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

[ChrisD.]

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

 

[ChrisD.]

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.

 

[ChrisD.]

Finally have mine, albeit only 3 of the drives have arrived and the RAM isn't here yet.

 

[ChrisD.]

Wow how long did it take.

I would have just ordered the bare bones

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.]

£66 IIRC.

 

[ChrisD.]

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.]

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

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.]

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!

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.

 

[ChrisD.]

Pretty much all services moved over from my old VM setup. I've also moved Plex to run via a Cloudflare Tunnel, along with some accompanying apps to handle things like requests (which I won't go into too much detail about for obvious reasons). This gives external access for people who use my library, and now I don't have any ports open to the internet. PS, useful guide here for Plex via Cloudflare and disabling caching. https://mythofechelon.co.uk/blog/20...ee-secure-high-quality-remote-access-for-plex

Transcoding multiple 4k streams without an issue, the only thing holding me back is internet upload speed. Running like an absolute charm with plenty of CPU power to spare. Fingers crossed the remaining 3 HDDs turn up tomorrow and I can get on with rsync'ing my all my files/media from my old NAS over to the new one (currently mounted via NFS shares).

More of a TrueNAS thing but I'm not a huge fan of how it handles containers out of the box, so I've decided to create my own Datasets for it and manually map the folder structure during deployment.

 

[ChrisD.]

What do you think of the hardware itself?

Physically it's well built and feels solid. I'd say premium, because it's put together very well but I do wish there was some more noise deadening for the HDDs. This seems to be common in recent times, even the latest Synology units are skimping on this. I mentioned before but I feel the way Minisforum have the pull out tray for motherboard access is superior, but then again how often would you need access? The drive bays are solid with an in built locking mechanism for 3.5" drives. 2.5" would require screws but I've not tried it myself. I wish there was a lock mechanism for the HDD bays to prevent accidental drive removal, I have a 3 year old and I could imagine him pulling one of the drives for the lolz and giving me a huge headache! Apart from that if I was being picky I would have liked an internal power supply, but with it being a Chinese device with long wait periods for replacement, perhaps external is the better option.

Temps are holding up fine, up to mid 70's on the CPU when it's very busy, and no cause for concern on the drives. There's enough room to put the provided heatsinks on the NVMe drives in the slot tray, and any gen 4 drive is throttled by the (lack of) PCIe lanes so they're never going to be driven anywhere near as hard compared if they were on a consumer motherboard as an example.

Overall, very impressive for the price, and the performance is great for what it is. I'm barely scratching the surface but I've still got quite a bit to bring onto it. It's probably wise to have a cold standby because support turnaround isn't going to be anywhere near what Synology could do. And I've no idea how it's put together internally as quite frankly I can't be bothered pulling it all apart, I'll wait for Rob 'ChatGPT' at NAS Compares to do that.

 

[ChrisD.]

The only niggle I've noted so far is I struggle to saturate a 2.5Gbps connection. I suspect this is down to my disk setup more than anything though

I think that's an Unraid thing, I've read a lot about it as it does appeal but it does look like it's limited in terms of throughput to a single disk. But then again you get the benefit of chucking in any old disk into a pool and seamlessly adding to it, which is where ZFS lacks.

 

[ChrisD.]

Two rsync's running, from different storage pools from my Synology onto the same pool on TrueNAS. The destination pool is 6x16TB disks in RAIDZ2, I decided against metadata VDEV after doing some reading and I'll use those NVMe drives for iSCSI.



Decent transfer rate which is averaging around 800 MB/s.

 

[ChrisD.]

Nice one. I'm more of a syncthing fan but I heard rsync is similar

Never tried it, I tend to learn use tools which are natively available in multiple Linux kernels rather than ones you have to install manually. Mainly due to doing a lot off Linux stuff at work where there's limited repos or no internet access.

 

[ChrisD.]

Syncthing is available in multiple Linux distro if that's what you mean?

Not bundled out of the box on the few boxes Ive just tried.

What I mean is, I tend to avoid the use of tools you have to install via apt/yum/compile if there's a built in options available. Which means I know the syntax, so when I'm on a box and need to do something I'm not having to dig through the man page because I haven't used it in some time.

 

[ChrisD.]

Does Rsync have a windows and mac client?

It's preinstalled on Mac, on Windows you have to install it.

 

[ChrisD.]

All well still with mine, just been sat doing its thing and no issues to report. Happy with the purchase, although there is one specific transcode Plex chucks to the CPU so do need to investigate that at some point.

 

[ChrisD.]

Did they update your tracking after you paid? I had to call them up before mine got updated

Same here, was just sat doing nothing, I had to get in touch. Seemed a stupid way of doing things.

 

[ChrisD.]

I went all in and got 96GB ECC from a memory supplier, IIRC they’re Kingston DIMMs. OcUK sell memory, and I believe SODIMMs also, perhaps best not to mention competitor names.

 

[ChrisD.]

It arrived, NAS software are people using ?

TrueNAS.

 

[ChrisD.]

Hi all,
I just received mine and transferred unraid over - no problems there.
My initial observation is it seems to be using quite a bit of power, GPU reporting 16-36W and nothing is using it, though I don't know whether that's accurate, the draw at the socket is around 60W.
Wondering if anyone else is seeing this?
Matt

From the NAS Compares review:

18W (idle, no drives), 73–89W peak loaded

How many drives and how busy is it? I don't think 60W is unreasonably high.