AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – SUPER COMPACT FLASH!
With so, SO many Chinese players entering the OS-free NAS scene in the last couple of years, several names have bubbled to the top (natural selection in IT?) and one name that is making big waves is Aoostar! At a glance, you could easily lump them into the ever growing pile of ‘mini PC’ companies that spam your Facebook pages, AliExpress and eBay. But what has set them apart is their specifically NAS-tailored development of their server releases. The mini PC crossover from SoC/Mobile scale processors of your favourite Intel Core or Ryzen processor is nothing new, but the growing market for NAS systems that need to spread the focus towards storage and network connectivity is all too often a leap that separates the men from the boys – and what has make Aoostar a player in this arena it would appear. Back in December ’23, I reviewed the Aoostar R1 and Aoostar R7, and I was massively impressed by what these affordable UnRAID/TrueNAS-ready boxes were achieving! Today is the turn of the Aoostar GEM10 – An m.2 NVMe Flash NAS System that features Gen4 SSD architecture, USB4, 32GB DDR5 Memory, 2.5G and oCulink. So, does the Aoostar GEM10 NAS deserve your hot data? Let’s find out in today’s review.
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AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – Quick Conclusion
The Aoostar GEM10 is making some pretty bold hardware promises, given it’s scale! The ‘dazzle’ of how powerful mini PCs have been getting in the last few years has definitely become a little duller, as it grows more common. But given how Aoostar has merged this into a much more NAS-tailored system in a meaningful way that clearly cost some $ at the R&D level needs to be appalled. This is not a small SSD NAS with is covered in Mini-PC caveats – this IS a NAS and one that I think might well be the most powerful for it’s scale in the market right now (especially at $499+). That said, it certainly ain’t perfect! Network scalability is a mixed bag, the way memory has been approached (in architecture and ECC support) is debatable, the CPU choices in the range of 4 with the differing process and PCIe layouts is a big baffling and the full utility of oCuLink in this NAS context is still far from fleshed out. BUT, There are prosumer concerns for the more technically minded and IT sophisticated, which I think does not make up the bulk of this device’s target demographic. I struggle to call this system turn-key (due to it’s lack of an included NAS OS, even a 3rd party one, as seen in the UnRAID license-ready LincStation N1), but it’s certainly miles more user-friendly than full DiY. I have often spoken of the growing middle ground between full NAS DiY from the ground up and full ‘out the box’ turnkey from brands like Synology and QNAP. The Aoostar GEM10 is a FANTASTIC example of the kind of product that can evolve from this – well build, powerful, 3rd party OS ready and a step above the churned-out Chinese budget fodder found elsewhere in the ‘pre-built OS free NAS sector’. Recommended – IF you have the time to set it up right!
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AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – Design
The design of The GEM10 is a little beefier than most mini PCs (though, obviously much smaller than comparable desktop NAS devices running on MITX boards), and a lot of this space is needed for the chunky cooling system internally.
The GEM10 arrives at just 10.7cm x 10.7cm x 6cm in size and just a little under 1KG when fully populated with SSDs. The retail kit includes an external power adapter, instruction manual (which arrives in 2 languages and is a little space tbh), mini screwdriver and thermal pads. Depending on whether you purchase the version with SSD and 32GB DDR5 Media, this will change the # of thermal pads inc.
There is ventilation on practically every side of the device – which given the 8-core 4.7Ghz , 16 thread architecture of the device and it’s three Gen4 M.2 slots should NOT come as a big surprise! This tony little chassis has a lot crammed in and the potential for temperature-related system bottlenecks and throttling is MASSIVE!
Alongside the passive ventilation panels on all 4 sides and the top section (above where the CPU is located), the system also features who internal active cooling fans built into the top and base. Even a casual check through the vented panels reveals the internal heatsink of that CPU. This is a decent amount of cooling provisioning for the scale of the system, even for a Ryzen SoC like this one, for when SSD NAS operations truly kick off!
