*** The Official Aoostar WTR Max NAS thread ***

ChrisD.

ChrisD.

ChrisD.

Man of Honour
Joined
20 Sep 2006
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Very interesting NAS for those wanting to move away from Synology, QNAP and other closed source in models to something which will run TrueNAS, Unraid etc. It's also an alternate to the Minisforum N5 if that NAS doesn't float your boat.

Personally, I've been wanting to upgrade my Synology DS1821+ for a while, and their replacement is underwhelming, plus there's the whole HDD saga. QNAP, well, tried them before and once bitter twice shy and all that.

TrueNAS fits the bill perfectly for my case (Plex (plus app suite), iSCSI, file storage, 10 GbE networking, iGPU etc).

Mine should be arriving tomorrow, but disks and memory will take another week because I haven't been very well organised.

Here's the spec I've gone for as I ordered the unit barebones.
  • 6x Seagate Exos X18 Enterprise 16TB (refurbished)
  • 2x WD RED 2TB SN 700
  • 2x Samsung 4TB 990 Pro
  • 96GB ECC RAM
  • Patriot P300 128GB boot disk
I'll likely run the 6x HDDs in a RAIDZ2 pool, and use the 2x2TB NVMe drives as a metadata VDEV.

Then I'll split the 4TB Samsungs between running containers and iSCSI storage for my VMware homelab.

I currently run all my stuff in a VM (on ESXi), with iGPU passed through and Plex media mounted via NFS. I wanted to consolidate that down to one box. I do have a few people who use my library remotely and transcode, so I'm really hoping the AMD GPU plays ball.

ChatGPT aided spec list for this NAS below:

**Aoostar WTR MAX – AMD R7 PRO 8845HS 11‑Bay Mini PC**

**CPU**
• AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS (8 cores / 16 threads)
• Base clock 3.8 GHz, boost up to 5.1 GHz
• Zen 4 architecture, 4 nm
• Integrated Radeon 780M GPU (RDNA 3, 12 CUs, ~2.7 GHz)

**Memory**
• 2× DDR5‑5600 SODIMM (up to 128 GB)
• Supports ECC modules

**Storage**
• 5× M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 4.0 slots
 – 3× Gen4×2
 – 2× Gen4×1
• 6× 2.5″/3.5″ SATA III bays

**Cooling**
• Glacier Pro 1.0 cooling: VC heat spreader + 4 fans, bottom intake, dual rear exhaust

**Networking**
• 2× 2.5 GbE RJ‑45
• 2× 10 GbE SFP+ (Intel X710)

**Display/Expandability**
• HDMI 2.1 ×1
• USB‑C (full function) ×1 (DisplayPort alternate)
• USB4 (40 Gbps) ×1
• OCuLink (PCIe 4.0 ×4, non‑hot‑swap) ×1

**USB / I/O Ports**
• USB 3.2 Gen2 ×2 (front/back)
• USB 3.2 Gen1 ×1
• 3.5 mm audio jack ×1
• MicroSD card reader ×1
• DC power input

**Display Support**
• Triple 4K at up to 240 Hz
• Includes customizable front status screen (via AOOSTAR‑NAS software)

**Chassis**
• Anodized aluminium with 6 front-access drive trays
• Additional internal space for M.2 SSDs

**Software**
• Barebone (no OS included) — supports Linux-based NAS OS (TrueNAS, Proxmox, etc.)

**Power**
• DC input (19 V/120 W Type‑C or barrel connector depending on region)
• CPU TDP ~54 W nominal
Click to expand...
 
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My own Aoostar WTR Max arrived yesterday and I've finished setting it up. My own set up is much more mundane than ChrisD.'s so it's a perspective from the other end of the spectrum. I bought mine to replace an overly large home built Unraid server. The Aoostar hardware is a bit of a sideway move from a six core 8600G to the laptop spec CPU (albeit an 8 core one) of the 8845HS. I bought a 32Gb SODIMM separately as Aoostar only offered memory with a 1Tb NVME which I didn't want. Just as well I didn't bother as Customs were on the ball and I picked up a customs bill from DHL.

