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The LincPlus LincStation N2 is a network-attached storage device with a compact design, an Intel N100 Alder Lake-N processor, and support for up to six storage devices thanks to four M.2 2280 slots for PCIe NVMe SSDs and two bays for 2.5 inch drives.
LincPlus recently launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the LincStation N2, along with a larger model called the LincStation S1 that supports up to four 3.5 inch hard drives. But the LincStation N2 is of particular interest, since it's an updated version of the LincStation N1 that I reviewed last year. So when LincPlus offered Liliputing the chance to review the new N2, I jumped at the opportunity to see how the new model compares with its predecessor.
When I reviewed the N1, I found it offered a good balance of features and at an affordable $399 price point. Accordingly, this review will look at whether the N2 actually is an improvement, and whether it still remains good value for money.
LincPlus sent me an LincStation N2 to test. This was provided to Liliputing for free, with no requirement that the NAS be returned upon completion of the review. This review is not sponsored by LincPlus, and the company did not modify or approve the content of this article in any way.
What's changed?Last year's LincStation N1 wasn't perfect: it has an Intel Jasper Lake processor released in 2021 that wasn't as fast as Intel's newer Alder Lake-N or Twin Lake processors. And the Ethernet port only supports network speeds up to 2.5 Gbps, which means that it's not fast enough to fully take advantage of the speedy PCIe NVMe drives, which can support data transfer speeds up to four times that speed.
The new LincStation N2 addresses both of those shortcomings: it has a newer, faster processor and a 10 GbE Ethernet port.
Here's a comparison of the two systems, with the differences highlighted in bold:
Model LincStation N1 (2024) LincStation N2 (2025) Processor Intel Celeron Processor N5105 (Jasper Lake)4-cores / 4-threadsUp to 2.9 GHzIntel UHD graphics (24 EU, up to 800 MHz)10 W TDP Intel N100 (Alder Lake-N)4-cores / 4-threadsUp to 3.4 GHzIntel UHD graphics (24 EU, up to 750 MHz)6 W TDP OS Unraid Unraid Memory 16GBLPDDR4x 16GBLPDDR5 Storage 1 128GB eMMC 128GB eMMC Storage 2 2 x SATA 3.0Supports 2.5 inch drives (max 9.5 mm thickness) 2 x SATA 3.0Supports 2.5 inch drives (max 9.5 mm thickness) Storage 3 4 x M.2 2280PCIe NVMe 4 x M.2 2280PCIe NVMe Ethernet 1 x 2.5 GbE (Intel I225-V) 1 x 10 GbE (Aquantia AQC113C) USB 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 x 1 Type-C (5 Gbps) 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 Type-C (10 Gbps) 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 1 Type-A (10 Gbps) 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 1 Type-A (10 Gbps) 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A (480 Mbps) Video 1 x HDMI 2.0 1 x HDMI 2.0 Audio 1 x 3.5 Audio Port 1 x 3.5 Audio Port Power 1 x DC power input (12V/5A) 1 x DC power input (12V/5A) Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.2 N/A WiFi WiFi 6 (AX201) N/A Case Plastic upper cover and metal shell Plastic upper cover and metal shell LED Light strip Light strip Dimensions 210 x 152 x 40mm8.27″ x 5.98″ x 1.57″ 210 x 152 x 40mm8.27″ x 5.98″ x 1.57″ Weight 800 grams1.76 pounds 800 grams1.76 pounds Price $399 $309 (Super Early Bird)$439 (Retail)The first notable change with the new LincStation N2 is that it uses an Intel N100 Alder Lake-N processor. The N100 is produced using Intel 7 lithography which reduces power and increases speed. Another advantage over using this processor is that it supports DDR5 memory. And from a hardware design perspective, the N100 gives you an extra PCIe lane increasing the maximum number of lanes to 9.