The base fan is not silent, but it manages to be pretty mild (in the grad scheme of things), as it is parallel with the desk when deployed. I will say that full control of this fan (and the CPU fan) is debatable, as the system does not arrive with NAS software (no Aoostor 1st party NAS OS, or an included UnRAID/TrueNAS/OMV license either). So, how much control you have over these cooling measures is going to be debatable.
For such a compact chassis, you can definitely feel the weight of the internals. The external casing is largely plastic, which I was a little surprised by. Nevertheless, you cannot fault that the brand has clearly factored cooling and ventilation in to their device, whilst still keeping an eye on keeping it fantastically compact. Let’s discuss the connectivity of the Aoostar GEM10.
AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – Ports and Connections
Credit where it is due – Aoostar has done a 10/10 job here to get as many ports featured on this device as they have, given the scale of the GEM10. The ports are located on the front and rear panel, and although there are the usual ‘mini PC’ telltale ones (audio in/out for example, that has practically no use in traditional NAS outside of a locally deployed VM), I will definitely give them credit for keeping pretty much everything else very NAS friendly – with a fun little twist at the end!
The ports are largely separated into network ports and storage ports (at least when you use NAS software) with the front featuring 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gb/s), USB 4 (40Gbps) and an Oculink port (more on that later).
The rear on the other hand features two 2.5GbE ports (so, a little good news / bad news there), twin HDMI 4K/8K outputs and two more USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb ports. So, although this mini NAS is a little more on the expensive side compared to other Mini SSD NAS that have been launched from China in the last 18 months, I will say that this device features some of the very ports hardware ports out there I have been at this price point.
We are starting to see more and more USB4 NAS-ready devices arrive on the market from China, as the booming industry for NAS-ready Mini ITX and Micro ITX boards scene grows more and more. However, once again, the extent to which you can use this functionality is hugely NAS OS-dependent. So, although I am willing to bet that most NAS software you install on this will happily give you USB 4 speeds on a connected external SSD drive, I do not think we will see this for use as a direct PC/Mac-to-NAS connection anytime soon – QNAP still dominates the market on Thunderbolt NAS devices that allow such a feature.
The GEM10 arriving with two 2.5G ports is mixed news really. Obviously, these two (even if your NAS OS of choice supports LAG, Trunking, SMB MultiChannel or even Load Balancing) mean a total network connection potential of 550MB/s or so (half a gigabyte) network throughput, so these are going to be massively oversaturated with even a single SSD inside. That said, there are still a lot of users who will be happy with this (at least you have 2x ports for failover) as they prioritize internal performance, IOPS and throughput for complex databases, VMs, containers and more. Given the scale of the system, you won’t be surprised to learn that a PCIe slot is simply not available for any kind of NIC upgrade card. You CAN use 2.5G/5G-to-USB adapters (again, NAS OS dependant) as the system has several USB ports available, but the system also arrives with another trick up its sleeve – oCuLink.
OCuLink is a relatively new kind of technology that allows the benefits and scalability of PCIe to be available over an external connection. Hotswapping and plug-n-play is still not in anyway advised, but it does mean that the GEM10 has the potential to add PCIe-connected hardware upgrades (via supports Oculink-to-PCIe enclosures). oCuLink is predominantly associated with eGPU upgrades to allow the power of graphics cards to be added to systems with ease, but the potential to use this for improved network connectivity with 10G/25G/100G cards is MASSIVE!
Noise-wise, I cannot say that the GEM10 is silent by any means. Because of the two FANS inside (base and CPU fan) during peak periods, the ambient noise was noticeable. It was still very much on a small scale and the only really problematic at less than 1 metre distance, but they were definitely there! In idle, the fans were non-existent in noise and I had to check a couple of times to see that it was on! But when the SSDs were in heavy write (as well as during the initial 15 secs of boot), the fans were around 32-35 db.
