Asustor AS6404T Review: 4 Bay SOHO NAS

Hardware, Benchmark and Performance

From the point of hardware configuration, Intel ApolloLake platform, 14nm process Celeron built Quad-core processor, the AS6404T processing performance is now at a new level, the overall performance over the previous generation upgraded to 30%. In addition to its built-in, HD Graphics 500 support HEVC and VP9 hardware decoding, multimedia applications and image processing capabilities naturally raise a lot. During our usage the test samples of different 4K and 1080p video, it easily decoded them in between 12.6Mb/s to 50.1Mb/s means no lag during 4K video play.

In the memory configuration, AS6404Tcomes with two 4GB DDR3L dual-channel, the total memory capacity of 8GB, users can update their own maximum of 8GB which really gives an extra thrust to those running multiple virtual machines on the NAS.

Two Gigabit Ethernet ports have become the standard for many mid- to high-end desktop NAS, and the AS6404T is no exception. Of course, it also supports link aggregation, that is to say, the user may combine two Gigabit Ethernet ports to form a single, higher-bandwidth data transmission. However, users must ensure that the network switch on their hands supports 802.3ad and LACP.

USB 3.0 interface configuration is sufficient to connect a variety of mobile storage devices, not only that, but you can also use this for printer interface, Bluetooth adapters, CD-ROM, UPS and so on, highly scalable.

The network protocols supported by it are CIFS / SMB, SMB 2.0 / 3.0, AFP, NFS, FTP (Unicode Supported), TFTP, WebDAV, Rsync, SSH, SFTP, iSCSI/IP-SAN, HTTP, HTTPS, Proxy, SNMP, and Syslog.

The disks we used to test this NAS were 4 x 2TB WD RED NAS drives. The WD Red NAS drive especially designed and developed with NASware 3.0 technology to provide balanced performance and reliability for NAS systems; in a 24×7 RAID environment which is not meant for Desktop drives. It comes SATA 6GB/s, 5400 RPM and 3 years warranty.

Test hardware used for this NAS

• Intel Pentium(R) CPU G3258 @ 3.20GHz
• Windows 10 64-bit version
• Kingston DDR3L 2133MHz 8GB
• Hard drive: Intel 250GB SSD
• Motherboard Gigabyte
• NIC: Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.30)
• The hard disk in Asustor AS6404T:  4x 2.oTB WD RED NAS drives.

Benchmark performance test

From the test results of CrystalDiskMark, the AS6404T’s continuous read and write speeds are above 115MB/s, and the performance is quite satisfactory. In the ATTO Disk Benchmark test results, the read and write speeds exceeded 115MB/s. Combining the results, the AS6404T has basically utilized the bandwidth of the Gigabit Ethernet port.

Testing the actual transmission speed performance of the AS6404T without any synthetic benchmark.

Data to test Real Environment performance

To test the real-life performance we had used some random collection of different file and folders to measure the read and write performance of the NAS device. The test ran by simply transferring the Data from our Intel 250GB SSD to NAS  and vice versa.

The break-up files: 33GB Gb in Total

• 11 GB ISO files
• 2GB of documents
• 10GB videos( random movies of 1080p, 720P, 4k, Blu ray quality movies of different format)
• 5GB Photo folder mixture of .png, .raw and .jpeg images.
• 5GB Audio folder

The top writing speed and reading speed while transferring the movie folder of 10 GB was between 110 MB/s to 113 MB/s and the lowest point it touched was 32MB/s. Overall, the average reading speed is better, the score is over 110MB/s.

We can see the graph in the given screenshots that show there was no sharp drop in the transferring speed.

Then we used the total 5GB  folder of images in which the read speed was more than 90MB / s while the wring speed was around 80MB/s second.

For ISO image transfer the results were again similar…

As compared to the benchmark reports, the real speed is acceptable and not too excessive attenuation can be seen. Also, the performance of the data transfer in a RAID environment was the same as the Single drive.

Asustor AS6404T review: Closing thoughts

This is for sure the AS6404T will not going to demean the hope of any NAS user because of data storage capability and wide range functions including a huge list of apps. After the ADM system upgraded to 3.0, there was a considerable improvement in both the aesthetics and functionality of the UI too. One thing surely lures anyone to the AS6404T is its playability and usage with directly connected HDMI display.

When it comes to data backup all the options are there those needed by any small to large businesses. Overall, it not going to let your investment down in terms of build quality, speed, features and expandability.

By providing relatively strong hardware configuration, good support for 4K video and wide range feature the  AS6404T could be a Sisyphean task for its NAS competitors.

However, the MRP of the product is a little bit high which is ₹99000 but on Amazon and on few other e-commerce websites it is easily available between ₹88000 to ₹50,000– without hard drives.

Pros:

• Good Speed
• A wide range of Apps
• ADM 3.0
• Build Quality

Cons:

A bit high in price (MRP)