However, it must be noted that a lot of mini PC makers that had been using Intel N100 processors in the past have begun upgrading to the newer Intel N150 Twin Lake processor, which supports slightly higher CPU and GPU frequencies. There is very little performance gain from the minor frequency increase though, so currently LincPlus is sticking with Intel N100 and is only considering moving to the N150 processor at some point in the future.
Arguably the biggest change from the N1 is that the N2 replaces the 2.5 Gb Ethernet port with a 10 GbE port. The system is backward compatible and can be used with Gigabit or 2.5 GbE networking gear if you haven't made the move to 10 GbE yet, but the faster port makes a big difference for those of us that already have the hardware to support it. For everyone else, this port helps make the LincStation N2 more future-proof than its predecessor.
Unfortunately there's one feature that's been removed: the LincStation N2 no longer supports WiFi or Bluetooth out of the box. This is likely because LincPlus ships the N2 with Unraid, an operating system for network-attached storage and self-hosted servers that doesn't support WiFi and Bluetooth.
But since you can install an alternate operating system, it would have been nice to have kept the wireless card.
LincPlus has also updated the computer's USB ports. The company sacrificed one of the two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10 Gbps) ports to add two USB 2.0 Type-A (480 Mbps) ports.
On the surface this seems like a fair swap allowing both a keyboard and mouse to be connected without wasting a 10 Gbps port. Realistically though, NAS devices are typically headless so apart from initial setup, the USB 2.0 ports may well end up unused.
Physically, the N2 chassis is virtually identical to the one for the N1. It still has the same toolless operation to remove the NVMe bay covers and to insert/remove the NVMe drives.
When setting up the NAS using the pre-installed Unraid software, there is only a minor difference between the N1 and N2.
In order to ensure you achieve the full throughput from the 10 GbE port you need to use JUMBO frames. Under Tools, Settings, Network Settings, you need to modify the default "Desired MTU" from 1500 to 9000.
Unraid performanceI configured Unraid in a similar way to how I had set up the N1. I created an array with the first two NVMe drives, allocated the third NVMe drive as cache, and the fourth as parity.
I also created some shares, including one called "nas" and another called "music". I then installed Jellyfin from the community applications as a docker container and configured to use the music share.
My first test was to see how fast the "nas" was when accessed from a Windows 11 PC by running CrystalDiskMark. On the N1 I previously saw the sequential read speed as being 261.44 MB/s and the sequential write speed as being 296.17 MB/s.
The N2 showed dramatic improvement thanks to its faster processor and network port. The sequential read speed came in at 1238.38 MB/s and the sequential write speed at 1233.83 MB/s.
As for upload speeds, when I transferred a large 100 GB file from a PC to the N1, the speed averaged 284 MB/s. When I transferred the same file to the N2, the speed reported by the PC was much faster, at around 840 MB/s.
This can be verified by the speed that the N2 writes the file to "cache" bearing in mind this is how I had set up my "nas" share.
To see how fast the "array" drives are I manually initiated the "mover," which literally moves the files from the cache drive to the array drives.
At the moment I took the screenshot, the N2 was reading the cache drive at 826.8 MB/s and writing to the array drive at 826.9 MB/s including the parity overhead.
When running Jellyfin and playing music remotely on the test PC connected through the web client, the overall CPU load was around 15% with RAM usage at 8%. This indicates there is plenty of headroom for other activities to run.
A quick look at alternative OSsUnsurprisingly I didn't encounter any issues running Windows 11 Pro (Version 24H2 OS build 26100.2314) on the N2, although I didn't look at controlling the LED strip.
Running HWiNFO64 shows the power limits (PL) of PL/1 set at 6 watts with PL/2 set to 12 watts with a tau of 28 seconds. Each of the NVMe drives and the Aquantia AQC113C 10 GbE port are allocated their own PCIe 3.0 x1 lane allowing a theoretical maximum throughput of 8 GT/s or 985 MB/s.
Running CrystalDiskMark confirms the drive speed capabilities with a sequential read speed of 886.87 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 862.44 MB/s.