The power use of the Aoostar GEM10 was pretty reasonable. Obviously, we have to factor in that this is an exclusively M.2 NVMe system and therefore this does seemingly scale the power use down, but this is still a pretty beefy CPU inside (comparative to the non SoC version of course). Idle power use was a conservative 10-12W (this was after the initial boot, running UnRAID and then the system was left to go into IDLE, with all drives in idle).
During heavy active use (UnRAID, accessing all drives and the CPU at 50-60% utilization) the power use was at 34-38W. Had this been a SATA HDD system, it would likely have hit the 50-60W scale easily. Pretty good for the size of the system.
Keep in mind that the CPU supports power adjustment at BIOS and, depending on your NAS OS choice, could result in even better power consumption numbers in your own bespoke setup. Overall, I am not going to say that the GEM10 gives you anything incredible in the connectivity department – but I will say that it is a complete gamechanger when compared to what is on offer from the bulk of Mini-PC NAS hybrid devices in the market. Aoostar have clearly spent serious time and R&D to finesse their NAS range (the GEM10, GEM12, R1 and R7 series are great examples) that are designed to be more than just a mini PC that is pretending to be a NAS. The GEM10 here has the kind of connectivity that I would love to see on more traditional turnkey NAS devices. But what good is all that connectivity, without the right H/W inside to fulfil it! Let’s discuss the internal hardware.
AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – Internal Hardware
The base of the system come away with the removal of four base screws. Doing so reveals the individual storage bays, the WiFi 6 wireless NIC structure and the base cooling and active fan provisioning.
The base fan is encased in its own panel and the intervening panel is a metal plate that sits directly connected to the M.2 SSDs. This is pretty smart (in a way) as it ensures that the heat being generated by the SSDs (Gen4 m.2 SSDs remember) will be passed (via the thermal pads) directly into the metal panel and dissipated into the airflow of the fan. Not an unusual method, but a smart tradeoff of the limited space and creative cooling.
The system arrives with three gen 4×4 SSD bays (according to the specifications tables, but there is room for debate, given the 4 different CPU configurations that are available in the Ryzen 7 7840HS, 7735H, 6800H and Ryzen 9 7940HS), so I will be digging into the BIOS and SSH later on to check. Plus, it becomes clear wh the included thermal pads that the GEM10 arrives with were so thin – there is very VERY little space between the individual M.2 bays and the metal fan-assisted panel. You can FORGET any kind of m.2 heatsinks in between, even particularly aggressive heatshields on SSDs are going to be a little tight.
If you purchase the pre-populated 1TB model, it arrives via a BIWIN 1TB Gen 3×4 SSD (available here for specs on Amazon). On the one hand, having an OS drive is always going to be handy, and in the case of some NAS OS such as TrueNAS, you need a clearly separate operating system OS drive target. But the drive being Gen3 means that you are already potentially underusing that Gen4 slot (you only have x3 total!). Additionally, if you plan on NAS software such as UnRAID (running from an USB) it means that you will need to replace this drive with something a little more uniform and higher performance soon-ish! Just a note to keep in mind when buying a pre-configured version of the GEM10.
Interestingly, another move by Aoostar here to manoeuver so much connectivity into this slim size (and be as efficient as possible with the 20 lanes afforded to that SoC Ryzen AMD chip) is that alongside those 3 Gen4 slots, they have added an adapter into a 4th slot that separates into a wireless NIC adapter slot and into that oCuLINK connector on a riser board. Obviously, this does bring up the question of removing the adapter card to remove wireless connectivity and the oCuLink, in favour of a 4th SSD. That’s one to ponder, for sure!
The WiFi 6 card is a fairly common $20-30 AX200NGW Intel adapter, that has 2×2 connectivity via two antennae that run from the card to two sides of the enclosure – so 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, and 800Mb and 1.2Gb wireless bands afforded to you. Once again, the NAS OS you use makes all the difference and very few NAS OS’ actually support wireless connectivity in both connections (i.e to attach the NAS to your WiFi network AND connecting to the NAS over WiFi directly as it’s on AP.
