Hands on: Asustor Nimbustor 4 Gen2 AS5404T review
This review first appeared in Issue 358 PC Professional Edition.
Asustor’s Nimbustor 4 AS5404T is a four-drive NAS case aimed at the demanding home user or small office. This is a performance-focused NAS Because the muscles are quite developed Intel Celeron N5105 processor and 4GB RAM Memory. On the back, you’ll find two 2.5GbE ports, as well as two of the NAS’s three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 slots – with the other easily accessible on the front.
The NAS can accommodate up to four 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch SATA disks in various RAID configurations, including RAID5, 6, and 10. Unusually, it also has four NVMe slots. You can configure the AS5404T with four SSD RAID5 volumes and a slower disk-based storage pool. Alternatively, you can use SSD caching to speed up disk performance, or compromise on one or two solid state drive Caching tasks and other tasks that act as fast volumes.
You can upgrade the case-installed RAM to 16GB, but you’ll have to remove the 4GB it comes with. If you need to add storage, You can use up to three Asustor AS6004U expanders for this purpose, allowing a total of 16 disks. Asustor says this NAS has a maximum read and write speed of 599MB/sec, but you need to use two network ports at the same time.
We weren’t crazy about the physical setup of the unit: The 3.5-inch disks can be accessed without tools, but the caddy made a horrible clicking sound when it released, which made us check to make sure we didn’t damage the latch. The caddy clip is also difficult to remove. You’ll need a screwdriver to open the case and access the NVMe slot, but the SSD itself simply snaps into place.
We configured the AS5404T with four 1TB drives in a RAID5 array, and two 1TB WD Black SSDs configured as separate RAID1 volumes. Asustor’s modern NAS servers are different operating system The default is EXT4 file system, but Btrfs can also be selected. This NAS insisted on syncing the new RAID1 array, but at least with our SSD, the process completed within an hour.
Connected via a single 2.5GbE connection, the AS5404T got off to an impressive start.
It performed strongly on the ATTO disk benchmark, recording data rates that were much faster than its 1GbE competitors. With 16KB and 2MB file operations, it also shows clear advantages over 2.5GbE competitors from QNAP. Performance on the PCMark 10 data drive benchmark, however, was far less impressive, and the AS5404T was one of the few NAS cases we tested to score inexplicably low. However, we always confirm actual data speeds with a simple Windows file copy, and here the AS5404T performed best, managing 85MB/sec while writing an 11GB file.
Performance remained consistent when we tested its SSD storage, delivering nearly identical ATTO results using SSD volumes, as well as when using SSD cache. In our file copy test, cached disk write speeds increased slightly, but read speeds actually dropped slightly. We also recorded similar performance when we reinstalled this NAS using two Synology 4TB disks.
Asustor’s ADM operating system is comprehensive and easy to use, but we did notice a few oddities during this test. Most importantly, the AS5404T cannot be browsed from either browser Chromebook or our Windows 11 The test PC, although its share can be accessed without it, unless we turn on SMB1 – as long as we enter the drive path by name.
One of Nimbustor’s strongest points is Asustor’s App Center, which at the time of writing offers an incredible 272 apps covering networking, monitoring, productivity, and entertainment. If you’re primarily interested in the latter, HDMI The port gives you a way to view multimedia content on a connected screen, but you can organize and serve photos or other media through things like Plex.
However, if you’re buying it for business purposes, don’t let the media capabilities of this NAS server put you off. The AS5404T delivers excellent performance even when configured with two disks, making it a solid starter kit for small businesses with big plans. If your micro office goes macro, you can add more disks, use SSD acceleration, enhance the memory, or even connect another chassis. This is our lab winner.
