Introduction

We would like to thank Asustor for supplying the review sample.



Asustor is a newer NAS players on the market, but they have, truth be told, taken huge steps toward catching up with the really tough and highly experienced competition only to take the lead in some areas. Since NAS devices lately tend to work as media players or even HTPCs (Home Theater PCs), more and more manufacturers equip their offerings with HDMI ports, which allows these servers to reproduce HD multimedia content. As we see it, the term media player and all its relevant devices will soon become irrelevant as NAS servers and storage centers will be transformed into a combination of entertainment and storage instead. Asustor was one of the first NAS companies to fully utilize the multimedia capabilities of their products and has now released the AS-204TE. Asustor says the unit to be compatible with the popular XBMC player and1080p HD multimedia content. They also included a remote control to make controlling XBMC a breeze.

The AS-20x is currently Asustor's lowest product line. It mostly addresses home environments since demands won't be as high there as they are in a business. The hardware we come across in the AS-204TE isn't top of the line, although it is definitely enough to cope with the typical home user's needs. This specific NAS can also take up to four HDDs and, like all Asustor units, runs their ADM operating system, which is highly intuitive and richly featured.

Specifications

The AS-204TE is equipped with a low-clocked Intel Atom CPU (most likely the CE5315), which, however, has two cores, so it will cope just fine with the needs of a home user. Its energy consumption is also low, which is crucial to a home environment. The NAS comes with 1 GB of DDR3 RAM since it has to run the demanding XBMC application well, but its RAM total cannot be upgraded.

You can install up to four HDDs into the AS-204TE, and the disks can be configured in all popular RAID levels. The maximum capacity of the unit is 16 TB if you use 4 TB disks, which aren't that expensive any more, although you should make sure to take a good look at Asustor's HDD compatibility page before making your purchase to avoid any problems down the road.

The NAS only comes with one Ethernet port for networking since a home environment probably won't utilize the Link Aggregation Control Protocol because it requires an advanced, managed, network switch, which isn't cheap. Some could argue that a second Ethernet port could also be used as a fail safe, but it would increase the price, which meant that it had to go as the AS-204TE is not meant for SOHO or business environments. It comes with many USB ports, including two that are compatible with the latest and pretty fast USB 3.0 specification, and one USB 3.0 port has even been put into the front to make it easily accessible. That said, Asustor chose not to include even a single eSATA port, which seems a little strange.

The AS-204TE's dimensions are those typical for a 4-bay NAS, and its weight is a little on the high side since it uses an internal PSU, not an external power brick. As for power consumption, Asustor speaks of very few watts used; however, they only provide measurements with one disk installed. We will cover all possible HDD configurations to provide you with the energy consumption of each configuration. We also believe that the pretty large 120 mm fan used to cool the AS-204TE will feature a silent operation, which many home users will definitely appreciate.

The most significant general details of a product are its price and the provided warranty, and the AS-204TE does fare a little worse than the average in those areas as it isn't that affordable and comes with the 2-year warranty NAS manufacturers typically provide. We think that Asustor should at least support such an expensive NAS server with a 3-year warranty.

Packaging

The box the AS-204TE comes in uses a different graphics design than the other Asustor products we have tested so far. The latter actually came in very plainly designed cardboard boxes, as though they were supposed to hide the value of the NAS. This box design is still far from fancy, but users with a minimalistic streak will appreciate it. We find only the Asustor logo and absolutely no information about the product or its series on the front, which was obviously intentional as the box will be used with all of their products from now on out.


On this side are several colored graphics that describe some of the NAS's features.


Some more icons here again describe significant NAS functions and features.


Finally a label and a specifications table with information on the product inside the box, although the latter only details the product's most important specifications.

Contents & Bundle

Two piece of cell foam inside the box protect the NAS incredibly well. Asustor spared no expense here, and they did well to do so since receiving a broken product due to lack of adequate packaging is always a shame.


A smaller box contains all the accessories that come with the AS-204TE. These include an AC power cord, two sets of fixing bolts for HDD mounting onto the trays, an Ethernet cable, an installation CD, and a quick-start guide.


The remote control, which will prove most helpful with XBMC, isn't included in the bundle but you have it purchase it separately if you want it. As you can see, its small size makes it very practical, although it only has the basic buttons, which will, on the other hand, make it very easy to use in even dark environments. Unfortunately, no batteries for the remote were included (the remote takes 2x AAA batteries).

Exterior

Like all other Asustor servers, the AS-204TE features a metallic chassis with a dark gray finish. This model doesn't come with an LCD screen like units of the 6 Series because Asustor tried to keep the price as low as possible.


The AS-204TE's manual, provided as a PDF filetype, also contains an interesting description of the LED indicators at the front.


Only one of its two sides features ventilation holes. We came across exactly the same design in QNAP cases.


The rear features the large 120 mm cooling fan and all I/O ports. The latter includes two USB ports (one is USB 3.0), an Ethernet and HDMI port, the Kensington security slot, a line-out, and the AC receptacle. The AS-204TE doesn't include any eSATA ports, which is a great shame.


The bottom of the NAS has four plastic stands and two labels with the model number, the MAC address of the Ethernet port, and its power input specifications.