Accessing the underside of this board, to access that CPU proved very difficult, as it would undermine the later tests in this article (so I will be coming back to this at a later date and/or in the review). The CPU in the model I reviewed was the AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS mobile SoC and 32GB of memory (pre-attached via individual flash cells – no upgrading). The R7 6800HS integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.2 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.7 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The HS variant offers a 10 W reduced TDP and therefore a lower sustained performance than the H version.
AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800HS
The new Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode. A big novelty is the integrated GPU Radeon 680M, that is now based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs at up to 2.2 GHz. It should be the fastest iGPU at the time of announcement. This Ryzen 7 has a default TDP of 35 W (also known as the long-term power limit). Which is definitely too high to allow for passively cooled designs. The CPU is cooled by a pre-attached double copper pipe radiator that fans out into the edges of the case.
The scope of this processor is great and exactly the kind of processor you would want if you want to have fast and stable performance from a RAID’d group of SSDs in such a compact system. The fixed memory, although of a decent amount at 32GB (4x 8GB Cells, attached to PCB, not SODIMM), is annoying that it is fixed – additionally, there have been mixed reports online supporting the overclocked speed potential of the LPDDR5-6400 in this configuration.
Plus, there is a lot of ‘grey’ when it comes to ECC support here too – as the 6800HS DOES support ECC memory, but it is very much BIOS, physical config and OS dependant to a degree – so ECC is only really going to be a ‘thing’ here if Aoostar have included it! All that aside, if you are less interested in hardware tinkering and OC’ing the architecture and just looking for fast and stable performance in the default config 0 this has ALOT of the building blocks in hardware that you would want to see on a competent flash NAS.
AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – Software and Performance
The Aoostar GEM10 NAS unit I received arrived with Windows 11 on board and an included OS SSD (this drive is available included, alongside the 32GB pre-attached memory). This software will almost certainly be abandoned after purchase, in favour of the system having UnRAID, TrueNAS, OMV, etc installed by the end user, but whilst it was there, I took a moment to check the Geekbench scores for the CPU and GPU. The GEM10 scored a highly respectable 2039/9435 Single/multi core rating.
The GPU score (something that many plex/vm/container users are going to be concerned with) was pretty good for a smaller class system, at 29336.
Digging into the terminal/SSH we were able to learn a little more about the PCIe allocation across the system. That SSD that was included with the device in m.2 NVMe SSD Bay #1 was indeed a PCIe Gen 4×4 slot, without any kind of downgrade in place – nice to see!
Likewise, slots 2 and 3 were also both 4×4 and not downgrade – surprisingly rare in 2024, with so many flash systems in the market needing to lower the speeds of m.2 bays for reasons of resource use, bifurcation or just heat generation.
Performance testing on these bays was reasonable, with the Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD (with a reported maximum performance of 5GB/5,000MB/s) hitting in excess of 4GB/s Read on sustained/repeated 1GB file tests.
Likewise, the maximum reported write performance of this drive of 4.4GB/s / 4,400MB/s by Seagate, was not too far off the 3.85GB/s average performance that the drive reached in the GEM10 in sustained 1GB write testing.
Then I tested the performance of copying data between 2 of the M.2 NVMe SSDs. This ended up hitting quite a low number at 1.155GB/s. This was not unusual (shared channel/lane etc vs system overhead etc). but I would have liked/hoped to have at least seen this hit closer to 2GB at least. Still not, terrible, just not great.
The top performance you should be expecting will be MASSIVELY influenced by the drives you chose to use and the NAS OS you choose to install. In the UnRAID and Seagate 525 Ironwolf setup I use, the power use, noise, performance and response times I observed were all pretty solid. But there’s plenty of room for improvement/error in other configurations compared with a standard turnkey solution, especially at this scale.
I reached out to Aoostar on some of the areas of this GEM10 Review that users frequently asked about with Mini PC styled NAS devices, and Aoostar was able to provide the answers to the most recurring questions below
Q – Why Does the Aoostar GEM10 not have ECC Memory?
