I think this really needs a solid port of XBMC to be, and for that processor to be used. I think there's a lot of interest in a NA/HTPC combo, especially on the smaller scale of things, for people who value space/power.
If Gigabyte can get a good, solid, port of XBMC running on this thing, whether on Android or a more traditional Linux, with hardware decoding and everything, and they have a good/easy simple interface for managing the device and the NAS side and setting up RAID, then they could have a home run on their hands.
But unfortunately, most of the time with these things, the software execution isn't there, which lets the whole thing down.
Agreed! My parents (went with a traditional 4 bay nas and a nuc in the end) and sister would both love this, but they aren't going to want any faffing around, it needs to work as well as any other appliance.
Hot swap bays add unnecessary expense to a home server. You aren't running a mission-critical business server that demands 100% uptime, it's ok to bust out the screw driver and open up the system to swap drives.
MadMan007 I agree but for a lot of endusers the idea of using a screwdriver is scary. I would rather see 3.5 drives but the price on 2.5 drivers are so low that it might not make a lot of difference
I've been using hot-swap racks in my tower systems for years n years now. The only thing I bust out a screwdriver for anymore is to install the racks during the initial build. I don't shut my system down to change a drive...
... and whilst miniaturization would be welcome, I don't want to go backwards either.
If they are serious about this, they need to make it at least 8 drive bays, and each bay needs to be able to fit 15.0mm height drives.
I'd love to see a stackable hdd enclosure based on eSATA for this thing. Then it could be a great replacement for my current define mini setup, which can hold a total of 9 drives, albeit in a different form factor.
I would love one of these for friends and family who don't want a giant computer some where, but who need a nice central location for data storage/backup.
I would drop Android. I know it is the new hotness but for now the does not make sense for a NAS. Frankly this hardware is just an odd mix. It looks like a NAS crossed with HTPC. As a NAS I would think something like FreeNAS would be a good solution. As an HTPC Android makes some sense if you can get Amazon to release Amazon video for Android. To the best use of this would be to add a really good 802.11 ac NIC and some extra ethernet ports and make this into a combo wifi router, HTPC, NAS, and even a casual gaming system. You plug it into your cable modem, sent it up as a router, turn on the NAS and plug it into the TV and stereo. On box for those three jobs.
Honestly, I think it's interesting and maybe even a step in the right direction, but ultimately, I think it's not a good idea. To me, the biggest problem is that it uses 2.5" drives instead of 3.5". You mentioned that 2TB 2.5" drives are available, but in my recently searches, the biggest that I've found are 1.5TB. The problem that you run into is pricing. The 1.5TB drive is about $120, but I paid $150 for a 4TB drive. Why would I spend $30 less for nearly 1/3 the storage space?
Another problem is that it uses HD 5200 (Iris Pro) graphics, which means it's probably going to be similar to the Brix Pro series. The Brix Pro series costs $500-650, which if it's priced similar, that would be rather ludicrous for such a limited, diskless NAS.
However, if you want a very small DVR with a lot of integrated storage space, this might be your ticket.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I must have missed that one! Out of curiosity, what are you using to attach power to all the drives? In my experience putting two 2.5" SSDs close to each other was just a pain to plug in the connectors. One solution that I considered was buying a SATA power extension that goes 1-to-4 and repositioning the middle 90-degree, pass-through plugs to be closer together.
Looking at enclosures on newegg, it appears they all have an intermediate backplane so you slide the drives into the 4 in 1 enclosure and then connect power/data to the back of the fixed mounting unit instead of directly to the drives. As a bonus, this means you only need to connect 1 or 2 power cables instead of 4.
Wow, nice a concept Gigabyte! Please bring this to market.
The recently released WD Red NAS 2.5" drives would be a great fit or even the the 2TB 2.5" Green drives. I could load this up with 4 drives and have a nice 3 or 6TB RAID5 array just humming along. The decrease in form factors is just awesome and as a current Synology NAS owner I do like seeing smaller footprint NAS products.
I also question the need to go Android. If this is truly a NAS then it's better mirror what others are doing in the market and go with something Linux based. I trust DSM installed on my NAS without any doubts, it is rock solid and I measure uptime in months or years.
I am also an avid HTPC user and builder. All of my builds run XBMC and with my previous comments this would be easier to execute on Linux than Andriod. The HDMI port is a dead giveaway as this concept could easily converge two items into one which we are already seeing from Synology, Netgear, etc. As they try to combine Evansport into new NAS products which can double up as an HTPC.
