LincStation N1 NAS review: LincPlus is leading the charge to an all SSD NAS

LincPlus sent me the LincStation N1 6-Bay NAS to test; it's the first "diskless" NAS I have ever tested, meaning that it is designed to be populated with SSDs. However, the two 2.5-inch slots do support harddisks if that is your preference. I am quite a fan of this concept: super quiet NAS in my meter closet and the reduced heat and power requirements. Sign me up!

I have some experience with NAS, having owned a QNAP TS-253Be, a Synology DS720+ and currently a Synology DS923+. Still, I only acquired them to do local and cloud backups and run my home theater solution using a combination of Emby and Plex. As I mentioned earlier, I am a fan of SSD storage. I even modified a previous DS720+'s default setup to install all my apps on an SSD volume. Still, all the hoops Synology makes you jump through, including curveballs like random unmounting of said volume, made it not worth the effort for a system that you don't want to be fiddling with constantly.

All of the aforementioned NAS devices I've owned are media-class, meaning they fully support having something like Plex installed on them to stream over my local network, and aside from a few other things as well as setting up some Docker containers, (if there is a clear tutorial) that's about the extent of my expertise into the realm of network-attached storage devices goes; it's an ongoing learning process.

Here are the most important specifications:

As you can see from the specs, this is a pretty powerful NAS, it comes with an Intel Celeron N5105 which was introduced in Q1 of 2021. Sadly this means it does not support AV1 decoding, however it can decode H.264, VP8, VP9, H.265 (8 bit), H.265 (10 bit) at up to 4096x2160 @ 60Hz. Furthermore, it supports HDMI 2.0b, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and LPDDR4X, all with a super-efficient max TDP of 10W.

Once again, we are seeing another NAS with an acceptable, if not great, amount of RAM. Up until a couple of years ago, it was commonplace to only get 2 or 4GB max on a flagship Synology or QNAP home NAS. Ever since the likes of TerraMaster and more have entered the market with ample RAM sizes included in their NAS offerings, it has gone a long way in forcing the hands of the traditional makers to up their game a bit.

First impressions

I was pleasantly surprised at how small and light the packaging is, most of the box height is taken up by accessories too, as you will see. Everything you need to get yourself started is included.

In the box

• LincPlus LincStation N1
• Power adapter
• User Manual [full online guide]
• Screws (for SSD bays)

Design

It's pretty cool to look at, although the top plastic covering is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. I wiped it down before taking a photograph, but it still appears to be a bit smudged. According to the official specs sent to me, it is made from a metal casing with a top plastic cover, the kind of plastic that, when you wipe down, never seems to look clean or uniform color. As you can see from the above photo, the SSD sleds are also made from plastic. They are a bit flimsy, but they serve the job well. Eight screws are also included so you can fasten the 2.5" SSDs into the sleds.

The front cover hides the SSD sleds and Type C port on the front, it's a bit awkward to pull down with a fingernail as there is no mechanism to open it with a push spring or whatever, it's simply a slide down door. There is also a light strip on the front that is set to a slow pulse of white. This behavior can be configured in a web browser by pointing to yournas.local:50000

The page is public, so it does not require login credentials to configure the LED control test, Hard disk status, LED Switch, or RGB Light Strip, which is the above pic. It's also entirely in Chinese, so you will need a browser that supports in-page translation.

It's quite light at just 800 grams, and it is passively cooled too, so you will not hear a thing from it when it is doing its thing.

On the front in the center, there are seven LEDs. You may be thinking, why seven if there are only six bays? Well, this particular NAS also has an LED representing the onboard 128GB eMMC flash boot drive, which is where UNRAID lives, along with LED indicators for the SSD storage drives and power. On the front right is the power button, which is also lit when on, and below that, an indicator for the door, which must be pulled down to open.

Around the back, from left to right, there is a 3.5mm audio jack, an HDMI port, two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports, a single 2.5 GbE Ethernet port, and a connector for the barrel port's 60W power source. Thanks to it being an external PSU, it goes a long way in reducing excess heat in the LincStation N1. There's no Kensington Security Slot present, which is a bit of a shame, considering it's a data storage device.

On the left and right of the LincStation N1, it's just the two-tone brushed metal and plastic top covering.

On the bottom, there are two bay doors, each of which contains two NVMe slots, and these are flanked by two rather long rubber feet with a good half-centimeter height to assist the passive cooling of the unit.

