A Closer Look
The first thing that I’m sure many users may find with the DS414 (unless they’re upgrading from a similar model), is how light the unit is. Given the number of units that I’ve reviewed, this is probably one of the lightest – if not the lightest system given its size and capacity. (For reference we are talking about ~2kg without disks). This lightweight build is down to the plastic body and a minimal metal frame inside for holding the drives in place along with the motherboard.
The outside of the DS414 has a textured matt finish and on the front of the unit is a removable plastic cover which has a gloss finish adding a little bit of contrast to the design.
Towards the top right corner is a series of LEDs to show the status of the system as a whole along with the individual drives.
Below the status LEDs is a front mounted USB2.0 port, below which is a power button with blue LED that lights up the right hand edge when on. As we can also see, the front cover of the NAS does attract a few fine bits of dust when the protective cover has been removed, however after a period of time, this light static charge does dissipate leaving a clean front view.
Like some other systems that I’ve seen, the DS414 does have a cover to the four drive bays (after all, seeing a line of disk trays is not always going to be glamorous in a home location), but there is no hinged door as we would typically see. Instead, Synology have kitted this unit out with a fully removable cover that easily pushes back in front of the drives with four rubber lugs in each corner. A simple and no fuss approach to hiding the drives away.
The four drive trays are held in place by a simple plastic latch. Pushing this up allows each of the trays to be pulled out via the handle that can be found on the front of each tray.
Above the drive bays is a series of dots that show each of the drive bays numbers. We can also see that the trays have a little up arrow on the handles to avoid any confusion when reinstalling the drive trays.
Turning the system around, it’s safe to say the cooling has been taken care of very well. Two large fans draw plenty of air through the unit to keep everything cool.
Below the fans, the DS414 comes with dual Gigabit LAN, two USB3.0 ports, a Kensington lock point, 12v DC power input and a system reset button.
Synology have chosen have a completely tool-free installation method for mounting a hard drive (unless you decide to use 2.5″ drives, where the included screws will be required). Along each side is a snap-on rail that has a series of pins which poke through the sides of the tray and into the screw holes on the side of a 3.5″ drive. This makes for a very quick installation as each drive can be loaded in to the tray and then the NAS in literally seconds.
With all the user visible parts seen, it’s time to dive inside to the heart of the DS414. The system is a little fiddly to get apart with a similar method of opening like we saw with the DS213j, although it should be noted that this will void your warranty as there are no user serviceable parts to be found inside.
On board, the DS414 has 1GB of DDR3 memory courtesy of four streamlined SK Hynix H5TQ2G83CFR IC’s. By using these trimmed IC’s, Synology can keep the memory bandwidth up whilst reducing the overall cost of production.
At the heart of the 414 is a dual core 1.33GHz ARM CPU. There has been a number rumours going around that the DS414 will support on chip transcoding, however I can confirm that this unit will NOT support this feature. Keep an eye out though as I will have more information on this in the near future.
The DS414’s storage is provided courtesy of Marvell’s 88SX7042 4-port SATA-II RAID controller. Given the bandwidth limitations of Gigabit LAN, it’s easy to understand why a more expensive SATA-III controller is not used. To the left of this is the firmware IC showing its compatibility with DSM 4.2 and above.
Towards the back edge of the PCB we find the dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, DC power Jack and a pair of PCIe slots for the SATA and USB daughter cards to connect to.
Back round on the front edge of the PCB, we can see where the power button gets its LED illumination with the sole USB3.0 port mounted to its left.
Finally in the upper side of the PCB is a line of SMB LEDs for disk and system status.
Turning the PCB over and having a look at the underside, there is little to see apart from a pair of identical looking chips near the systems Ethernet ports.
Looking a little closer we can see that like the RAID controller, the LAN is handled by Marvell with a pair of 88E1512-NNP2 Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Each controller is only capable of handling one network interface, but two are provided to give the system its LAN bonding capabilities.
Placing the motherboard aside and having a look at the first of the two daughter cards that the DS414 has, this smaller PCB is home to the USB controller and twin USB3.0 ports. On this board is also an eSATA interface, although this feature is redundant on this particular model.
Like the DS213j that I recently looked at, EtronTech’s EJ168A is the controller of choice for the USB3.0 interface.
The second, slightly larger daughter card is much more simple and provides the four SATA power and data interfaces for connecting drives into the system.
Sounds very interesting, I’d been looking at the 413 but couldn’t justify the £400+ for it so if this one really will sell for under £350, then we’re onto a winner.
Shame there was no direct comparison to the 413 in the article, such as speed differences. Considering the cheaper price, what do you actually gain or lose with the newer model? It’s now a 1.33GHz dual core ARM compared to 1.067GHz in the 413. You gain a 2nd LAN port (not very useful) but lose the eSATA port (could have been useful).
Why wasn’t the Synology Hybrid RAID included in the tests? This is a very useful set up and from what I read, it will allow you to take out a single drive and replace with a larger drive which totally invailidates your “con – Drive upgrades require system to be totally reconfigured”
Also, the article seriously needs proof reading!…
“Below the status LEDs AS a front mounted USB2.0 port”
“this will void your warranty as there are NOW user serviceable parts”
“upper side of the PCB is a LIME of SMB LEDs”
“little to see apart from a pair IF identical looking chips”
“we can see THE LIKE the RAID controller”
“placing on a shelf without the SORRY about it putting too much pressure”
“is the support for RAID 50. For those who are not full familiar with how the RAID systems work when mixed together, RAID 50 is basically two 3 drive RAID 5 arrays” – so two x 3-drive arrays… that’s 6 disks in total… clever seeing how this box can only fit 4 drives in it! Plus you obviously don’t benchmark RAID 50 in the article because the 414 doesn’t support it.
I don’t get why there is a eSata port on the board without opening on the plastic shield though.
It seems the USB and SATA is on a seperate IO board which is actually labelled DS412. so they’re just re-using that interface board from the DS412+ and don’t interface with it on the mainboard. It’s most likely cheaper for Synology to make the board with the SATA connector and use it for multiple products than it is to produce a different board for the DS414.
What does the lack of “on chip transcoding” mean? How will the affect a home user that may want to stream videos from a NAS box to a smart TV?
I’m curious if the 414 can handle some of the stuff that the 412+ does right now in time. It seems as if this series is the “new” direction of this level of NAS. It’s the top dog for the SOHO brand, whereas the 412+ seems to be middle of the pack for their SMB. I recently ordered one for both NAS storage (media files, syslog, etc) and for a VMware host using NFS. It shows up today and I’ll be interested if I can make the 414 do what I want or if I’ll need to upgrade to the 412+
@jgbedford:disqus I think the lack of “on chip transcoding” means that you can xcode via a native CPU instruction set if I understand correctly. So you’ll need to enable some sort of third party xcoder to handle it for you – probably something from the marketplace. The marvell chip might be capable of doing this if properly written into the nas OS, but since this is a first-rev on this SOC I just wonder if it’s “not there yet”. I’m hoping that Synology continues to expand this one like they have the other models for several years now.
@Jason The lack of “on chip transcoding” means, that the Marvell CPU designed for the Synology DS414 doesn’t support hardware transcoding – if you want to stream a HD video to a mobile device, that video is being transcoded to the mobile resolution.
Transcoding done on chip is usually a lot faster and needs less energy. As a NAS producer, if you can do this in hardware, you do. Doing this kind of calculation in software is possible, but less effective and performant.
I hope this explanation helps a little.
Check out my review on the DS414 – http://blog.alexburn.co.uk/tech-reviews/synology-ds414-full-review/