Did Synology just shoot themselves in the foot with the DS923+?

[heffeque 39]

Info here: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS923+

They purposefully capped the 10 Gbps ethernet ports that the R1600 CPU natively has... to 1 Gbps ports, so you have to spend extra on Synology HW to get 10 Gbps ports on it, so it's less attractive for businesses and advanced domestic users.

They put a CPU with no HW transcoding capabilities, so this model is automatically a no-no for anyone using Emby, Plex, etc.

People are already saying that DS920+ availability is going bye-bye, and that 2nd hand DS920+ and even DS918+ prices will probably start increasing.

Unless Synology releases a "DS923+play" of some sort that includes an equally good x86-64 CPU + at least 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports + HW transcoding... or they are surely going to push people to search for alternatives (and people might like what they find).
Synology's powerful and robust OS and SW can't pull the whole train, it needs decent HW to back it up.

Edit: just realized that this post might be better suited for "Hardware", instead of "Emby Server - Synology". I'm not sure how to move it (not sure I can).

Edit 2: thanks for moving it!

Edited November 16, 2022 by heffeque

[Luke 37060]

Outside of that it's still a pretty powerful NAS though.

[FrostByte 5049]

The pcie Gen 3 m2 drives will be nice if they ever enable volume support without a hack. 

I don't need h/w transcoding (I prefer the faster processor speed), but can see why most people using it as a media server will probably be put off by the lack of integrated graphics.

 

Edited November 16, 2022 by FrostByte

[heffeque 39]

Yes, the R1600 is quite powerful on the single-thread part compared to the Celeron J4125 (around 30%), but if I'm not mistaken, it's around 30% slower on the multi-thread part.

I don't know, it just seems like purposefully capping ethernet and not including transcoding is putting a big dent on quite a big chunk of clients that are going to have to look for alternatives (2nd hand devices, or reaching out to the competition).

The Asustor AS6704T is a brilliant piece of hardware (quite a bit more powerful, with none of DS923+'s HW weaknesses) and it costs around the same.

Edited November 16, 2022 by heffeque

[FrostByte 5049]

Qnap is another which seems to have better hardware at similar costs.  I prefer DSM though which keeps bringing me back to Synology.  Hopefully there is another model this year like you said which has integrated graphics.

[FrostByte 5049]

Looks like Synology will finally support putting volumes on their nvme drives in newer models.  

Which Synology NAS models support using M.2 SSDs to create storage pools? - Synology Knowledge Center