Synology DS124 NAS – The Best 1-Bay Yet?

Brand New Synology DS124 Value Series NAS Revealed

Do you remember when owning your own private server was an incredibly complex, expensive, and intimidating proposition? Yeah, me too. However, the acceleration in how this kind of technology has become considerably more user-friendly and considerably smaller has been extraordinary, and few areas of the private server ownership market have seen that level of transition more than one-bay NAS devices. For a long time, one HDD servers were considered something of a joke, thought of more as Billy-Basic “hard drives connected to the internet”, with most brands rarely affording them anything more than the most inexpensive processors and barely featured services. Fast forward to 2023/2024 and things are considerably more nuanced! Thanks to a more uniform and cost-effective approach to the hardware inside each tier of a manufacturer’s portfolio, we are more and more seeing the hardware, features and support that you typically find in larger two and four-bay devices being made available to these rather modest one-bay systems. This brings us to the subject of today’s article, the new Synology DS124 NAS, the follow-up to the five years older DS118 released in 2017/2018. Arriving with a nearly identical hardware architecture to the rest of the value series in Synology’s 23/24 range, this is possibly the lowest priced current generation Synology you can buy, but still supports the majority of Synology’s DSM platform. So, let’s find out if this fantastically modest yet capable NAS deserves your data.

What Are the Hardware Specifications of the Synology DS124 NAS

As previously mentioned, the DS124 is the latest entry into Synology’s current 2023/2024 value series and features hardware very similar to the two-bay and four-bay devices in that range. Although we have seen tremendous innovation within one-bay NAS devices in recent years, we are still yet to see this brand roll out a one-bay NAS with anything higher than an ARM processor. Give them credit though, this is quite a capable ARM processor, and it would have been very easy for them to cut corners and opt for a lower-class Marvel or Annapurna AL processor in order to keep costs low. The Synology DS124 arrives with the Realtek RTD1619B quad-core ARM processor, which has a 1.7Ghz clock speed and even has a smidgen of integrated graphic support too. This processor certainly will not rival even the most modest Intel Celeron in capabilities, but Synology has been doing great things in ensuring its latest software, DSM 7.2, runs on this platform exceptionally well. The extent to which DSM runs will be discussed later on, as ARM processors have a very unique architecture that also has an inherent difficulty when it comes to more complex processes, but fair play to Synology for including this CPU on such a value series device and after already testing this CPU in the likes of the DS223J, DS223, and DS423 here on the channel, I can comfortably say this is the best value series CPU the brand has ever used and definitely runs the bulk of Synology’s mainline home and light business backup applications.

Synology NAS	Synology DS124 NAS
Chassis
Check Amazon	Check Amazon
CPU Model	Realtek RTD1619B
CPU Type	ARM
CPU Architecture	64-bit
CPU Frequency	4-core 1.7 GHz
Hardware Encryption Engine	Yes
System Memory	1 GB DDR4 non-ECC
Drive Bays	1
Hot Swappable Drive*	No
External Ports
RJ-45 1GbE LAN Port*	1
USB 3.2 Gen 1 Port*	2
Size (Height x Width x Depth)	166 mm x 71 mm x 224 mm
Weight	0.71 kg
System Fan	60 mm x 60 mm x 1 pcs
Fan Speed Mode	Full-Speed Mode Cool Mode Quiet Mode Low-power Mode
Brightness Adjustable Front LED Indicators	Yes
Power Recovery	Yes
Scheduled Power On / Off	Yes
Wake on LAN / WAN	Yes
Power Supply Unit / Adapter	36 W
Warranty	2-year hardware warranty, extendable to 4 years with Extended Warranty Plus

The Synology DS124 also arrives with 1GB of DDR4 memory, soldered to the board and cannot be upgraded. On the one hand, not being able to upgrade this memory is something of a pain as even moderate use of Synology DSM 7.2 is going to push this allocated memory quantity quite hard. However, this is still a pretty decent baseline memory to have once you factor in the total cost of the device. And, as mentioned, we have already tested the system services on the nearly identical two-bay DS223J which arrives with the same CPU and 1GB memory and ran DSM very well.

In terms of expandability however, the Synology DS124 lacks a considerable amount of scalability both in terms of its internal storage and its long-term expandability. As this is a one-bay NAS, you will be unsurprised to hear that any kind of RAID support is massively off the table and indeed hot-swapping is simply not feasible on a device that is going to be running its entire storage system services from a single drive. Likewise, once you reach full capacity on this drive, even after getting over the fact you will have zero RAID safety nets in place, there is no means to attach an expansion device to the DS124. So despite innovations in one-bay NAS architecture in recent years, there is still a tremendously low glass ceiling here in terms of your long-term storage scalability. And I will not even touch on the lack of M.2 NVMe bays, which no one would have assumed Synology would have included at this storage tier.

In terms of ports and connectivity, everything is pretty familiar and nearly identical to that of its predecessor. Arriving with a single LAN port on the rear, at 1GbE/Gigabit architecture, this is okay I suppose and possibly a limitation of the CPU’s supported network adapters to exceed this speed, but it is worth highlighting that even modest grade hard drives these days can easily exceed 160 to 200 MB/s transfer rates, and if you are going to go above 10 TB (which let’s face it if you are only running a single drive inside the system, is pretty likely) then this performance number goes even higher. Therefore, that single external Gigabit Ethernet port will serve as a slight bottleneck and although the rest of the system architecture may struggle to saturate the likes of a 2.5GbE port here, it might well have been appreciated. Given the relatively low-cost difference at the production level between 1GbE and 2.5GbE. This would not be so bad if the system supported USB network adapter upgrades that these days can be purchased for as little as $20 for a 2.5G USB upgrade. However, Synology has substantially downgraded USB support on their devices and DSM. It’s stated that the low frequency of users utilizing these ports did not justify the potential security risks posed to the system with more open-ended USB compatibility of peripherals and devices beyond storage drives.

