INTRODUCTION

   With the "arrival" of Raspberry Pi based systems many people are wondering if it's worth turning towards NAS servers for their needs and although i do have to admit that prices for Raspberry Pi products are extremely appealing my personal opinion is that NAS servers are still way ahead primarily due to their straight out of the box functionality and in many cases nowadays a lot better hardware specifications. Once again it all always comes down to what your needs are and how much you're willing to spend in order to cover them so although obviously the really good NAS models cost quite a bit there are many excellent choices out there priced just right with plenty of features and good performance levels (there's always something available for every need). Well according to our good friends from Thecus their latest N4310 is amongst those models and today we will be taking a very thorough look.

   In 2004, Thecus Technology was founded to design, manufacture, and market digital storage products. Now, 10 products and over 100 awards later, Thecus is recognized as a global leader of digital storage solutions. With decades of R&D experience, the Thecus team has developed an entire range of state-of-the-art storage products for consumers and enterprises alike. With its global sales channel development, quality Thecus products are now distributed in over 30 countries and territories across the globe. Thecus products are designed not only to be powerful and flexible, but easy-to-use. Users have increasingly growing digital libraries, and they need to access their digital media as quickly as possible Thecus storage solutions consistently deliver top-notch performance, able to deliver digital media at an impressive clip. To keep data completely safe, Thecus products are designed with data security in mind, each coming with numerous security options for the user to select. Thecus storage products also have the unique ability to support third-party software modules, making Thecus products infinitely customizable. And to make sure our products are accessible to both novices and experts alike, Thecus makes sure that each of its products can be easily installed and used. Secure and flexible storage products that simply work. That is the Thecus guarantee.

   Once again Thecus has taken an entirely different approach compared to let’s say QNAP, ASUSTOR and Synology so this time around they have equipped the N4310 with a single-core 1.0GHz Applied Micro Catalina APM86491-RKB1000T SoC processor (with Hardware XOR Engine) and with 1GB of DDR3 memory by Sk Hynix. Now i know that you're all probably thinking the same thing i did since a single core CPU seems way outdated and right from the bat we knew that it wouldn't set any new performance records. Still we do have faith in Thecus so although for their own reasons (power consumption and low cost probably) the chose to go with that particular CPU model we hope it will not disappoint. Other features include support for RAID 0/1/5/6, iSCSI, 128-bit AES encryption, Power Redundancy (via an extra external power supply), HDD spin-down, USB 3.0 connectivity (2 rear ports), DDNS, mobile apps and an somewhat large selection of built-in servers (FTP/iTunes/DLNA Media/Plex Media/BitTorrent). So the time has come for us to check and see how this little 4 bay NAS server performs.