As another reader already mentioned make this physical case stackable and we can put multiple units on top of each other. Or as already mentioned make a 4/5 bay eSATA enclosure for native expansion of the volumes or for additional volumes. Another stackable accessory could be a small UPS with an LCD to provide reliability. On the pricier end of things we should not lose sight of NAND and the increasing density of NGFF drives. There could be an option for one or more SSDs to increase performance.
I am really enjoying seeing the SFF market evolve and these products are going the right direction!
First, this is the right direction! Second, why Intel & Android for a NAS? I'd be interested in a really low power NAS or a medium power NAS + Media computer with on the fly transcoding for different devices, but then why Android?
I think using android is an excellent alternative. Most home NAS units rely on a webserver interface to control the file server setup. Many of these interfaces, like the Synology DSM, have evolved into a full desktop GUI. So, if the end result you are shooting for is a desktop, why not just use the already-created android desktop? Android also gives you the bonus of hundreds of already existing apps to play video, manage your audio collection, etc.
They lost me at "Android". Otherwise it looks like an interesting concept. I wonder how difficult it would be to bypass Android and install another OS.
I'd be tempted to use it as a NAS/my personal desktop at home. I'd consider running Windows in a VM for email, web browsing, and other light duties, which is the bulk of what I do at home, and run the NAS part under Linux, or even Windows if I were using HyperV. In any case, this would allow me to reboot Windows whenever I install software updates, without having to worry about messing up the NAS side. I currently have two separate computers for this purpose, so this would save a lot of physical space (and energy), and I have to confess I don't use my desktop PC all that much, though it's still critical enough to have it around.
As far as HTPC, I'd prefer something that can also do gaming so I don't need both a console and a HTPC. For this purpose, I'd look for something that can run, say, some OS with integrated grapihcs for the HTPC side, and Windows in a VM with a dedicated graphics card for the gaming side. (I'm actually thinking of converting my daughter's mini-ITX box for this purpose when she goes to college.)
This is almost great, almost. I've been looking for a system like this, but it's not quite there.
Frankly, I don't understand why more OEMs don't make a HTPC/NAS hybrid. Both really need to be on 24x7 to be most useful - why buy and power 2 systems?
However, Android??? It really needs to be available with Windows 8. Win 8 has good drive pooling/redundancy options built in, and can have media servers like WMC and Plex installed. (And a system like this could actually do transcoding without choking) Not to mention the multitude of Windows apps out there that would be useful in this kind of setup, like CrashPlan, home automation software, OwnCloud (or similar), etc.
Second, but less important, why 2.5" drives? Make it 3.5" - it's not that much bigger and anyone using 4 drives would appreciate the extra storage.
Here is where Intel can also innovate in teh cpu department by making a Haswell chip with a dual BayTrial cores in them!. So one can have 6 cores running fairly independly serving NAS (BT cores) and quad Haswell doing gaming. When the gaming is over, the Haswell cores shutdown and the NAS runs on just BT cores thus drawing the least power possible yet still functional for other devices on the network. I would like to see the Haswell cores serving games to tablets in the network so it would enable compelling play even on low-end tablets.
On second thought, Gigabyte might as well mimic the Apple design form by making round cylinder with a FLAT front face, the back might be rounded with ports but the front being flat allows for nicer LCD panel displaying temp, fan speed, drive activity, drive % filled, cpu usage. Then docking a 4 inch thick module would extend the PCIe bus (plus power distribution). ie BRIX base unit. Dockables are : NAS Unit 4 bay 2.5inch or 2 Bay 3.5inch, I/O unit dock with USB3, card readers. A GigE Hub and wireless dock for 7 GigiE ports and 802.11ac wifi. Game port dock with 8 USB2 ports dock!. PCIE backplane extended to each dock module with larger module using PLX bridge chip and possibly I/O controllers/buffers. Intel might just use TB2 internal connectors to extend PCIe bus to the docks but it will be mighty expensive unless just price the TB chips low and sell BT chips with the docks.
I know this article is more than a year old, but I have some comments on this invention.
First of all it is a very good idea and it is quite unique. I have recently tried to find something similar to Gigabyte BRIX MAX without much luck. All you can get as of middle of 2015 is either too big, weights too much, does less and costs too much (like a regular 3.5" disk NAS) or must be spread over multiple devices (like a normal BRIX/NUC with external disks).