I also had no problem installing and using Ubuntu 24.10 on the computer.
On Ubuntu I also took the opportunity to both look at and test the ports in more detail.
Starting with the two new USB 2.0 ports at the rear. Both functioned as expected and you can see my KVM with a keyboard and mouse plugged into Port 002 Dev 009 running at 480M (Mbps). In Port 003 Dev 012 I have a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 (20 Gbps) NVMe enclosure. Whilst this uses ASMedia's ASM2364 controller, as the port is only USB 2.0 it will only operate at 480 Mbps.
If I move this enclosure to the upgraded front USB Type C port, in this instance it connects to Port 001 Dev 003 at 10000 Mbps or 10 Gbps. Running my LinuxiumDiskMark program (which is a knockoff Linux version of CrystalDiskMark appropriating the "fio" commands from "kdiskmark") gave me a sequential read speed of 1089.0 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 1057.6 MB/s.
As before with the N1 model we have 16 GB of memory. But now it is LPDDR5 running at 4800 MT/s.
Finally looking at the newly upgraded Ethernet port confirms that it is 10 GbE and is backward compatible by supporting 5, 2.5 and 1 Gb connection speeds amongst others.
And there is no better proof of an Ethernet port being capable of 10 Gb other than running the "iperf3" command. With 9.90 Gbits/sec for both sending and receiving, that's basically a perfect result.
Power and ThermalsThe N2 is powered using a HuntKey (HKA06012050-0A7) 60 W (12V/5A) adapter.
I measured power consumption when running Ubuntu by connecting the LincStation N2 to a power meter, which was connected to a UPS power outlet to provide clean power. I maxed out the CPU by running the "stress" command across all four cores for twenty minutes.
When idle, the fan is too quiet to measure, indicating it is below 30 dBA. During the stress test the fan noise averaged around 38 dBA. Whilst this is not loud, you do become aware of the fan as when it slows slightly, it seems to sound louder yet then gets quieter when it speeds up. I didn't find this an issue, but a quirk of the fan that is noticeable.
Slight thermal throttling occurs during the stress test as the CPU frequency drops from 2900 MHz to oscillating between 2600 and 2700 MHz whilst the CPU temperature averages around 94.5 °C. Despite this rather high temperature, the NVMe drives are unaffected maintaining around 40 °C.
Neither is the heat transferred to the top of the device. When idle, the top's temperature averaged 38 °C. During the stress test, the temperature of the top did rise, but kept just below being too hot to touch at 47 °C.
ConclusionWhilst the LincStation N1 only cost $399, the expected retail price for the N2 will be $439, although for a limited time you can reserve one for $309 by making a pledge to the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign before it ends on April 13, 2025.
In terms of value for money, it's certainly worth spending more on the N2. It costs just $40 more but offers substantially better network performance because of its 10 GbE port. And even if you don't have the network hardware to take full advantage of that port, you should see some performance improvement due to the faster processor and memory. And the USB Type-C port on the front of the system is also now twice as fast.
The N2 is definitely an example of taking a good design, then identifying and implementing the key improvements that can be made for the most benefit for a reasonable affordable cost increase. Like the N1, the new LincStation N2 is an affordable and feature-rich NAS. It's just a better one.
So if you are considering buying an 'N series' LincStation, the N2 is the obvious choice. However as the N2 is an incremental upgrade, existing owners of the N1 should probably only purchase the N2 if they already have or plan to have a 10 GbE network and need the faster speeds offered by the N2.
Since both the N1 and N2 use Unraid as their default operating system, there's plenty of software support available through the Unraid community forums, support documentation, and support ticket system. The operating system is actively developed, supports thousands of community-developed apps, and a license gets you one year of OS updates.
Coupled with the great hardware options at an affordable price is Unraid being pre-installed and including a first year license. This makes the N2 a very good choice for anyone wanting to dip into the world of NAS for the first time.
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