Thecus TopTower N6850 6-Bay NAS Review

Summing this NAS up is going to be quite a good one, firstly there is the whole new feature list that we have seen in NAS systems, such as the capability to install a slim line optical drive into the main body of the system and RAID 50 which I will go into a little more in a moment. Before all of that though I will start off rounding up the style, design and feature package.

Even though I have seen this system before at CeBIT along with its bigger counterparts, namely the N8850 and N10850, its style ceases to grab my attention and whilst it stands out, its not in your face attention. We know that that the vast majority of NAS systems adopt a black colour scheme on the whole and the simple addition of the two brushed aluminium bars to the left hand side, break this mould a little adding just that little bit of style to the business class product.

On the note of features, its also a great sight to see the capability to add in an optical drive into a NAS, this allows for great flexibility to copy data from a disc straight to the system quickly but also burn a disc directly from the system with ease. Mounting the motherboard onto a totally removable tray is also another thing that has got to get a thumbs up, whilst other desktop systems can have scope for upgrade they do have the need to dismantle them in a slight fashion, whilst this after four thumb screws simply slides out and gives full unrestricted access to the board and its components for example when upgrading the memory.

Moving over to the performance side of things, there are two key areas that I have noted from this system. First of all, this is the first NAS that we have had in that is not based on an Atom CPU and that makes a difference not necessarily on the overall throughput (although it naturally will benefit it more when a higher number of concurrent connections are make) , on the back end of the system, navigation through the admin panel felt a lot smoother and with less of a delay. This is something that would be noticed even more when progressing from the N6850 to the N8850 with its Core i3 CPU then upto the N10850 with its Xeon chip at its heart.

The other area that has stood out is inclusion of RAID50. I’m surprised that we’ve not seen this particular type of array on other systems until now, but what is clear is that its advantages are transparent. RAID5 is fundamental due to its ability to continue running with a dropped drive, although it does suffer from a lack of performance as we know and RAID0 is pretty much the standard if blazing speed is what you’re after but suffers from an incapacity to withstand a dropped drive and thus data loss. Combining to two together by striping two RAID5 arrays together is a great balance and gives the benefits of both.

On the whole I’m very impressed with the TopTower range of systems and if this is what is on offer on the bottom end of the range, then things can only but get better with the 8 and 10 bay offerings. If you’re after a NAS that offers up business class performance, with the scope for future upgrades of memory or network connectivity and has just a little bit of style if its going to be out and on show, then the N6850 and the rest of the TopTower range will easily get my vote and is well justified by its price starting at just under £900 for the N6580 that we’ve looked at today.