The USB ports on the DS124 are all USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, 5Gbps, and I am not going to give Synology too much of a hard time on this as 1) They have very rarely engaged with larger 10G Gen 2 USB on any other device already, and 2) I’m not wholly convinced that this CPU supports USB Gen 2 architecture. The fact that compatibility of USB on this device is rather restricted is definitely going to annoy some, especially that lack of network adapter support, but all in all the ports and connections on the DS124 are not too bad and perfectly adequate for the price point.

What Are the Software Specifications of the Synology DS124 NAS

Although it is very easy for us to spend a lot of time critiquing Synology for the level of hardware that their systems arrive with, it cannot be denied that in the software department, Synology still largely rules the whole of the NAS industry. Although alternatives from the likes of QNAP and their QTS platform are edging closer, Synology DSM 7.2 is a fantastically well-featured, hugely capable, and tremendously user-friendly platform for network attached storage users. That is why when weighing up the price tag of any Synology NAS, including the DS124, you need to factor in the cost of DSM as part of that investment. I’m pleased to confirm, thanks to previous testing of other NASdevices built on this architecture, that DSM 7.2 runs very well on the DS124 and although certain key premium applications are not available due to this ARM architecture, you still have access to the bulk of Synology applications.

Some of you may wonder why big premium applications such as Synology Virtual Machine Manager, Active Backup Suite, Write Once Read Many (WORM) support, volume encryption, and SHR are not available on the DS124 NAS. This is simply down to that ARM-based processor and the way in which it handles instructions to the rest of the system. All processes made by a CPU are delivered via strings of binary instruction to and from the processor, and the more complex the process, the more detailed and lengthy the command. ARM-based processors are more typically used in more power-efficient devices such as mobile devices and those designed to run for days, weeks, months, or years at a time. ARM processors are able to run at much better power efficiency than x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD thanks to their ability to compress these instructions significantly internally and therefore use fewer system resources in order to get the average task actioned. This combined with recent innovations in 64-bit ARM processors is how the DS124 can do so much more with its ARM processor in 2023 than other ARM processors in older generation Synology NAS. However, some commands are simply too complex or nuanced to be easily compressed, especially those of a highly graphical nature, and therefore, these larger AAA+ services from Synology are simply not possible on an ARM-based NAS like the DS124. Nevertheless, it is still impressive that this system can run the bulk of Synology’s Surveillance Station camera operations with multiple cameras, AI facial recognition in Synology Photos, the full multimedia suite, Office collaboration suite of applications that include Mail, Office, Chat, and Drive. And of course, there is Synology Hyper Backup and USB Copy that allows you to mitigate some of the redundancy limitations of a one-bay NAS and factor in local and remote backups to other servers, USB, and the cloud. If you are looking for access to the baseline applications from Synology and have lower frequency demands, there is a lot to love in the more modest but effective range of services open to the DS124 in DSM. Alternatively, you can watch our Synology DS223 NAS Review video below and watch the software section of the review (it will skip directly to that part in the video below, just click play, or click HERE)

Next, let’s discuss how much improvement/difference we have in the DS124 against the DS118 NAS that it is seemingly refreshing for 2023.

How Does the Synology DS124 compare with the DS118 NAS?

On the face of it, the DS124 and the DS118 NAS are incredibly similar and upon closer inspection, it seems the only difference between them comes down to the CPU. The older generation DS118 arrives with the Realtek RTD1296 processor and the newer DS124 arrives with the Realtek RTD1619b. Both are 64-bit ARM processors, in quad-core architecture, and with limited integrated graphics for handling HEVC and 4K multimedia to a greater or lesser degree. So, how does the DS124 serve as an upgrade or refresh? Well, it is simply that the newest CPU benefits from years of additional development by Realtek and is even more efficient in how it handles processes compared to its predecessor. It also benefits from a higher clock speed that, although only marginal, is still an increase from 1.4 GHz to 1.7 GHz per core, with a slight tweak in improving the ARM-based integrated graphics too.

Note: GREEN = Better

When Will the Synology DS124 NAS Drive Be Released and What is the Price?

Although a formal release of the Synology DS124 and availability is still yet to be fully confirmed, we can make some pretty educated guesses. Thanks to multiple listings of the Synology DS124 already having appeared online on multiple European websites, we can largely predict that the DS124 will be available to buy around late July or early August 2023. Additionally, Synology will almost certainly be maintaining a similar price point to its predecessor, the DS118, as this has been Synology’s strategy in many of the more recent refreshes of their portfolio this year. You can fully expect the DS124 to be priced more affordably than many of their plus series range, in keeping with the system’s more modest hardware, stature, and reflective of the comparatively fewer expandability options that it has. If you’re interested in checking availability, use the provided links below to verify with your local retailer. Any purchase made using these links will result in a small commission for us here at NAS Compares, which helps support me (Robbie) and Eddie to continue doing what we love. Thank you and have a great week.

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