At first we would like to thank Thecus for sending a sample of their W4000+ NAS Server for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About Thecus:

 

“In today's networked world, digital content is truly the most precious asset. At Thecus, we take pride in developing innovative storage solutions that keep data safe and secure. Founded in 2004, the Thecus team brings decades of R&D expertise, Thecus brand marketing channel development, and a strong customer focus to deliver high-quality products that meet the storage needs of individual, small/medium business and enterprise.

 

Thecus focuses on hardware and software integration and development, and the core protocols of digital media storage. The result is products that are easier to use and can offer greater connectivity to consumer devices. Thecus envisions greater integration of data storage for both home and office environments, and we strive to be a pioneer in these fields and provide our users with the products that are second-to-none.

 

To develop optimal storage solutions for such a wide range of users, Thecus has assembled a best-in-class development team with extensive experience in both storage hardware and software development. By combining engineering expertise with a keen focus on the end-user experience, Thecus builds products that are not only powerful but easy-to-use, making advanced storage products accessible to users of all skill levels. Thecus' mission is to transform the most sophisticated technology into easy-to-use solutions to introduce comfortable network storage environment to people's everyday life. By crafting technology that is transparent as possible, Thecus continues to bring exceptional data storage solutions to advanced users and organizations around the world.

Core Values

 

Quality, innovation, integration, and reliability -- the four pillars that Thecus was built on.

 

Quality - Commitment to bring only the highest quality products to the marketplace.

 

Innovation - Investing vast resources into research and development to provide high performance and easy-to-use solutions.

 

Integration - Understanding consumers' needs and bringing the most complete product line to serve various types of applications and environments.

 

Reliability - Bringing the most secure, easy-to-use, and reliable storage solutions available.

 

By expanding service and product coverage worldwide, Thecus' mission is to establish an international service network. Committed to Thecus core values, the entire corporate, research and development, sales, and technical support teams firmly stand behind this commitment of service. We put our words into actions to show our clients that Thecus is the number one choice when it comes to network attached storage solutions. We promise to deliver innovative solutions that empower users, and in doing so, become the top brand digital storage devices.”

 

 

 

Considering the fact that most NASes for home and small businesses from different manufacturers are mostly based on Linux distributions, Thecus has thought to try something new by creating a different model which is named W4000+; this is basically a refreshed version of the initial W4000, which sported only 2GB of RAM, the new one doubling the memory, while incorporating the same processor. Let’s check the product in more detail by looking at the packaging; the server is coming in a pretty large cardboard enclosure, so we are happy that the manufacturer has decided to include a plastic carry handle:

 

 

 

As you may have probably seen with the previous photo, the box does have written W4000 all over it and not W4000+; this is because they have used the same external packaging for the product:

 

 

 

Another confirmation that the product is using more RAM is made via the extra sticker and on this side we will also get to see more in-depth information regarding the hardware specifications and software features of the product:

 

 

 

Some main product features are also explained on the exterior of the box:

 

 

 

After lifting the top cover, we will get to see a lot of foam material which is meant to protect the server along with its bundle:

 

 

 

The bundle is offered in a separate re-sealable plastic bag but also inside a small cardboard enclosure:

 

 

 

To be more exact, we will get one Installation Guide, one LAN cable, tray security keys along with mounting screws for both 3.5’’ and 2.5’’ drives and also a warranty card:

 

 

 

While the installation manual is Multilanguage, we did not find it as a very useful product because very little information is explained here:

 

 

 

The plain cardboard enclosure which we have mentioned earlier does contain the power lead along with the power adapter:

 

 

 

The power adapter is pretty beefy and manufactured by Seasonic:

 

 

 

Regarding the specifications, it can deliver on the output 12V at 8.5A for 120W maximum power:

 

 

 

For the Windows Storage Server W4000+ model, Thecus has chosen to go with a very solid metallic chassis, which is quite heavy even without any drive installed inside the trays; on the top cover we get the WSS license sticker, which does also contain the product serial number, which must be entered during initialization:

 

 

 

