AsustorFLASHSTOR 6 Gen2 FS6806X, 6 Bay All M.2 SSD NAS, AMD Ryzen Quad-Core 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM DDR5, 10GbE Port, USB4 Type-C, Network Attached Storage for Video & Content Creators (Diskless)

I have been running a plex server for years on my desktop PC. I got the dreaded message from MS that Windows 10 was dying soon and my PC did not meet the minimum requirements to run Windows 11.I have been looking at NAS solutions like Synology and QNap. While these are definitely an option, I ran across the ASUStor on Amazon and then jumped to YouTube to do some research. Thank you guys over at NASCompares! Great info and guidance.Then I discovered how much SSD prices have fallen and well, decision made! I dove in to this ASUStor Flashstor Pro Gen 2! I chose to go with six 4TB drives in raid 5 to start with. Still have 6 slots that I can expand into for future needs!I chose to go with the ASUStor heat sinks for an additional $29 and 6 TeamGroup MP44 4TB SLC Cache gen 4x4 SSD drives to round out my initial setup.First I have to say, make sure you cross reference the drives you choose, with the ASUStor compatibility guide online. This is critical.Next, the Flashstor 12 Pro Gen 2 was super easy to open up and add the drives and heat sinks to. Took about 10 minutes total and boom, powered on and ready to rock and roll.Quick note here, you may want to log into your router and find the DHCP address assigned to your Flashstor, you will need this so you can connect to the web interface!Setup was super quick with the ASUStor ASM! This software is freaking amazing and very intuitive! It basically walks you through the process to get your drives configured and they have their own App Store! Super easy to find apps you will need. It has everything from Container Software to back up software to streaming media software. Amazing job here ASUStor!Be warned, 24Tb of SSD is a lot, even with the AMD Processor, it is gonna take awhile to complete. Good news though, you can actually start loading the apps you want while it is doing its thing after a certain % complete on the raid! Nice touch there!Again, my plan was to replace my aging PC I stream Plex from. Here is where it gets a little frustrating, the Plex App was difficult to actually get working. So much so, that as I dug in on researching the issue, I discovered that Plex actually generates a ton of bloated traffic on your network! What the heck Plex!? I have a lifetime pass with them, but this really made me second guess my choice of Plex… yep I wound up switching to Jellyfin and the Flashstor had the app available in their store and it was super quick and easy to setup and get running. Again, phenomenal job here on third party apps and availability in your ASM tool!The quality of this hard ware is amazing! It feels pretty well made and they have done a lot to dissipate the heat in a passive system! They have built in monitoring in the ASM and you can track the health of your raid(s) with real time temperature monitors for the SSD and Processor.They offer dual 10gb Ether ports and ECC RAM support. The RAM comes at 16gb (single stick) with the initial device. This is easily expandable to 32gb, and I recommend you jump on that quick! It will really improve streaming performance when you get a few people in your house streaming to their various devices.This thing is super quiet too! Say goodbye to jet engine sounding NAS in your house! This bad boy is so quiet! Benefits of no mechanical drives and massive power requirements!To sum this up, I was very impressed by this device and would recommend to anyone looking to venture out into the world of NAS for backup solutions and/or streaming. A little bit pricey for the initial setup, but you can grow as you go and need because of the expandability this device offers!

Configuration:Flashstor 125x TEAMGROUP MP34 4TB (yields 14.77 TB in RAID 5)Crucial 16GB DDR3 memory upgradeFirst, the configuration I have above works. The Asustor compatibility website is pretty limited on which ssds they confirm will work, but I saw a youtube video where someone had used the teamgroup mp34s without issue and another one where they used the crucial memory up to 16GB. There are also some reports of problems upgrading the memory to 34, so I stayed with just 16 which is what it officially supports.Second, installation and setup was super simple. You remove just a handful of screws and slide the top and bottom off easily. The ssd installation is as simple as they should all be with this style, and the memory installation was completely uneventful. Getting everything setup without connecting any kind of monitor or keyboard also worked flawlessly. I did use some Asustor 'Control Center' program on my computer to discover it on the network, but honestly I don't think this is needed, but if you did go that way it works just fine.Finally, the NAS itself has been performing perfectly. Despite being hidden in a fairly cramped cabinet, drive temperatures have been steady in the low 40s C with the system temperature reported in the low 50s C. I've had no issues with speed and everything has been running non-stop with no issues.I suppose all of that is expected, but what is great about this NAS in particular is that it is almost completely silent, and it is small and sleek disappear into a cabinet. I opted for the 12 over the 6 primarily for future disk expansion as/when SSDs drop in price even further. I've seen others say that CPU is a bit under-powered, but I've had no issues with transcoding which is about as demanding as I've thrown at it.My own, mild, complaint would be ADM, the NAS OS, which is a bit less seamless in a few cases. For instance, I found it actually easier to setup some apps directly through docker-compose (using portainer's version of that) than to install them through their app 'store'. Interacting with it through the browser is also not as smooth as with a local OS or even a remote desktop experience. But I would consider these super negligible issues compared with how much I like the rest of the product.Would I buy it again? Instantly!