AOOSTAR launches a cheaper WTR MAX 11-disk NAS with an Intel Alder Lake-U processor

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The AOOSTAR WTR Max is a feature-packed network-attached storage device with support for up to six hard drives and five SSDs, support for up to plenty of RAM, and plenty of ports including OCuLink, USB4, two 10 Gigabit LAN ports and two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet.

When AOOSTAR first launched the WTR Max last year, it sold for $699 and featured an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS Hawk Point processor. Now the company has added a cheaper model with an Intel Core i5-1235U processor. It’s available now for $559.

With the AMD-powered model currently on sale for $659, that makes the new Intel version $100 cheaper. While the processor is a mid-range laptop chip that’s a few years old and significantly less powerful than AMD option, it should be good enough for most basic tasks… so if you’re planning to set up a home server with a lot of storage but don’t need a system with a super-speedy CPU or GPU or an integrated NPU, I suppose it’s nice to have the option of saving some money.

But there ar e a few other important trade-off to consider SD speeds. The AMD models supports ECC memory, while the Intel version does not. And while both systems have five M.2 2280 slots for storage, their capabilities vary:

WTR Max (AMD)WTR Max (Intel)ProcessorAMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS8 x Zen 4 cores / 16 threads3.8 GHz – 5.1 GHz CPURadeon 780M GPU12 x RDNA 3 GPU coresUp to 2.7 GHzNPUUp to 16 TOPSTDP35-54WIntel Core i5-1235U2 x Performance Cores + 8 Efficiency cores / 12 threadsUp to 4.4 GHzIntel Iris Xe GPU80 Execution UnitsUp to 1.2 GHzNPUN/ATDP15 – 55WRAM2 x SODIMM slotsUp to 128GBDDR5-5600ECC supported2 x SODIMM slotsUp to 96GBDDR5-4800Non-ECC onlyPCIe (M.2 2280)3 x PCIe 4.0 x22 x PCIe 4.0 x13 x PCIe 3.0 x22 x PCIe 3.0 x1HDD6 x 3.5″ SATA 3 baysPorts2 x 10 Gigabit LAN (Intel 82599)2 x 2.5 GbE LAN (Intel i226V)1 x OCuLink1 x USB42 x USB 3.2 Gen 21 x USB 3.2 Gen 11 x HDMI 2.11 x DisplayPort 1.41 x 3.5mm audio combo1 x microSD card reader1 x DC power inputPrice (May 25)$659$559

Other f eatures that are common to both include a cooling system with four fans and a vapor chamber heat sink and a small LCD display on the bottom left front portion of the computer that can display real-time CPU, GPU, RAM, and data stats, among other things.

The AOOSTAR WTR Max measures 249 x 245 x 195mm (9.8″ x 9.6″ x 7.7″).

Note that the starting price is for a base unit with no memory or storage – you’ll need to supply your own. The system also goes all-in on wired networking: there’s no WiFi capabilities out of the box, although you could always add a USB wireless adapter.

via AndroidPC

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