For us who want to get rid of the old clunky tower-format home or small office server this would be a step forward. Not even the Raspberry/Banana Pi branch seems to be able to compete - there are simply no NAS cases for the Pi variations and even if there were you are limited to USB 2.0 storage connections.
That was the good part. The bad is cooling. I have tried a Gigabyte BRIX BXBT-1900, which is a BRIX with space for a 2.5 inch SATA drive in the bottom. Like a MAX, but with only one drive. With a 2.5 inch HGST drive loaded and without any extra cooling are the temps at about 43-45 C in idle, and at lighter work 47 C. This is not dangerously high but enough to be concerned in longer terms of usage. To ease the situation I have placed a extra 80mm fan outside the case which blows in from the side vents which lowers it to about 35 C.
Now this is with ONE drive. Just imagine what temperatures there will be inside the MAX with 4 drives! In the BXBT-1900 the situation is self-explained, there simply is no fan at all and there is no vents for the drive.
So, for the MAX, if it ever will be released, I hope they have made something for the disk cooling situation. Making it 3 cm longer in some direction or so is not the whole world if a fan is mounted that makes the disks stay cool.
For Android I just say no. If I buy this with a disk I would just resize the Android partition to a minimum and then install Debian or another Linux distro. Just do as with the other BRIX - sell it without disk and RAM.
As a bottom line, release it! I will not play corny Android games on it, I will use it as a more competent NAS device.
Correction, there is a fan in BXBT-1900, but it is only for the chipset and graphics and it does not reach the disk. Banana Pi/Pro has eSATA connection and there exist BanaNAS cases, but then you need a 3D printer to make them.
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cycomiko - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
This, with windows running itunes would be xcellent. Dear gigabyte... I have the licience, I can get my own drives and ram, please sent it my way.esoel_ - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Why android?lmcd - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link
Yeah what were they thinking? Android? Windows or maybe a Linux variant (Suse?)aryonoco - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I think this really needs a solid port of XBMC to be, and for that processor to be used. I think there's a lot of interest in a NA/HTPC combo, especially on the smaller scale of things, for people who value space/power.If Gigabyte can get a good, solid, port of XBMC running on this thing, whether on Android or a more traditional Linux, with hardware decoding and everything, and they have a good/easy simple interface for managing the device and the NAS side and setting up RAID, then they could have a home run on their hands.
But unfortunately, most of the time with these things, the software execution isn't there, which lets the whole thing down.
cjb110 - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Agreed! My parents (went with a traditional 4 bay nas and a nuc in the end) and sister would both love this, but they aren't going to want any faffing around, it needs to work as well as any other appliance.MadMan007 - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Hot swap bays add unnecessary expense to a home server. You aren't running a mission-critical business server that demands 100% uptime, it's ok to bust out the screw driver and open up the system to swap drives.lwatcdr - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
MadMan007 I agree but for a lot of endusers the idea of using a screwdriver is scary. I would rather see 3.5 drives but the price on 2.5 drivers are so low that it might not make a lot of differencehrrmph - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I've been using hot-swap racks in my tower systems for years n years now. The only thing I bust out a screwdriver for anymore is to install the racks during the initial build. I don't shut my system down to change a drive...... and whilst miniaturization would be welcome, I don't want to go backwards either.
If they are serious about this, they need to make it at least 8 drive bays, and each bay needs to be able to fit 15.0mm height drives.
lesherm - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I'd love to see a stackable hdd enclosure based on eSATA for this thing. Then it could be a great replacement for my current define mini setup, which can hold a total of 9 drives, albeit in a different form factor.James5mith - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I would love one of these for friends and family who don't want a giant computer some where, but who need a nice central location for data storage/backup.lwatcdr - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I would drop Android. I know it is the new hotness but for now the does not make sense for a NAS. Frankly this hardware is just an odd mix. It looks like a NAS crossed with HTPC. As a NAS I would think something like FreeNAS would be a good solution. As an HTPC Android makes some sense if you can get Amazon to release Amazon video for Android.To the best use of this would be to add a really good 802.11 ac NIC and some extra ethernet ports and make this into a combo wifi router, HTPC, NAS, and even a casual gaming system. You plug it into your cable modem, sent it up as a router, turn on the NAS and plug it into the TV and stereo. On box for those three jobs.