Some pics below. What the pics perhaps don't show is how dinky the machine is. It's definitely aimed at the NAS appliance space so is nice and compact at about a quarter of the size of the monolithic Antec case based server it replaced. I flipped the drives out of the Antec case and into the Aoostar with minimal downtime. The Aoostar drive caddies slide out, you pop in the HDD and slide it back it in. Sorted. I did have a 2.5" SSD that I needed to fit and two screws were required to keep it in place but it was hardly end of the world. One of the drive caddies has space for 4 NVME drives which I'll be using at some point in the future. One thing to note about this is that there's only a single line of communication to the four drives so the bandwidth is split between the four. Only an issue if you need to utilise all four NVMEs at max speed for a period of time.

Once the drives were fitted, I plugged a network cable into one of the 2.5Gbit/s slots, my Unraid USB drive into the front USB slot and away I went. Unraid started up and my software issues started from there... but they're not relevant to this post!

Any criticisms? A couple minor ones. To access the SODIMM and NVME slots on the motherboard, you need to unscrew four hex screws. The bottom panel is quite tense which made the screws a bit fiddly to get back in. There's also no sound proofing, which isn't really relevant if the machine is hidden away but you do hear the drives and fans buzzing away if you're close by.

I've only mentioned what's relevant to me. The Aoostar has lots of potential for those that can take advantage of it. The two 2.5Gbit/s and two 10Gbit/s network port will be of interest though I'm unsure of the need for 10Gbit/s ports and I don't think the link would ever be able to be saturated. Nice to have though! There's also an Oculink port which I know can be used to connect an external graphics card but I vaguely recall it can be used for other things too. It's limited to PCI-Ex4 but should be more than enough for a decent graphics card if needed.

Aerial view


Front


Back


Here's a view of the motherboard. There's an NVME slot at the top, two SODIMM DDR5 slots at the bottom left and that's your lot for upgradeability.
 
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Still don't have mine, DHL issues. I paid yesterday, and it's still showing that I need to pay. Off Oop North in an hour or so anyway and I don't have much to plug into it yet.

Can't comment on the Unraid aspect, but agree regarding memory access, Minisforum did a much better job of this with the slide out design.
 
I have had mine for a bit now.

I agree with @ChrisD. about the slide out tray. But the max is cheaper.
The 10Gb sfp+ are unlocked.

I tried Truenas it is not to my liking. ZimaOS is not to bad, a bit like synology os.
Tried to get Xpenology(red pill)working. But for some reason no browser will connect to it. It pings just fine.

Got anothe Max coming next month.
 
jonneymendoza said:
Wow how long did it take.

I would have just ordered the bare bones
Click to expand...
I got barebones, it shipped within a few days of the ETA on the website. Main delay was DHL wrongly holding onto the package despite the fact I'd already paid the customs fee.

Debating whether to pull a 48GB non-ECC DIMM from another box and putting in a mix and match number of drives to get things started or whether to just wait.
 
ChrisD. said:
I got barebones, it shipped within a few days of the ETA on the website. Main delay was DHL wrongly holding onto the package despite the fact I'd already paid the customs fee.

Debating whether to pull a 48GB non-ECC DIMM from another box and putting in a mix and match number of drives to get things started or whether to just wait.
Click to expand...
How much did you pay for custom?
 
Couple of beers during the F1 so I decided to grab a 48GB (non ECC) DIMM from one of my ESXi hosts, and use 3 drives in RAIDZ1 for testing, plus 2x NVMe for a metadata VDEV. Copying some stuff over from my current Plex library at around 3-400 MB/s. Plex working well so far, and no issues with GPU passthrough and transcoding.

I'd forgotten how utterly loud Seagate Enterprise drives are! I know I'm copying a bunch of stuff over but they are significantly louder than the Toshiba N300 drives I have in my DS1821+. Will see how they go moving forward but I'm half tempted to send them back and look for something else.
 
