THE N5550 EXTERIOR

The chassis of the N5550 comes in black color and measures 240mm in length, 190mm in width and 230mm in height with a weight of 7.2Kg.

A large section of the chassis on both sides is perforated to allow hot air to exit.

A push to release plastic door is placed at the front of the NAS but thanks to a clear plastic section you can see the HDD/Network/Warning activity LEDs.

The company logo is placed at the lower end of the door right next to another clear plastic section from where you can see the interior LCM screen and navigate via the 4 buttons placed right beneath it.

Although this may sound odd i do like the N5550 more with the door open.

All of the available drive trays come ready with locks, can be configured in RAID 0/1/5/6/10/JBOD mode and support hot-swapping, hot-spare, auto-rebuild, online RAID migration, online RAID Expansion and iSCSI mode.

Thecus has used aluminum trays which as expected can be used with both 3.5" and 2.5" drives.

The sole USB 3.0 port is placed at the front right above the on/off power and the reset buttons.

Unfortunately the rear is not painted black like the rest of the chassis but that shouldn't matter to most people.

Here we see an 92mm exhaust fan which is manufactured by ADDA and can spin up to 2000RPM to produce airflow of up to 43.5CFM with up to 23.5dBA of noise.

Right next to the system fan we find the microphone, audio input/output plugs, eSATA port, 4xUSB 2.0 ports, HDMI port, VGA port and the two Gigabit LAN ports.

Thecus opted for a powerful (for a NAS) 200W PSU (80 Plus certified) which is kept cool with the help of an 40mm exhaust fan.

The N5550 sits on 4 small round rubber feet (there's also a perforated section at the base as well).