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GMKtec Nucbox G9 4 Bay M.2 NVMe SSD NAS (Intel N150, 12GB/64GB, 2x 2.5G) US$171.40 (~A$275.16) Del @ Honor Box Store AliExpress

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GMKtec Nucbox G9 4 Bay M.2 NVMe SSD NAS (Intel N150, 12GB/64GB, 2x 2.5G) US$171.40 (~A$275.16) Del @ Honor Box Store AliExpressAffiliate
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Clear on 02/04/2025 - 19:47 aliexpress.com (2454 clicks)
Last edited 02/04/2025 - 20:00
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Good price on this 4 Bay NAS for those who are after something takes M.2 NVMe SSDs and doesn't cost a fortune. It's an excellent choice as a media player, since the Intel N150 paired with Quick Sync works well for Plex/Jellyfin transcoding and you can expand the storage with 4 SSD slots available. Out of the box it has 64GB of eMMC storage with Windows/Linux pre-installed and 12GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM making it RAIDy to roll right out of the box.

Featuring 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x2 slots with official support for up to 4TB in each slot, 64GB eMMC storage with Windows/Linux dual boot, 12GB LPDDR5 RAM (soldered), 2x HDMI 2.0 4K@60Hz, 1x USB-C full feature with PD, Data & DisplayPort output, 1x USB-C PD, 3x USB 3.2 10Gbps ports and 3.5mm audio.

For connectivity it's using two Intel i226-V 2.5GbE network ports, as well as WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. For cooling there is a CPU fan and two smaller fans for the SSDs. I recommend installing heatsinks on each SSD as they're not included.

Unfortunately due to CPU constraints the M.2 NVMe slots are limited to 2 PCIe lane (x2) instead of 4 PCIe lanes (x4), however this is still faster than having mechanical SATA HDDs.

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closed Comments

  • Nom on 02/04/2025 - 20:25
    +5

    Huh, the 2.5Gb networking means the most you'll get from this NAS is 250MB/s … which a mechanical hard drive can just about do, so the SSDs are basically pointless unless you want to store millions of tiny files (which are really really slow on a mechanical drive).

    A 16TB mechanical drive will offer about the same throughput for dramatically less cost.

    • Clear on 02/04/2025 - 20:30
      +1

      PCIe x2 + a single 2.5G LAN port in theory is going to be 312.5 MB/s and 625MB/s with two 2.5G and link aggregation. Ideally they should have included a 10G port instead.

      • Nom on 02/04/2025 - 20:40

        Yeah it's a great price for this particular machine 👌 I just think the layout and choices make it ultra niche 😁

        • p1 ama on 03/04/2025 - 10:11

          Niche as compared to what?

          • Nom on 03/04/2025 - 14:05

            @p1 ama: A 16TB mechanical-drive NAS at a quarter of the price ?

            This machine with 16TB of NVMe drives won't be far off $1500 - that's an astronomical amount of money for just 16TB of 250MB/s storage.

            • p1 ama on 03/04/2025 - 18:46

              @Nom:

              astronomical amount of money for just 16TB of 250MB/s storage

              And what's the 4KQD1 performance of mechanical hard drives? What about seek times and latency?

              FWIW, needing 16TB of storage is a niche requirement in the first place.

              • Nom on 03/04/2025 - 19:08

                @p1 ama: Sorry, not sure where you're heading with this - people who need the specifics of SSD performance from their NAS are absolutely niche.

                Nobody is arguing the mechanical drive can meet the same performance in every metric. Just that it will do the job just fine for the vast majority of users at a quarter of the price.

                • p1 ama on 03/04/2025 - 20:52

                  @Nom:

                  Sorry, not sure where you're heading with this - people who need the specifics of SSD performance from their NAS are absolutely niche.

                  My point is that there are plenty of use cases where an SSD NAS would be the right choice, and those use cases are increasingly common.

                  For example, I edit photos in Lightroom off a NAS - previously when I used a HDD-based NAS, performance was choppy, not because of throughput (images are only ~50MB), but because of seek times and latency. Moving to an SSD-based NAS has had a noticeable and quantifiable uplift in performance.

                  The idea that it's "just 250MB/s" is a very shallow way of looking at the differences between HDD and SSD performance.

                  Nobody is arguing the mechanical drive can meet the same performance in every metric. Just that it will do the job just fine for the vast majority of users at a quarter of the price.

                  Yeah, but we're talking about a niche of a niche of a niche here. Very few people ever need a NAS in the first place, so these are all, at the end of the day, niche products.

      • bjt on 04/04/2025 - 10:00

        Can you get consumer switches that support LAG?

        • Clear on 04/04/2025 - 10:16
          +1

          Of course. TP-Link TL-SG108E and Netgear GS108Ev3b are specific models with LAG support. If you don't want to go full enterprise a lot of the Unifi switches will do it.

    • p1 ama on 02/04/2025 - 21:20
      +2

      which a mechanical hard drive can just about do, so the SSDs are basically pointless unless you want to store millions of tiny files

      The whole point of an SSD-based storage server is latency and performance at shallow queue depths, so there definitely is a use case for something like this. Sequential speeds mean very little unless you're literally just copying files back and forth.

      • rkeniger on 02/04/2025 - 21:26
        +6

        And silence! If this thing is anywhere near me I want it bloody quiet. Four spinning disks is the opposite of quiet.

    • RedHab on 03/04/2025 - 10:46

      Yes, I agree. The speed of the storage (4x 2 GB/s for PCIe 3 x2) and that of the network interfaces (2 x 0.25GB/s) is rather mismatched.

      The product would make more sense for SATA storage.

      However, an interesting product, nice to see some creativity.

