Specifications

The N2310 comes equipped with Applied Micro’s fresh APM86491 single-core PowerPC processor. The SoC (System on a Chip) has in this case been clocked to 800 MHz, and while it may look weak compared to modern CPUs, it uses various hardware acceleration technologies which help it get the job done effectively. It features two Gen 2 PCI Express x1 interfaces, supports one USB 3.0 host and two SATA ports, and AES-, ARC4-, 3DES-, MD5,- HMAC-, SHA-xxx encryption, has a dedicated Ethernet Offload Engine, Classification Engine, Queue Manager / Traffic Manager, and supports advanced wake-up capabilities from Deep Sleep. This SoC is ideal for a small, incredibly energy efficient NAS unit. The SoC is also backed by 512 MB of DDR3 RAM you can't upgrade, a situation common to most entry level NAS boxes.

This NAS can take up to two HDDs, which puts its maximum storage capacity at 8 TB if 4 TB disks are used. 8 TB are surely enough for home usage unless you have a ton of videos to store. You would then have to invest in a 4-bay NAS.

The N2310 doesn't support the iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) protocol. iSCSI simply allows a user to "see" a remote storage location as a local one through the workstation, which makes expanding the storage capacity of any system a pretty straightforward task.

The NAS only has a single Ethernet Gigabit port for networking, but there is no need for two and port trunking at its price and in its category. There are also two USB ports. One USB port is compatible with the most recent USB 3.0 protocol, and there is unfortunately no eSATA port. We think that there should be one, but Thecus meant to keep cost as low as possible.

This NAS is pretty compact and fairly light. As for its power consumption, Thecus only mentions a 5 W figure, but doesn't provide further details, like which operating mode was used while this energy consumption measurement was taken. So we had to use the results of our measurements in the above table. Since power consumption is low, there is no need for a strong PSU. A small power brick with 40 W capacity will suffice.

The cooling fan is small and can, as such, be noisy at high speeds, though it operates at low speeds most of the time, and the N2310 comes with the two year warranty common to most NAS servers. We left the best part of this product for last: Its highly affordable price. The N2310 is currently the most affordable NAS available. Its HDDs will most likely cost you more!