I like the interior layout, fans blowing up over a massive heat sink, then up and over the ssd heat sink, and out. Nice chimney effect with the heat management.
I wish the NVME heatsink designs were a bit more intelligent. I heard I think in a Level1 video that NAND cells are actually better when they're a little warmer, and that its *the controller* on any given M.2 drive that you want to remain very cool. I confirmed this myself by testing a drive with a copper heatsink across the entire thing (2x NAND cells and the controller) and compared that against a much smaller heatsink that only covered the controller (got it in a kit of heatsinks meant for Pi-style devices) and found that only cooling the controller led to better performance, albeit only slightly.
Thank you for sharing this. I've read that some tests on NVMe drives perform better when the drives are warm, than when they're first powered on (and cold). This actually makes a lot of sense.
5:50 this review like few others mentions the ability to install custom os like unraid or truenas. Someone from truenas forums tied, and reported numerous issues. Q: what is the basis for the claim?
@@MichaelKlements not sure if my reply with link went through, but that thread comes first in Google search for "TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus - TrueNAS Install Log"
First of all, thanks for the very detailed video and generally for your good woek. I really enjoy your videos. Is it possible to use NVMes with preinstalled heatsinks? How thick can they be to still fit in the case? I would be also very curious to see how this device performs with truenas scale and ZFS. Somehow nowbody seems to have done this yet. Maybe this is an idea for a future video. :)
Yes there is some room around the drives to allow for pre-installed heatsinks, as long as they're not much thicker than the ones included with the F8 SSD Plus (less than 5mm thick would probably be fine). I'll have a look at doing a follow-up TrueNAS video!
I recently got a Terramaster D5 Thunderbolt 3 DAS. With 5 hard drives in RAID 5 I'm getting about 850 MB/s reads and 800 MB/s writes. My drives are 14TB so in RAID 5 about 56TB of usable storage. The enclosure price was $700, and I got the drives for about $150 each. SSD's are certainly potentially faster, but you've got a bottleneck with 10Gbps ethernet, and also the cost per TB is much higher. Of course, my setup is not a NAS, so if that's required it's a different category. Just offering this comparison as a FYI.
Thanks for sharing your feedback. I agree, the real concern with this setup is the price of NVMe drives. They're still orders of magnitude more expensive than hard drives and through a 10Gb Ethernet connection they offer very little speed benefit. The main benefits of this NAS that I can see are that it is significantly smaller and lighter than a traditional NAS and it is almost silent. These make it an easy option for a travel NAS or to use in a small home office. You can have it on the desk next to your PC and wouldn't notice it.
@@MichaelKlements Yes, noise is definitely a factor with my D5 with hard drives vs SSDs. I'm using a 3m Thunderbolt cable to get the enclosure off my desk for that reason. Shared access, size, weight, and location flexibility favors this NAS/SSD setup. But when SSD prices come down enough I can swap the HDDs for SSDs and get another major speed boost with the available bandwidth of Thunderbolt's 40Gbps. The more options and choices the better.
With four drives plus attached heatsinks installed, the box looks full. Where do the other four drives go? You keep mentioning it holds 8 drives? Why did you use only four? Do the other ones not fit?
I like this better then the new asustor flashpro. That PCIe lane configuration is nuts. And $1500 is just too much for that. This is better for a turnkey solution. Still going with a mini pc and external HD's though 😂
It depends on your use case and budget. If you are using the NAS heavily then you probably want to go with NAS grade drives, WD Red SN700's are fairly good value for money. Alternately, if price is a concern then go with a drive with good endurance like the Lexar NM790. The Crucial P3 Plus drives that I used are very competatively priced but I don't expect they would last long in this application.
I get who this is meant for but for the price I'd get a 'cheap' H11 motherboard + Epyc CPU combo off of ebay and have a ton more options though admittedly at much higher TDP. That said at least they put a 10GbE Nic on this, makes me sad when I see all SSD NAS's with 2.5.
Yeah this is really ideal for portability as its compact and light. You can definitely build a NAS that performs similarly for cheaper if size and weight don't matter to you.
They are f@&$ing crazy if they are charging those prices. I can build a mini pc myself with way better specs and drives for less than their enclosure only.
I just bought a usb 5 bay hd box. Using that on a n100 with a 4tb ssd for caching. 2*2.5 ethernet, 32gb ram. Total cost excluding storage 350 😂 that will last me until cheaper mini pc have at least 2xUSB4 too.. then gonna play with clustering and ceph. Cheap upgrade path to way more power and storage 😁😎 and the current parts, going external backup at my oldest son 😂
The F8 SSD Plus is low power, quiet and portable. If you don't need any of these features then sure building something out of second-hand or older hardware is going to be cheaper
I like the interior layout, fans blowing up over a massive heat sink, then up and over the ssd heat sink, and out. Nice chimney effect with the heat management.
It is a nice design and the thermals were good throughout testing too.
yes build one! would love to see your take and attention to detail.
The TerraMaster F8 non-Plus also looks very good.
I wish the NVME heatsink designs were a bit more intelligent. I heard I think in a Level1 video that NAND cells are actually better when they're a little warmer, and that its *the controller* on any given M.2 drive that you want to remain very cool. I confirmed this myself by testing a drive with a copper heatsink across the entire thing (2x NAND cells and the controller) and compared that against a much smaller heatsink that only covered the controller (got it in a kit of heatsinks meant for Pi-style devices) and found that only cooling the controller led to better performance, albeit only slightly.
