. 90 W brick. 3-year warranty. Volume types: Single, JBOD, RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 6 / 10, RAID 1 / 5 + hot spare.

Power table: 38.3 W operation, 17.7 W hibernation, 0.81 W S3. That is the 4-bay tax versus the AS5402T 22.9 / 12.7 / 0.71 W. Still an S3 story. Still maker lab numbers. We have not measured wall watts.

The job this box is for: a few VMs on NVMe, media and backups on CMR HDD, 2.5G to a closet switch. ADM App Central and virtualization are real; they are not DSM. If the restore is the product, DS423+ is still the Plus 4-bay — and still gigabit. If you want 10G and Docker as a first-NAS pick, that remains the DXP4800 Plus slot. If you want 32 GB and an x86 board people re-image, F4-424 Pro.

CMR in the SATA bays. Skip WD Red EFAX, Blue EZAZ, BarraCuda 3.5" 4 / 8 TB SMR. IronWolf 1–6 TB is 5400 RPM; ST8000VN004 8 TB is 7200. WD Red Plus WD80EFPX is CMR and 5640 RPM — backups yes, VM LUN no, unless the VMs live on M.2. Guide: 2026 CMR picks.

Street, 22 Aug 2026

PathWhat we foundNote
Amazon disklessListing $582.99 at research fetch (113 reviews, 4.2).B0C5M8RMMM. Other shops were cited $530–$692. Publish the live number on the card you click, not a frozen range.
AsustorMaker product + datasheetasustor.com product p_id=82.

Skip

Skip if you only need two bays — the 2-bay sibling is the same NIC and M.2 story for less power. Skip if you need 10G. Skip SMR. Skip filling four bays with 5400 RPM disks and calling it a hypervisor datastore.

Sources

Nimbustor 4 Gen2 datasheet (38.3 / 17.7 / 0.81 W, RAID table). 2025 comparison PDF. Amazon B0C5M8RMMM. We have not sat with a unit.

Also in this lane

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. SHR vs RAID 1 on a 2-bay or 4-bay SynologyTwo identical disks: SHR ≈ RAID 1. RAID is not backup.