Upon removing the two bay doors of the NVMe slots you'll find a mostly plastic enclosure, however the doors themselves are metal with thermal pad covering. One thing I like about these slots is that they do not use a screw or bolt to hold the drives in place. It is a pull spring clip system. So you pull the clip up, add the drive and let go, which clamps it into place [image]. However, this system only works for 2280 lengths.

Setup

BIOS

The LincStation N1 includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends, and you can set up pretty much everything here. On booting, there is even a choice to run Memtest86+, which is a nice addition.

Populating the LincStation N1

TEAMGROUP supplied us with four MP44Q 4TB NVMe SSDs and two QX 4TB 3D NAND QLC 2.5 Inch SATA III SSDs. The MP44Q are PCIe 4.0 x4 drives and currently cost $216.99 on Amazon or Newegg. The 2.5-inch QX drives are a little cheaper at $192.99 on Amazon or Newegg.

Initial Setup

The setup was a breeze. Just point your web browser to http://tower.local/and log in with root / 123456.

The LincStation N1 comes preinstalled with Unraid on the internal flash disk, so all you are really required to do is change the root password and set up a disk array. Unraid defaults to a RAID5-style array, which is perfectly fine for our use. Initially I had too many storage devices connected (thanks to plugging in a USB drive), which threw up a warning about the BASIC license of Unraid not supporting more than six storage devices, this can make things a bit difficult with wanting to transfer data from a external disk to a fully populated array. A Plus license costs $59, so you would have to decide if that's worth the expense.

The main dashboard of Unraid

After logging in, you are presented with the main dashboard of Unraid, and at this point, I checked for updates and was offered 6.12.3, which was updated from 6.12.11.

At this point, I created our array. Initially, I assigned all six SSDs to it, but this meant I was unable to assign a cache device due to license limitations, so for the purpose of testing, I took one SSD out of the array and assigned a USB 3.0 thumb drive as a cache drive.

As can be seen in the above image, the internal array check (of six disks) reported an average speed of 780.6 MB/s (6244,8 Mbit), which is not too shabby. The OS is written to the internal flash drive, but in order to install apps, an array must be present since the /appdata/ folder is saved on the disk array.

I ran a CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within Windows 11 23H2 PC connected over a 2.5 GbE hub, which was well within acceptable ranges, first without a cache drive and then with a cache drive.

• the sequential reads on the cache drive were up to 10.055% faster
• the sequential writes are well within the margin of error as the cache drive is less than 0.04% faster
• the random reads on the cache drive were 12.65% faster on Q32T16, but it was 28.45% slower on Q1T1
• the random writes on the cache drive were 9.14% faster on Q32T16 and 13.655% faster on Q1T1

Although it appears within the margin of error, it does seem to support the notion that a cache drive, even with an all-SSD array, is beneficial.

Unraid comes with a community app store that contains tens of thousands of apps. In some cases, there are multiple flavors of the same app, such as Plex, so do look out for the OFFICIAL stamped in the top right corner of the app to be sure you are installing the intended version, or maybe you prefer a different take on the app, it's up to you! I installed Plex, and all I had to do was assign a temp directory for Plex Transcode and add a path for my media. After copying some media files over and accessing the new Plex server from my Google TV, I could start streaming immediately.

Conclusion

At only $399 (as of writing), this is a seriously competitive product. The only real downside is the current cost of large-capacity SSD drives, which eclipse their older HDD counterparts in price. So, moving to an SSD NAS can be a painful investment. On the flip side, an all-SSD NAS means less heat dissipation, and it is far more energy efficient, especially with the mere 10W max TDP of the Intel Celeron N5105.

On the other hand, it costs $300 less than the TerraMaster F4-424 Pro we reviewed earlier this summer, or $200 less than the current gen Synology's DS923+, which costs $599.99, or the slightly cheaper $565 QNAP TS-464, all of which, if you're okay with fiddling, technically have six bays if you populate the HDD bays with 2.5-inch SATA SSDs and assign the two NVMe drives as a volume.

There is also a lot of community support regarding the apps you can install in Unraid on the LincStation N1, so you won't have to look far and wide to get yourself up and running. For me, this gets a resounding thumbs up, Considering this NAS has been available since last year, LincPlus is leading the way to an all SSD NAS future.

Update: LincPlus got back to me and are offering our readers a 5% off code BTS2 on purchases at the official site.

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