ChrisD. said:
Couple of beers during the F1 so I decided to grab a 48GB (non ECC) DIMM from one of my ESXi hosts, and use 3 drives in RAIDZ1 for testing, plus 2x NVMe for a metadata VDEV. Copying some stuff over from my current Plex library at around 3-400 MB/s. Plex working well so far, and no issues with GPU passthrough and transcoding.

I'd forgotten how utterly loud Seagate Enterprise drives are! I know I'm copying a bunch of stuff over but they are significantly louder than the Toshiba N300 drives I have in my DS1821+. Will see how they go moving forward but I'm half tempted to send them back and look for something else.
Click to expand...
The walls of the Woostar seem to be just plain metal and don't do much to deaden any drive noise. Drive noise is much more noticeable than that of my Antec case with sound deadening as you'd expect but I was still a bit taken aback. I'll likely put the NAS on a rubber mat to help deaden vibrations a bit too
 
ChrisD. said:
Couple of beers during the F1 so I decided to grab a 48GB (non ECC) DIMM from one of my ESXi hosts, and use 3 drives in RAIDZ1 for testing, plus 2x NVMe for a metadata VDEV. Copying some stuff over from my current Plex library at around 3-400 MB/s. Plex working well so far, and no issues with GPU passthrough and transcoding.

I'd forgotten how utterly loud Seagate Enterprise drives are! I know I'm copying a bunch of stuff over but they are significantly louder than the Toshiba N300 drives I have in my DS1821+. Will see how they go moving forward but I'm half tempted to send them back and look for something else.
Click to expand...
If I wanted to saturate as much of the 10gbit connection read and write, what's the best strategy to do so on this device using truenas.

I've never used true nas and just read a tiny bit about zfs, using 1 or two for parity and the pool system in true nas but that's as far as I understand so far.

Please help if you can
 
jonneymendoza said:
If I wanted to saturate as much of the 10gbit connection read and write, what's the best strategy to do so on this device using truenas.

I've never used true nas and just read a tiny bit about zfs, using 1 or two for parity and the pool system in true nas but that's as far as I understand so far.

Please help if you can
Click to expand...
Honestly mate you're better off watching Wendell (Level1Techs) on YouTube, perhaps Techno Tim too who cover a bunch of ZFS/TrueNAS stuff.

You're unlikely to completely saturate 10 GbE with just spinning disks (unless you have a bunch of them), you'd need flash storage for that, hence I front my main storage with NVMe for metadata. The idea is all the small files and metadata etc live in flash and it improves random access/seek times. But if you lose your NVMe drives, you lose all data so make sure to use a mirror VDEV and use write resistant drives.

TrueNAS is not for the faint hearted, if you want a true turn key solution on your own hardware then perhaps Unraid might be the better option but it's not as performant. With that said, it's perfectly fine for 'home' use, but it does cost money for the license.
 
ChrisD. said:
Honestly mate you're better off watching Wendell (Level1Techs) on YouTube, perhaps Techno Tim too who cover a bunch of ZFS/TrueNAS stuff.

You're unlikely to completely saturate 10 GbE with just spinning disks (unless you have a bunch of them), you'd need flash storage for that, hence I front my main storage with NVMe for metadata. The idea is all the small files and metadata etc live in flash and it improves random access/seek times. But if you lose your NVMe drives, you lose all data so make sure to use a mirror VDEV and use write resistant drives.

TrueNAS is not for the faint hearted, if you want a true turn key solution on your own hardware then perhaps Unraid might be the better option but it's not as performant. With that said, it's perfectly fine for 'home' use, but it does cost money for the license.
Click to expand...
Na I looked at unraid and true nas fits me best.

Currently I only use Ubuntu server and use docker etc to manually install all these features and services I use. Command line and using yml. I think i can handle true nas! That has a ui!
 
jonneymendoza said:
Na I looked at unraid and true nas fits me best.

Currently I only use Ubuntu server and use docker etc to manually install all these features and services I use. Command line and using yml. I think i can handle true nas! That has a ui!
Click to expand...
Give this a watch, it's a decent way of running apps (containers) on TrueNAS where you get more customisation than by using the default app view.

 
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