Here is a view at the frontal black plastic interface:

 

 

 

Above the HDD bays we get to see a section where a LCD display should have been, but in fact it is just a placeholder; a “Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 Essentials” sticker has been placed here:

 

 

 

On the left side we have the HDD status LEDs, along with the LAN activity LEDs and some extra Status LEDs:

 

 

 

On the same area but further down we get two USB 3.0 ports along with the Power button:

 

 

 

The HDD bay cover is provided with a metallic mesh and can be easily opened when needed; each tray does come with a lock, which means that this product is mostly designed for SMBs:

 

 

 

After the removal of the trays, we will get to see the HDD SATA Data/Power connectors, which in fact are independent and not placed on a daughter-board as we have seen with many other products; by implementing this solution, more cables must be used, which is not optimal in some cases because they can also obstruct the back fan:

 

 

 

The trays are also equipped with a special tape which avoids short-circuits with the electronic boards of the mechanic drives:

 

 

 

Pre-drilled holes are also available for 2.5’’ drives:

 

 

 

In the front of the trays we will also spot the ventilation grill:

 

 

 

Thecus did not design extra ventilation grills on the motherboard side, since the employed SoC is a low-power design:

 

 

 

Let’s take a look at the back side of the WSS NAS; in the center we do have one 120mm fan which is meant to cool the entire platform:

 

 

 

On the top we have another placeholder which is meant for us to install an expansion card:

 

 

 

The lateral area comes with the DC-IN port, one VGA output port, one Line-Out audio port and also one HDMI port:

 

 

 

Further down, we will get to see two USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA port, two Gigabit LAN ports and one Kensington lock port:

 

 

 

We did initially say that no ventilation grill is available on the motherboard side; that is correct if we look on the lateral, but some holes can be spotted on the bottom area; here we will also find one sticker with the product serial number and four large rubber feet:

 

 

 

After removing the top cover, we will get to see the internals of the product, which have quite an interesting placement; on the top we will find one ADATA SP600 64GB SSD which comes with the Windows Server OS installation while the motherboard holds the rest of the components. The motherboard reveals that the Atom D2701 which operates at 2.13GHz is passively cooled, while a separate SATA port and power connector is available for each bay. An extra SATA port is made available for the boot SSD:

 

 

 

If we look on the right side of the product we will be able to spot the HDD cage along with the assembly behind it, but also the cooling fan:

 

 

 

 

 

Surprisingly, an empty Mini PCI-E slot is available on the board, easy accessible but it is not mentioned in the specifications of the product:

 

 

 

Near the SSD SATA port, we will also get to see the expansion full-size PCI-E port:

 

 

 

The back side of the motherboard is protected by a very peculiar plastic layer, which seems to have been designed for another motherboard type, since it does also feature a cut-out for a memory upgrade slot:

 

 

 

After the system boots, we will be welcomed by the initial setup routine, which is quite easy to perform and will also include the stage when we need to enter up the serial number for activating the Windows Server 2012 R2 installation. It is just obvious that after the desktop interface loads we should go to the Windows Update section for downloading the latest fixes and security updates. Because of the slow CPU, updating the server to the latest version took about 6.5 hours, which is quite a lot! One other thing we would like to specify is that all Windows Server 2012 OS variants are on 64-bit, so including this one; the D2701 SoC is discontinued by Intel for quite some time now and during its life period they have released GPU drivers only for the 32bit platform, so do not expect to have support on the server (the main disadvantage is that we are locked on a maximum resolution of 1280x1024). There is an old beta 64-bit VGA driver available on the web for this SoC, but it does not function properly at all; during driver installation we will receive a very nice BSOD, which will be followed by a system restart so we do not recommend it AT ALL!

