ASUSTOR Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X, A Very Flash-y NAS

Dump That Spinning Rust, Enjoy Amazing Queue Depth Performance Instead

ASUSTOR have a new NAS which is all flash memory, the Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X.  It can hold up to a dozen M.2 2280 drives though with a Celeron N5105 inside there must be something unmentioned in the specs to provide enough PCIe lanes for those drives.  Indeed, ServeTheHome determined that there are ASMedia ASM2806 PCIe switches and ASM1480 PCIe mux inside which break up the lanes to provide the equivalent of a single PCIe Gen2 x1 lane.  That leaves enough lanes for the 10Gbe network connection and an assortment of USB including SB 3.2 Gen 2.  Their testing also showed that if you plan up upgrading the 4GB of DDR4 you should limit yourself to 16GB total.

There are certainly faster all flash NAS systems on the market, but you certainly can’t grab them for ~$800.  This is definitely aimed at consumers, from the price and features to the snazzy look of the Flashstor 12 Pro, which is a new form factor.  The ASUSTOR Control Center app is quite comprehensive for this type of device, allowing a variety of RAID options, recovery and health information.  TweakTown tried out some WD Red drives in RAID-5 and saw rates of  1167 MB/s read and 687 MB/s writes, and had it had no trouble at all with high queue depth reads.

If you are looking to move your home NAS out of the stone age and into the current era, check out the full review.