Is Asustor Lockerstor AS6704T enough for me?

[Enquiries]

Hello everyone,

My question is about Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen2 (AS6704T), from what I see it should do everything I want.

I run Plex on my own PC's last 8 years with lifetime PlexPass, I have around 12GB content. All content is 1080p, and I am not planning to use 4K.
I use NZBGet, Sonarr, CouchPotato and Tatulli, I do run Home Assistant on a dedicated NUC, I am not planning to move Home Assistant on NAS, but you never know in the future.
NAS will be used mostly for Plex and document back-ups.
I want 4x 18TB HDD's, two M.2 drives and I have no intention to go higher than 2.5Gbps any soon.

My questions are:
- Can AS6704T encode at least 2x 1080P high bitrate files and subtitles simultaneously to 480p.
- My budget is around €700 for NAS, is there a better or cheaper options out there?
- Gen3 Lockerstor should be announced at the end of 2024, should I wait?

Thanks in advance!

[ed]

It seems like the Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen2 (AS6704T) should meet your needs quite well. With your current setup and requirements—primarily 1080p content streaming via Plex, alongside NZBGet, Sonarr, CouchPotato, and Tatulli—the AS6704T should handle multiple 1080p transcodes and subtitle conversions to 480p without issues.

Regarding your budget of €700, the AS6704T appears to be a suitable choice. As for waiting for the Gen3 Lockerstor, which might be announced by the end of 2024, it's worth noting that newer models typically come at a higher cost but might not offer significantly better performance for your specific needs.

[SpAwN]

@ed thanks for your fast answer, enjoy your coffee please

Next decision I have to make is, which version of it, the question was for the 4 bay version but if I choose to get one with 6 bays and take 3x 18TB drives instead of 4x and add extra drives later when the budget allows.
But that is on me, I probably go for the 6 bay with 16GB RAM upgrade, but we will see, I am not in hurry at the moment. 

Again, thanks for your time!

[ed]

@ed thanks for your fast answer, enjoy your coffee please

Next decision I have to make is, which version of it, the question was for the 4 bay version but if I choose to get one with 6 bays and take 3x 18TB drives instead of 4x and add extra drives later when the budget allows.
But that is on me, I probably go for the 6 bay with 16GB RAM upgrade, but we will see, I am not in hurry at the moment. 

Again, thanks for your time!

Thank you for your support.
Yes, so often people get few more bays and keep them empty. Then simply add drives later when more space is necessary.

[SpAwN]

Thanks for the reply @ed

Meanwhile, I made my decision, and I am going for 6 bay version.

Next decision to make was harder, going for 4x 500GB M.2 drives or 1TB drives, if I look into my needs, I only need the NAS for Plex and some document-photo back-ups, 2 of those drives will be utilized as cache and 2 other drives for RAW storage for the document back-ups. 
Watched a lot of videos and read a lot of information, and I am leaning towards 4x 500GB, since I don't need huge caching and fast storage for Plex and 500GB is more than enough for ADM and some documents.
Drives will be WD Red SN700 NVMe, speeds are more than sufficient for AS6706T, it is still not clear if AS6706T has PCI-e 3.0 x1 or PCI-e 3.0 x4, even if it has x4 the SN700 will be enough.
Price difference between (4x) 500GB and 1TB drives is around €90, but everything adds up, so far I am above €2000 which was my target budget for all. 
If you guys advice to get 4x 1TB drives, I will go for that, otherwise 4x 500GB looks like enough.

[SpAwN]

To keep this topic up to date...

Everything is ordered and received:
Asustor AS6706T
2x Lexar LD4AS016G 16G rams (32GB total)
4x WD Red SN700 500GB M.2 NVMe
4x Seagate IronWolf Pro, 18TB (received 3x, reason below)
1x TP-Link TX201 2.5 Gigabit PCIe card (for the PC)

NAS is installed and running right now without HDD's, first I ordered 3 HDD's and while I was waiting decided to go for 4 HDD's and Raid6 instead of Raid5.
2 of the NVMe drives are used as Volume1 and 2 are not utilized, for those I am waiting till HDD's are installed, to utilize those as caching.

Also added an 2.5Gb network card to my PC and used Cat7 cable between my PC and the NAS, both devices are connected to my normal 1Gb network and have directly 2.5Gb network in between them, this was only for the transferring the current files from my PC to NAS, the HDD's on my PC can't go fast as 2.5Gb, but little faster than 1Gb network, I didn't want bottleneck between NAS and PC transfers. At the end, made a permanent solution through the pipes in the walls and used 2x Cat7 cables from my PC to my little modem/switch/NAS closet, distance was 15 meters.

Next step was a UPS, installed s APC Back-UPS 500 for the NAS, I already had this UPS for my PC, but it was not strong enough after a PC upgrade, so I got bigger one for my PC and this small one was collecting dust. I had to order the USB cable since I can't find it anywhere.
There is already a big 2000VA UPS in the closet, but it was connected to the Home Assistant NUC with a lot of automations, I couldn't make the NAS shutdown since it was connected to the Intel NUC. APC UPS should work according compatibility list of Asustor, we will see when the USB cable arrives tomorrow.

Only thing left to do is, adding 4x 18TB drives when last one arrives tomorrow and build a Raid6, which will take days I guess and then move 12TB media to the NAS, which will take another couple days more 

I want to thank you guys for the content on YouTube and help I received here, learned a lot from you guys.