Aikouka - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Honestly, I think it's interesting and maybe even a step in the right direction, but ultimately, I think it's not a good idea. To me, the biggest problem is that it uses 2.5" drives instead of 3.5". You mentioned that 2TB 2.5" drives are available, but in my recently searches, the biggest that I've found are 1.5TB. The problem that you run into is pricing. The 1.5TB drive is about $120, but I paid $150 for a 4TB drive. Why would I spend $30 less for nearly 1/3 the storage space?Another problem is that it uses HD 5200 (Iris Pro) graphics, which means it's probably going to be similar to the Brix Pro series. The Brix Pro series costs $500-650, which if it's priced similar, that would be rather ludicrous for such a limited, diskless NAS.
However, if you want a very small DVR with a lot of integrated storage space, this might be your ticket.
hrrmph - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
The 2.5" 2TB drives are WD20NPVX and are $175 at Amazon.They are expensive - you are paying for miniaturization and niche product.
I use them in quad-pack racks to get 8TB in a single 5.25" bay.
By comparison, the external drive version of these is WDBMWV0020BBK-NESN and costs $115.
I'm expecting a 3TB version of the 15.0mm height drives to become available in 2014.
Aikouka - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link
Ah, thanks for the correction. I must have missed that one! Out of curiosity, what are you using to attach power to all the drives? In my experience putting two 2.5" SSDs close to each other was just a pain to plug in the connectors. One solution that I considered was buying a SATA power extension that goes 1-to-4 and repositioning the middle 90-degree, pass-through plugs to be closer together.DanNeely - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
Looking at enclosures on newegg, it appears they all have an intermediate backplane so you slide the drives into the 4 in 1 enclosure and then connect power/data to the back of the fixed mounting unit instead of directly to the drives. As a bonus, this means you only need to connect 1 or 2 power cables instead of 4.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Zandros - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
It is a very interesting space. Mr Cutress, do you think you or Ganesh would be able to dig up some more info on BRIX Fanless (Bay Trail-M)?beatmech - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
definitely interested.how the android apps goes along to cover NAS or HTPC functions will be very interesting topic for a follow up article.
creed3020 - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
Wow, nice a concept Gigabyte! Please bring this to market.The recently released WD Red NAS 2.5" drives would be a great fit or even the the 2TB 2.5" Green drives. I could load this up with 4 drives and have a nice 3 or 6TB RAID5 array just humming along. The decrease in form factors is just awesome and as a current Synology NAS owner I do like seeing smaller footprint NAS products.
I also question the need to go Android. If this is truly a NAS then it's better mirror what others are doing in the market and go with something Linux based. I trust DSM installed on my NAS without any doubts, it is rock solid and I measure uptime in months or years.
I am also an avid HTPC user and builder. All of my builds run XBMC and with my previous comments this would be easier to execute on Linux than Andriod. The HDMI port is a dead giveaway as this concept could easily converge two items into one which we are already seeing from Synology, Netgear, etc. As they try to combine Evansport into new NAS products which can double up as an HTPC.
As another reader already mentioned make this physical case stackable and we can put multiple units on top of each other. Or as already mentioned make a 4/5 bay eSATA enclosure for native expansion of the volumes or for additional volumes. Another stackable accessory could be a small UPS with an LCD to provide reliability. On the pricier end of things we should not lose sight of NAND and the increasing density of NGFF drives. There could be an option for one or more SSDs to increase performance.
I am really enjoying seeing the SFF market evolve and these products are going the right direction!
Conficio - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
First, this is the right direction! Second, why Intel & Android for a NAS?I'd be interested in a really low power NAS or a medium power NAS + Media computer with on the fly transcoding for different devices, but then why Android?
bryanb - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I think using android is an excellent alternative. Most home NAS units rely on a webserver interface to control the file server setup. Many of these interfaces, like the Synology DSM, have evolved into a full desktop GUI. So, if the end result you are shooting for is a desktop, why not just use the already-created android desktop? Android also gives you the bonus of hundreds of already existing apps to play video, manage your audio collection, etc.hpascoa - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
They lost me at "Android". Otherwise it looks like an interesting concept. I wonder how difficult it would be to bypass Android and install another OS.Ktracho - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
I'd be tempted to use it as a NAS/my personal desktop at home. I'd consider running Windows in a VM for email, web browsing, and other light duties, which is the bulk of what I do at home, and run the NAS part under Linux, or even Windows if I were using HyperV. In any case, this would allow me to reboot Windows whenever I install software updates, without having to worry about messing up the NAS side. I currently have two separate computers for this purpose, so this would save a lot of physical space (and energy), and I have to confess I don't use my desktop PC all that much, though it's still critical enough to have it around.As far as HTPC, I'd prefer something that can also do gaming so I don't need both a console and a HTPC. For this purpose, I'd look for something that can run, say, some OS with integrated grapihcs for the HTPC side, and Windows in a VM with a dedicated graphics card for the gaming side. (I'm actually thinking of converting my daughter's mini-ITX box for this purpose when she goes to college.)