A – On the subject of ECC, currently 95% of the mini computers on the market don’t support ECC memory, it’s not that we don’t want to get it that way, it’s restricted by some part of the authority, so it leads to most of the mini computers on the market don’t support ECC memory at the moment. However DDR5 does support on die ECC, which provide a similar level of data inconsistency protection.
Q – Why is the Aoostar GEM10 at a maximum 32GB of memory when the CPU supports more?
A – Unfortunately, there is no 64G of inlay RAM available at this scale and deployment, it’s not that we don’t want to do this configuration. If you want to use dual-channel DDR5 RAM like other models, then the size will be bigger, and it will not be able to meet the “mini size” we advertise. But the 32G RAM capacity is good enough for most uses
Q – With so many configurations of the GEM10 and GEM12 series, how does a buyer avoid confusion on what they need?
A – In view of your confusion about the configuration of the GEM10 series of CPUs, let me introduce you to the GEM10 series of CPUs: GEM10 AMD R7 6800H CPU (inlaid memory 32G); GEM10 AMD R7 7735H CPU (inlaid memory 16G, currently discontinued); GEM10 AMD R7 7840HS CPU (32G of inlay memory); GEM10 AMD R9 78940HS CPU (32G of inlay memory). The best price/performance ratio is the GEM10 6800H CPU, but as a company that puts a lot of money into R&D and seeks to produce cost-effective products, the GEM10 Intel N100 SKU (32G of inlaid memory) is already ready, but we are still testing it for the engineering machine, and it should be officially launched in a few months.
Q – Why does the GEM10 use USB4 and not Thunderbolt4?
A – About Thunderbolt and USB4 ports. As we all know, the Thunderbolt interface is Intel’s project, so they produce their own mini-computers are equipped with the Thunderbolt interface. USB4 interface is more open, AMD does not have a proprietary interface of the project, and they, as a competitor to INTEL, want to get the authorization of the Thunderbolt interface is in fact very difficult, which is why the market is equipped with the AMD mini-computer are USB4 interface! . Our company will also launch the INTEL series of minicomputers next month, but I still don’t know whether the project team will license these minicomputers with Thunderbolt interfaces or USB4 interfaces
AOOSTAR GEM10 SSD NAS Review – Conclusion and Verdict
The Aoostar GEM10 is making some pretty bold hardware promises, given it’s scale! The ‘dazzle’ of how powerful mini PCs have been getting in the last few years has definitely become a little duller, as it grows more common. But given how Aoostar has merged this into a much more NAS-tailored system in a meaningful way that clearly cost some $ at the R&D level needs to be appalled. This is not a small SSD NAS with is covered in Mini-PC caveats – this IS a NAS and one that I think might well be the most powerful for it’s scale in the market right now (especially at $499+). That said, it certainly ain’t perfect! Network scalability is a mixed bag, the way memory has been approached (in architecture and ECC support) is debatable, the CPU choices in the range of 4 with the differing process and PCIe layouts is a bit baffling and the full utility of oCuLink in this NAS context is still far from fleshed out. BUT, There are prosumer concerns for the more technically minded and IT sophisticated, which I think does not make up the bulk of this device’s target demographic. I struggle to call this system turn-key (due to it’s lack of an included NAS OS, even a 3rd party one, as seen in the UnRAID license-ready LincStation N1), but it’s certainly miles more user-friendly than full DiY. I have often spoken of the growing middle ground between full NAS DiY from the ground up and full ‘out the box’ turnkey from brands like Synology and QNAP. The Aoostar GEM10 is a FANTASTIC example of the kind of product that can evolve from this – well build, powerful, 3rd party OS ready and a step above the churned-out chinese budget fodder found elsewhere in the ‘pre-built OS free NAS sector’. Recommended – IF you have the time to set it up right!
| PROS of the GEM10 Flash NAS | CONs of the GEM10 Flash NAS |
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