Smallnetbuilder has done their usual thorough job of reviewing the Thecus TopTower N6850 NAS. This Thecus NAS is a typical example of Thecus' NAS design which includes strong hardware at a low price point. The NAS has some of the most powerful features available in a small NAS and is driven by a Pentium G620 processer. It has six-drive bays, USB 3.0, and optional 10 GbE ports. It comes standard with 2 GB DDR3 RAM, which is expandable to a whopping 16 GB of RAM. Also unusual for a NAS is the HDMI port allowing the device to double as a media player.
The rear panel allows for installation of two PCIe expansion boards including one with 10 Gb ethernet ports for super fast connectivity if your network is 10 GB enabled.
Power usage was found to be moderate:
Thecus supplied four 1 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST31000524AS) drives for testing. They brought total power consumption with all drives spun up to 79 W. I also tried four of WD's new 3 TB Red drives, which brought power draw down to 73 W.
The review finds that the NAS is very fast with an excellent price-performance ratio:
The N6850 sticks closely to Thecus' playbook. It's a bit rough around the edges software-wise, but doesn't hold back when it comes to performance. Also standard, and perhaps to make prospective high-performance NAS buyers take a serious look, is the N6850's very aggressive price.
Head on over to the review to view all the performance graphs that are typical of the thorough job Smallnetbuilder does when reviewing NAS servers.
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