Thank you for sharing this. I've read that some tests on NVMe drives perform better when the drives are warm, than when they're first powered on (and cold). This actually makes a lot of sense.
@@MichaelKlements Sure thing! Just bear in mind i have no idea if any of it applies to PCIE Gen 5 drives lol.
Why not asked Wendell from Level1 Tech on UA-cam channel, and ask for a suggestions.
5:50 this review like few others mentions the ability to install custom os like unraid or truenas. Someone from truenas forums tied, and reported numerous issues. Q: what is the basis for the claim?
Can you post a link to the forum with these issues?
@@MichaelKlements not sure if my reply with link went through, but that thread comes first in Google search for "TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus - TrueNAS Install Log"
@@MichaelKlements Links may not work in UA-cam comments. Search truenas community forums for "Terramaster F8 SSD install log"
FYI community found a workaround. Search TrueNas forums for details.
First of all, thanks for the very detailed video and generally for your good woek. I really enjoy your videos.
Is it possible to use NVMes with preinstalled heatsinks? How thick can they be to still fit in the case?
I would be also very curious to see how this device performs with truenas scale and ZFS. Somehow nowbody seems to have done this yet. Maybe this is an idea for a future video. :)
Yes there is some room around the drives to allow for pre-installed heatsinks, as long as they're not much thicker than the ones included with the F8 SSD Plus (less than 5mm thick would probably be fine).
I'll have a look at doing a follow-up TrueNAS video!
I recently got a Terramaster D5 Thunderbolt 3 DAS. With 5 hard drives in RAID 5 I'm getting about 850 MB/s reads and 800 MB/s writes. My drives are 14TB so in RAID 5 about 56TB of usable storage. The enclosure price was $700, and I got the drives for about $150 each. SSD's are certainly potentially faster, but you've got a bottleneck with 10Gbps ethernet, and also the cost per TB is much higher. Of course, my setup is not a NAS, so if that's required it's a different category. Just offering this comparison as a FYI.
Thanks for sharing your feedback. I agree, the real concern with this setup is the price of NVMe drives. They're still orders of magnitude more expensive than hard drives and through a 10Gb Ethernet connection they offer very little speed benefit.
The main benefits of this NAS that I can see are that it is significantly smaller and lighter than a traditional NAS and it is almost silent. These make it an easy option for a travel NAS or to use in a small home office. You can have it on the desk next to your PC and wouldn't notice it.
@@MichaelKlements Yes, noise is definitely a factor with my D5 with hard drives vs SSDs. I'm using a 3m Thunderbolt cable to get the enclosure off my desk for that reason. Shared access, size, weight, and location flexibility favors this NAS/SSD setup. But when SSD prices come down enough I can swap the HDDs for SSDs and get another major speed boost with the available bandwidth of Thunderbolt's 40Gbps. The more options and choices the better.
How fun that a "toolless design" includes a screwdriver to mount the drives. Toolless .. lol.
With four drives plus attached heatsinks installed, the box looks full. Where do the other four drives go? You keep mentioning it holds 8 drives? Why did you use only four? Do the other ones not fit?
Four drives on each side of the motherboard. I only had four drives available to use for testing.
I like this better then the new asustor flashpro. That PCIe lane configuration is nuts. And $1500 is just too much for that. This is better for a turnkey solution.
Still going with a mini pc and external HD's though 😂
What NVMe's would you recommend to be used with this? preferably 4TB
It depends on your use case and budget. If you are using the NAS heavily then you probably want to go with NAS grade drives, WD Red SN700's are fairly good value for money. Alternately, if price is a concern then go with a drive with good endurance like the Lexar NM790. The Crucial P3 Plus drives that I used are very competatively priced but I don't expect they would last long in this application.
I get who this is meant for but for the price I'd get a 'cheap' H11 motherboard + Epyc CPU combo off of ebay and have a ton more options though admittedly at much higher TDP. That said at least they put a 10GbE Nic on this, makes me sad when I see all SSD NAS's with 2.5.
Yeah this is really ideal for portability as its compact and light. You can definitely build a NAS that performs similarly for cheaper if size and weight don't matter to you.
They are f@&$ing crazy if they are charging those prices. I can build a mini pc myself with way better specs and drives for less than their enclosure only.
you can’t roam around with that mini PC,price is charged for convenience,except for luxury goods
@@akashsxoI use plain usb ssd, can always share those on the network and way smaller and no external power
I just bought a usb 5 bay hd box. Using that on a n100 with a 4tb ssd for caching. 2*2.5 ethernet, 32gb ram. Total cost excluding storage 350 😂 that will last me until cheaper mini pc have at least 2xUSB4 too.. then gonna play with clustering and ceph. Cheap upgrade path to way more power and storage 😁😎 and the current parts, going external backup at my oldest son 😂
I liked your raspberry pi 5 Nas better. 😊
Lol, it's easy to like something that's 1/4 the price, I'll stick with my raspberry pi 5 nas
I think I'm going to have to try build a 10G version and see if I can get the transfer speeds up.
You can get a whole Dell T5820 with NVME flex bays for that price. The f8 is way too expensive as it is.
The F8 SSD Plus is low power, quiet and portable. If you don't need any of these features then sure building something out of second-hand or older hardware is going to be cheaper
@@MichaelKlements waste of money