CONCLUSION

   It's quite clear just by looking at our charts that although the N7710-G is perhaps the most powerful NAS we've reviewed to date still it doesn't do very good in the power consumption, noise level and temperatures tests something which may disappoint some consumers. That being said the N7710-G is NOT a consumer oriented solution not only because of its powerful hardware specifications and software features but also because it comes outfitted with 7 drive bays and a single 10GbE PCIex card which can offer up to 10 times the network speed of current 1GbE solutions (yes the ones we're all using). So in office and large business environments we really doubt that anyone will be able to hear the two Suno fans of the N7710-G nor care about the extra power consumption as long as the performance is exactly what they want. The ThecusOS is still far behind in terms of graphics compared to solutions by QNAP and ASUSTOR but for some reason this time over we came across no issues with the N7710-G although we didn't test it with XBMC like we did the N5550. Overall the N7710-G offers everything we wanted to see with the N5550 and then some so we have nothing to complain about really.

   Performance is something that always costs and that applies even more in the case of special NAS Devices like the N7710-G which are aimed at large business and enterprise users and so currently the N7710-G by Thecus retails for USD1084.73 inside USA (Amazon.com) and for 950Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). Surprisingly enough although the N7710-G comes complete with a 10GbE card it costs even less compared to the TurboNAS TS-470 and although that may not be very crucial for large enterprises who care not about cost I’m positive that small and large business users will not ignore it. That being said the N7710-G has everything professionals could ever hope to see in a NAS, it's very fast, build quality is excellent, has room for up to 7 drives, comes ready with a 10GbE card and the ThecusOS offers a lot in terms of available options. We would like to see an improved GUI for the ThecusOS but compared to even a year ago we feel that it's a lot easier to navigate and use than we thought back then and since it lacks nothing we can think of it gets our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- Dual Core Pentium G850 CPU
- Excellent Performance
- Features
- 4GB DDR3 RAM (Expandable To 32GB)
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 10GbE Ready (Via PCIe Card)
- 8 USB Ports (2xUSB 3.0 / 6xUSB 2.0)
- HDMI Output
- RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/JBOD + Hot Spare/Swap Support
- Two SATA III Slots (6Gb/s)
- ThecusOS

CONS

- Power Consumption (For Some)
- HDD Temperatures
- Noise Levels (For Some)
- Price (For Some)