Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

Summary

I'm in the process of rebuilding my homelab from the ground up, moving from a 24U full-size 4-post rack to a mini rack. One of the most difficult devices to downsize (especially economically) is a NAS. But as my needs have changed, I'm bucking the trend of all datahoarders and I need less storage than the 120 TB (80 TB usable) I currently have. It turns out, when you stop running an entire YouTube channel in your home (I'm in a studio now), you don't need more than a few terabytes, so my new conservative estimate is 6 terabytes of usable space. That's within the realm of NVMe SSD storage for a few hundred bucks, so that's my new target. Three new mini NASes were released over the past year that are great candidates, and I have relationships with all three companies making them, so I am lucky to have been offered review units of each: I've compiled all my experience with the three NASes into one concise YouTube video, which I've embedded below: However, I thought I'd at least give a few notes here for those interested in reading, not watching. Generally, all three mini NASes use an Intel N100/N150 chip, and divvy up its 9 PCIe Gen 3 lanes into 4 (or in the Beelink's case, 6) M.2 NVMe SSD slots. They all have 2.5 Gbps networking, though the GMKtec and Beelink have dual 2.5 Gbps NICs. The difference is in the execution, and each box has one or two minor issues that keep me from giving a whole-hearted recommendation. When you're dealing with tiny devices, there's always a compromise. So you have to see which compromises you're most willing to deal with. (Or just buy a full size NAS if you have the space/power for it.) GMKtec G9 I previously reviewed this NAS in April; see my blog post The (almost) perfect mini NAS for my mini rack. That 'almost' is doing a lot of heavy lifting, though; there were inherent cooling issues if you ran the box with four NVMe drives, and it was bad enough GMKtec went through a design revision. Their newer version of the G9 has a much larger c...