 

 

 

 

If we do look closer on the SSD drive partitioning, we will get to see that not all space is allocated, but 27.4GB are free to use for other functions by the user:

 

 

 

An initial setup procedure must be also followed in order to configure the server for our network:

 

 

 

 

Some details must be also provided like the company name, internal domain name and server name:

 

 

 

An administrator account will be also defined to be used with the new domain:

 

 

 

Next, we can configure Windows Update settings:

 

 

 

The steps will be performed accordingly and multiple restarts will follow:

 

 

 

 

A next stage of configuration will follow where we can add user accounts, add server folders, set server backup and so on:

 

 

 

For each user we can choose if it is a Stardard one or Admin:

 

 

 

Since our trusty SSD drives are always blank before each NAS test, we have chosen to create a Striped volume:

 

 

 

 

 

 

A folder can be created next so data can be accessed through the networks from the client computers:

 

 

 

Folder access permissions can be chosen per each user:

 

 

 

We can also access next the rest of the configuration tabs like Users, Devices, Storage or Applications in order to configure necessary options:

 

 

 

 

 

 

In order to set up the client to be connected to the newly configured server, we will need to use the Connector software; this software will install as a Windows Update, will migrate if needed our offline profile to the new one and will also ask for our server login credentials:

 

 

 

 

A computer restart is needed afterwards and we will be all set; upon login we will be asked to press the ALT+CTRL+DEL combination and enter the supplied password from the network administrator:

 

 

 

Test Setup

 

CPU : Intel I5 4690K Retail

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard : BIOSTAR GAMING Z97X

RAM : GeIL EVO CORSA 16GB 2400MHz C11

(2GB Exceleram DDR1333 for NASPT compatibility)

Video : HIS 280X

Power Supply : Cooler Master 850W

SSD : OCZ Vertex 4 256GB

Case: Cooler Master ATCS840

 

To test the NAS performances, the Thecus W4000+ NAS was populated with one OCZ Vertex 4 SSD along with one KingFast SLC E-Drive in RAID 0, formatted with a single volume and the NAS was connected directly to the computer, to avoid any limitations by implying additional hardware like a router. The first simple test was performed by loading the test file onto a RAM drive and then it was copied to the NAS, on its shared folder. The speed was recorded with Total Commander:

 

 

The second test was to copy the same file back to the computer; for eliminating any HDD speed limitations, the file was copied back to the RAM drive:

 

 

For performing a more advanced test, the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit was used, for performing 5 different test runs. Here are the results:

 

 

As extras, we have also included ATTO Disk Benchmark and Anvil:

 

ATTO Disk Benchmark

 

 

Anvil

Thecus has made an interesting variation on the market with their W4000/W4000+ NASes (a 2-bay and also a 5-bay version is also available) considering that we no longer have a Linux distribution on our server but Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 Essentials and the product can be used from scratch like a regular PC. Windows Server 2012 is quite complex for entry-level users and we can clearly say that we would not recommend this product for home use simply because it is not as easy to set up as a Linux-based NAS and also requires a Connector software to be installed on each and every station in order to integrate the client with the server (and implicitly the newly created internal domain).

 

With the extra 2GB of memory, the system should allow running more processes at once, but at its heart we still have the dated Atom D2701 SoC, which besides the fact that it went EOL in Q3 2011, Intel did not provide any support for it on 64-bit operating systems so yeah, that also means that we do not get any integrated graphics driver for it. The resolution remains at a maximum of 1280x1024 which is way too low even for Full-HD TVs and the space on the desktop is implicitly quite small for such a complex operating system.

 

Regarding our experience with the Windows Server 2012 R2 OS, we could say that there were moments when the mouse cursor has remained locked during certain configuration procedures, but afterwards the system has stabilized itself. Be prepared for a long wait time during the initial updates because these will take at least six hours to complete. The transfer performance is a mixed bunch, in Intel NAS Performance Toolkit resulting average read/write rates which tells again the limitation of the included Atom SoC.

 

In order to reset the server to default, factory settings, we will have to get the ISO prepared by Thecus on their website, boot it and follow the steps in order to restore.

 

The Thecus W4000+ business-oriented NAS can be found online for about 566 Euros, with any storage drive installed.

 

Thecus W4000+ Windows Server NAS is Recommended For:

 

 

We would like to thank again to Thecus for making this review possible!