GiggityGoo - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link
This is almost great, almost. I've been looking for a system like this, but it's not quite there.Frankly, I don't understand why more OEMs don't make a HTPC/NAS hybrid. Both really need to be on 24x7 to be most useful - why buy and power 2 systems?
However, Android??? It really needs to be available with Windows 8. Win 8 has good drive pooling/redundancy options built in, and can have media servers like WMC and Plex installed. (And a system like this could actually do transcoding without choking) Not to mention the multitude of Windows apps out there that would be useful in this kind of setup, like CrashPlan, home automation software, OwnCloud (or similar), etc.
Second, but less important, why 2.5" drives? Make it 3.5" - it's not that much bigger and anyone using 4 drives would appreciate the extra storage.
fteoath64 - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
Here is where Intel can also innovate in teh cpu department by making a Haswell chip with a dual BayTrial cores in them!. So one can have 6 cores running fairly independly serving NAS (BT cores) and quad Haswell doing gaming. When the gaming is over, the Haswell cores shutdown and the NAS runs on just BT cores thus drawing the least power possible yet still functional for other devices on the network.I would like to see the Haswell cores serving games to tablets in the network so it would enable compelling play even on low-end tablets.
fteoath64 - Monday, January 13, 2014 - link
On second thought, Gigabyte might as well mimic the Apple design form by making round cylinder with a FLAT front face, the back might be rounded with ports but the front being flat allows for nicer LCD panel displaying temp, fan speed, drive activity, drive % filled, cpu usage. Then docking a 4 inch thick module would extend the PCIe bus (plus power distribution). ie BRIX base unit. Dockables are : NAS Unit 4 bay 2.5inch or 2 Bay 3.5inch, I/O unit dock with USB3, card readers. A GigE Hub and wireless dock for 7 GigiE ports and 802.11ac wifi. Game port dock with 8 USB2 ports dock!. PCIE backplane extended to each dock module with larger module using PLX bridge chip and possibly I/O controllers/buffers.Intel might just use TB2 internal connectors to extend PCIe bus to the docks but it will be mighty expensive unless just price the TB chips low and sell BT chips with the docks.
dotpointer - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
I know this article is more than a year old, but I have some comments on this invention.First of all it is a very good idea and it is quite unique. I have recently tried to find something similar to Gigabyte BRIX MAX without much luck. All you can get as of middle of 2015 is either too big, weights too much, does less and costs too much (like a regular 3.5" disk NAS) or must be spread over multiple devices (like a normal BRIX/NUC with external disks).
For us who want to get rid of the old clunky tower-format home or small office server this would be a step forward. Not even the Raspberry/Banana Pi branch seems to be able to compete - there are simply no NAS cases for the Pi variations and even if there were you are limited to USB 2.0 storage connections.
That was the good part. The bad is cooling. I have tried a Gigabyte BRIX BXBT-1900, which is a BRIX with space for a 2.5 inch SATA drive in the bottom. Like a MAX, but with only one drive. With a 2.5 inch HGST drive loaded and without any extra cooling are the temps at about 43-45 C in idle, and at lighter work 47 C. This is not dangerously high but enough to be concerned in longer terms of usage. To ease the situation I have placed a extra 80mm fan outside the case which blows in from the side vents which lowers it to about 35 C.
Now this is with ONE drive. Just imagine what temperatures there will be inside the MAX with 4 drives! In the BXBT-1900 the situation is self-explained, there simply is no fan at all and there is no vents for the drive.
So, for the MAX, if it ever will be released, I hope they have made something for the disk cooling situation. Making it 3 cm longer in some direction or so is not the whole world if a fan is mounted that makes the disks stay cool.
For Android I just say no. If I buy this with a disk I would just resize the Android partition to a minimum and then install Debian or another Linux distro. Just do as with the other BRIX - sell it without disk and RAM.
As a bottom line, release it! I will not play corny Android games on it, I will use it as a more competent NAS device.
dotpointer - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Correction, there is a fan in BXBT-1900, but it is only for the chipset and graphics and it does not reach the disk. Banana Pi/Pro has eSATA connection and there exist BanaNAS cases, but then you need a 3D printer to make them.