We removed all trays to provide you with several photos of the HDD compartment. You will get to look at much more detailed internal photos once we start analyzing the unit's insides.


The trays are of high quality and can accommodate both 3.5" and 2.5" disks should you want to use SSDs. However, you won't notice a significant speed difference with SSDs since this NAS doesn't support the faster SATA III protocol, and using SSDs would also significantly reduce the NAS server's storage capacity, although they are far more reliable and heat resistant than mechanical disks. Asustor unfortunately, once more, didn't number the caddies, but we expected there to be no locks on the trays since this NAS is for home use only, where physical data security isn't as important as in a business environment.

A Look Inside

It's now time to strip the NAS down to take a look at what components it hides inside its casing.


Breaking apart the AS-204TE was a story that involved many screws; however, it was pretty straightforward since we have come across NAS servers that were much harder to crack open. As you can see, its chassis is fully metallic, and we can assure you that is very sturdy and incredibly well built.


The mainboard is really small and under-populated, but houses all the necessary components a NAS server needs.


Like in the AS-302T, the solder side of the mainboard is protected by a plastic shield which we removed to provide you with a clear view to the components installed on this side.


The NAS is equipped with one of Intel's fresh Atom dual-core processors (most likely the CE5315), and it is clocked at 1.2 GHz. This processor is actually a SoC (System on a Chip) and has the code name Evansport. It supports Hyper-Threading, HDMI 1.4a, USB 3.0, PCI Express 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and has a hardware H264 trans-coder. The CPU is cooled passively by a large enough heatsink, thanks to its low TDP.


The DDR3 modules are directly soldered to the mainboard, so you cannot upgrade the RAM. Four K4B2G1646Q-BCK0 Samsung ICs combined total 1 GB of RAM.


For additional USB 3.0 ports, an Entrontech EJ188H controller is used.


This DC-DC converter includes a TPS54310 synchronous buck (or step-down) converter that takes 3 V to 6 VDC input voltage and outputs down to 0.9 V with 99% accuracy.


The single PCIe port of the mainboard. It is occupied by the PCIe expansion card that holds all SATA connectors.


The mainboard's battery is installed vertically.


The PCIe expansion card with its SATA connectors. On it is an Asmedia ASM1051 SATA controller.


On the solder side of the main board is a Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver, which is weird since the Atom SoC includes a Gigabit Ethernet controller.


The NAS's flash memory, an FL128SA1F00 IC, is located on the solder side of the mainboard.


The NAS's PSU is by FSP and has a capacity of 150 W. 120 W are available on the +12V rail alone, which is definitely more than enough to meet the needs of the AS-204TE.


The fan is by YS Tech, and its model number is FD121225HB (120 mm, 12 V, 0.48 A, 2600 RPM 106.1 CFM, 44 dBA). This particular fan uses double ball-bearings to ensure it lasts a long time, and while it won't bother you in auto-fan-speed mode, it is quite noise at full speed.

Software

You will have to load the bundled software disc into the drive of a client PC after installing the HDDs into the NAS and connecting all cables (power and network). Asustor suggests reading through the Quick Start Guide first, and we agree with them. You will also find their User Guide on the same disc, so you should take a look at it as well.


The provided disc comes with Asustor's Control Center, which we will discuss below, and the Backup Plan application. As it name suggests, it allows you to create a backup plan or restore from a backup file.


As you can see in the above, the Backup Plan application comes with a lot of backup options.


Asustor also provides you with their Download Assistant, an application that allows you to interact with the Download Center app, which you can install to the NAS via any Windows or Mac system. Download Center also gives users the ability to pick the content they want to download off a torrent before a download starts.


The Download Assistant includes a customizable download schedule, the Smart Download function, which allows users to automatically add download tasks for torrents placed into the Smart Download folder. We should stress that you must install Download Center on the NAS for Download Assistant to work.

Asustor Control Center & Initial Setup

It's now time to install Asustor's Control Center. This application will not only find the NAS on your network, but will also allow for its effortless and quick configuration.


Once inside the Control Center, easily configure various options of the NAS, map a network drive, create a remote file folder, or connect to the NAS via FTP.


Asustor's Control Center also easily allows you to initialize the NAS through Web Setup. The first step of the initialization process asks you to make sure that at least the first tray has an HDD installed, and not to power the NAS down or remove the aforementioned disk. You will then be prompted to either download a fresh version or install a version of ADM. If you have access to the Internet, we highly recommend installing ADM off the net to make sure it is up to date. The initial configuration begins after you have done so, and you will be asked whether you'd like to one-click setup everything instead of doing so manually. We chose the manual route since we like to be in control over every step of the initialization procedure.


You will now be asked to pick an admin password. You will then configure the time and network settings and pick the RAID configuration that best suits your needs. There are RAID levels, but you can also configure your disks in JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) or pick to run everything off a single disk if you cannot afford to install an HDD into every tray.


We started the second part of the initialization process after setting the RAID level. Configuring RAID didn't take long, and we were then quickly prompted to register our NAS to obtain an Asustor ID, which is necessary in order to download additional applications for the device.


You will now be redirected to the login page, where you have to input your credentials to proceed to the administration interface.