Written 22 Aug 2026. Specs from the maker pages linked below. Prices from those stores. I haven't used these. Confirm the diskless SKU before you click. Amazon is full of drive bundles.

Four bays at 2-bay Plus money, still one faster port: TerraMaster F4-425

Four quiet bays when you want to start with two disks and add later, at the price of a 2-bay Plus. Same Intel as the 2-bay. Still one faster-than-house ethernet port. Still no M.2.

Four quiet bays when you want to start with two disks and add later, at the price of a 2-bay Plus. Official specification: Intel Celeron N5095 (not the Newegg “N95” row), 4 GB DDR4 non-ECC, one slot, official max 16 GB, four SATA bays, one 2.5GbE, HDMI, no M.2, TRAID / TRAID+, RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 6 / 10, 90 W brick, 21.0 dB(A) standby claim (2 SATA, 1 m). 222 × 179 × 154 mm, 2.1 kg net. One 120 mm fan. 2-year warranty. Max raw on the store page: 120 TB (30 TB × 4).

Same CPU-label caution as the F2-425: official marketing and the spec block say N5095. Newegg spec blocks have said N95. Quote the official store. Aging Jasper Lake, no NVMe. Say that before you celebrate the bay count.

TOS vs DSM is the real comparison, not the NIC. Four empty bays and TRAID are why this exists. If you need snapshots-that-restore and a package list that has been boring for a decade, DS423+ is still the DSM 4-bay. If you want four M.2 and dual 2.5GbE, that is AS5404T. If you want 32 GB and a board people re-image, F4-424 Pro.

Disks: CMR in any RAID / TRAID / ZFS. Skip WD Red EFAX, Blue EZAZ, BarraCuda 3.5" 4 / 8 TB SMR. IronWolf 1–6 TB is 5400 RPM; 8 TB ST8000VN004 is 7200. WD Red Plus 8 TB WD80EFPX is CMR and 5640 RPM. Fine for media and backups, wrong as the only VM LUN.

Street, 22 Aug 2026

Skip

Skip if you need NVMe or dual LAN. Skip if TOS is the thing you don't want to debug. Skip SMR in TRAID. Skip a used DS918+ as the “real” 4-bay alternative. That used SKU is out.