  • BlinkyBill on 02/04/2025 - 20:31

    Channel bonding (assuming it's supported) will get you closer to 600 MB/s

    • Nom on 02/04/2025 - 20:34
      +3

      Right but you need a Switch that can do this, and if you're doing LACP then it let's you do 2 X 250MB/s streams simultaneously rather than combining into a single double-speed.

      To put it another way, LACP means two hosts can pull 2.5Gb at the same time - it doesn't mean one host can pull 5Gb (unless it's making two separate connections).

      EDIT : I think SMB3 supports multiple connections now, so maybe it can take advantage 🤔

      • BlinkyBill on 02/04/2025 - 21:19

        I've done 4 x 1 Gb/sec channels on fairly inexpensive switches in the past, with great success. I can't remember if it was with a Windows Server host or OpenFiler (it was maybe 10 years ago). But it does work and can easily saturate all 4 channels.

      • afayd on 03/04/2025 - 11:49

        You seem to know your stuff. Can’t we just connect a 10gbe external ethernet adapter on the usb-c port and get 10Gb/s speed? It shows in one of the images that the usb-c port supports 10Gb/s.

        • Nom on 03/04/2025 - 14:01
          +1

          Yes you can. But USB Ethernet adaptors are variable in quality, and overheads mean you often don't get the full 10Gb.

          But you will get more than 2.5Gb.

      • MetalPhreak on 05/04/2025 - 00:49

        @Nom yep multichannel https://kb.synology.com/en-au/DSM/tutorial/smb3_multichannel… but not everything will use it.

  • Scottabargin on 02/04/2025 - 21:07
    +1

    Isn't eMMC terrible to have your OS on? (Limited writes)

    • Clear on 02/04/2025 - 21:38
      +3

      Yeah it's not the best choice. If you don't want to sacrifice one of the M.2 slots the alternative to the eMMC is a USB flash drive. For example UnRaid will load entirely into RAM after boot and won't have excessive writes to the storage.

    • ndenham on 02/04/2025 - 23:16
      +2

      Ideally on many server platforms the base OS (i.e. Proxmox, ESXi) never changes much (except security patches), you can even make a ramdisk for logs so they're not using up precious write cycles.

      Everything other than the Base OS will be on the other drives.

    • RedHab on 03/04/2025 - 10:48

      Yes, this will likely be the first point of failure. Put the OS on one of the NVMe drives rather.

      • afayd on 03/04/2025 - 12:28

        @RedHab Can that NVMe drive be part of the raid if the OS is installed on it? I’m thinking of raid 1.

        • RedHab on 03/04/2025 - 13:03

          I don't know about this particular system - no idea what its boot options are. It also depends on the NAS OS. UnRAID is pretty flexible. Not sure about TrueNAS etc.

        • Nom on 03/04/2025 - 16:59

          Depending what NAS OS you choose, some can just install and boot from a USB drive - you don't need to waste any of the NVMe space on the OS itself.

  • Click_It on 03/04/2025 - 01:00

    Very niche.

    It's not quite there yet imo, though I can see this segment growing like crazy in the coming years. I have a big loud synology, I love it but I'd definitely like an SSD NAS in the future.

    Asustor Flashtor 6 and 12's are another option. More costly, but a whole level up from this too. With that 12 model you're starting to get into serious storage options.

    • Clear on 03/04/2025 - 01:02
      +4

      Aoostar WTR Max is the dream NAS. 6 SATA + 5 M.2 NVMe.

      • BrodensNephew on 03/04/2025 - 01:18

        Oooh. Nice spot.

        Do you have any idea on pricing?

      • wwwboy on 03/04/2025 - 08:11

        I have had many synologies over the years.. but that Aoostar you linked is mighty nice.. I just dont have a use case at the moment….. But thanks for sharing the tech..

      • DigitalAnalog on 03/04/2025 - 08:44

        Wish there was an Intel variant.

      • Click_It on 03/04/2025 - 19:59

        Wow, I'd have to find a use case for so much power, but very interesting!

  • bread69 on 03/04/2025 - 09:57

    Purchased one of these to backup my nas with 2 × m.2 and eventually run a few containers for HA?

    has emmc some devices solder im not 100% this system does
    ive been using the emmc for os im pretty sure its removable, i havent cracked it open yet but before
    see this video for proof https://youtu.be/AY5IKKTOy2E?si=ac0V26_VLp1abMXT

    just to add it seems at the moment N150 igpu drivers are hit or miss i couldn't to get hardware encoding to work in jellyfin container with the OS im using

    • afayd on 03/04/2025 - 12:23

      Could you please check if the usb-c port actually runs at the 10gb/s shown in the images? I’m thinking about buying one of these to connect a 10gbe external ethernet adapter on the usb-c port to by pass the bottleneck from the included ethernet adapters. If you’re not sure how to test, I’m more than happy to help.

      • bread69 on 03/04/2025 - 16:25

        Link me a guide it does say 10gb on the side of it

  • Quarter Pounder on 03/04/2025 - 10:16

    Might only be good for use as a NAS, bought one from a past deal, cpu gets maxxed out with one chrome tab

  • heineken016 on 03/04/2025 - 11:33

    Any good deals on suitable ssds around atm?

    Looked a little while back and something like a 2tb corsair mp600 from umart/msy seemed about right, not super fast but wouldn't matter too much here right?

    • Sendaris on 03/04/2025 - 14:50
      +1

      The ethernet link will get maxxed out before any NVMe does, I would find the cheapest that has a good reliability record.

  • kdinosaur on 03/04/2025 - 18:14
    +2

    This product is an absurdity. If you buy this one to save some bucks, you're not gonna spend your money on these fancy M2 SSDs.

    • bcYield on 06/04/2025 - 11:42
      +1

      Agreed. Still early for M.2 Nas for average people. SATA SSD Nas should do the same.

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