1. Why buy DX4600
I bought this Greenlink DX4600 on Double 11 the year before last (2022), when I was using Synology DS920+, there were more and more materials and movies in my collection, 4 disks were not enough, and the cost of changing to a NAS with more than 8 disks was too high. At that time, the DX4600 happened to have a special promotion, and I felt that it was a good deal, so I bought one and came back with the DS920+ and has been using it until now, during which I also wrote several posts about the DX4600. I forgot to write a review for him after I started it, so I took the time to share a summary of my experience in using it for a year and a half for reference.
2. What do you mainly do with DX4600?
Previously, DS920+ was mainly used to back up important data and store photos and video materials taken by yourself, while DX4600 was mainly used to build its own film and television library collection, including two 14T hard disks for classic movies and dramas, a 10T hard disk for cold backup of photo data, a 5T hard disk for downloading, and Docker and databases on M2 solid state drives. Last year, I DIY a Windows NAS to run credits and download machine, and now DX4600 is a collection of film and television materials, cold backup of important data, and the three major uses of Apple computer time machine, which have been very stable during the year and a half, and there have been no problems.
3. What about the hardware configuration of DX4600?
I made a table to compare the hardware configuration of the Greenlink DX4600 and Synology DS920+, since the DS920+ was released earlier than the DX4600, it seems a bit unfair to compare, so I added the upgraded DS923+ to the comparison. From the configuration table, it can be intuitively seen that the configuration of Greenlink DX4600 is higher than that of products that are twice as expensive, although DS923+ supports 10 Gigabit network, but you need to purchase an additional network card; From the perspective of hardware configuration, the price of DX4600 is indeed very attractive, and the cost performance is quite high, and a good 4-disk array cabinet costs thousands of yuan:
4.DX4600 exterior design
Usually I put two NAS in the network cabinet, but today I took them out and put them on the table to take pictures in order to write an article. DX4600 is relatively larger, the body is longer, and a detachable magnetic panel is also thoughtfully designed in front of the hard disk cabinet, and the fan port behind it also has a pre-installed magnetic dust filter, which can reduce some dust ingress:
In addition to "stacking" on the hardware, the Greenlink NAS shell is made of aluminum alloy materials, and the thickness is more than 3 mm, which makes the DX4600 body look quite solid and integrated; The ordinary NAS seems to be spliced with several pieces of plastic, and the appearance and workmanship of the DX4600 directly wins:
5. Expansion interface of DX4600
As shown in the figure, all the ports and switches of the DX4600 are designed on the back of the NAS, including one USB-C port, two USB-A ports, two 2.5G LAN ports, a reset button, a 12V power jack, and a power button. 3 USB ports are enough in the rear,After connecting to the UPS power supply, you can also connect other devices at the same time,Unlike the previous DS920+There is only one USB port on the back,I can only connect a USB HUB and then connect the UPS power supply and 2.5G network card on the HUB;LAN port directly gives dual 2.5G,No need to buy an additional network card。 This design also has some disadvantages, such as the boot button on the back, if you put it in the network cabinet, it is very inconvenient to reach out to the back and press it, but fortunately, you can also turn on the "intranet boot" of the APP or the client; Then there is no design of the front USB port, sometimes you need to temporarily connect the card reader, mobile hard disk will be inconvenient, but it is also a small problem, you need to connect often to buy a good quality extension cord on the line.
6. About hard disk installation
If you take down the magnetic cover on the front panel of the NAS, you can see the hard disk compartment, and the hard disk tray is not locked with a key.
The DX4600 HDD bay is also designed with a tool-less quick-release design, which requires no tools to install a 3.5-inch hard drive, which is faster than Synology's edge strip type, and requires 4 screws to install a 2.5-inch hard drive. The official website shows that a single disk supports up to 22TB, and I installed two WD 14T disks to store movies, and Seagate's disk also has one, and I didn't encounter compatibility problems. DX4600 supports common RAID 1, RAID 0, RAID 5 and other array modes, so I don't need to use RIAD mode for storing movies and doing cold backup.
7. About memory and M2 SSD
The promotional page shows that DX4600 supports memory up to 16G, in fact, I installed two 16G before a total of 32G can also be identified and used normally, and later found that because DX4600 currently does not support virtual machines, large-capacity memory actually has no meaning, so it was removed and installed into the computer, and finally installed two 8G to form 16G has been used. The factory is pre-installed with an 8G Kingston DDR4 memory module, the actual measurement is completely sufficient before the official launch of the virtual machine, the average user can consider not upgrading, even if you need to play Docker is enough, if you need to upgrade, add an 8G on the line. The DX4600 memory compatibility is very good, and I tried many of the memory to work fine, unlike the DS920+. There is no need to pursue high frequency in memory frequency, N5105 only supports up to dual-channel 2933MHz, and you can buy DDR4 2600-3200. The memory and M2 hard disk expansion ports are at the bottom of the NAS, and you need to use a small Phillips screwdriver (with a gift):
THE DX4600 HAS TWO PCIE 3.0 M2 SSD SLOTS, WHICH CAN BE DIRECTLY INSTALLED WITH 2280 M2 NVME SSDS. M2 SSD directly supports storage and acceleration cache two modes, ordinary users need to play Docker is recommended to install an M2 SSD to improve operational efficiency, film and television, photo albums and other applications need to frequently access the database, the actual measurement of Docker files and databases on the SSD access speed is particularly obvious; As for SSD cache, ordinary users don't need to think about it, unless they need to frequently access a large number of fragmented files every day, and the measured SSD cache has almost no benefit to daily reading and writing. I installed a discarded 500G Western Digital SN750 SSD to install Docker, and the other one was only used for testing, which I don't usually use. There is also a point that the solid state drive with a heat dissipation vest may not cover the bottom cover plate after installation, so you should pay special attention when buying a hard disk, and do not buy a solid state with strong performance and high calorific power, for example, my SN750 has a daily temperature of about 60 degrees:
8. Functionality and ease of use
DX4600 has built-in functional modules such as photo albums, cloud cinemas, backup synchronization, and downloads on NAS, which are enough for most users to use these built-in functions, and even a friend of mine only uses a backup function. All built-in features are pre-installed and don't need to be installed separately in places like app stores.
Greenlink is the easiest NAS server I have ever used, and all the functions are simple and intuitive to understand, even if a novice buys a NAS for the first time, it can be easily used without having to read the tutorial first. For example, if you want to automatically back up the work folder on the computer, the first step is to select a disk used to store the backup files in my backup and backup management in the Greenlink private cloud client, the second step is to click on the new backup, the third step is to select the folder to be backed up and it's over, and the new files in this folder will be automatically backed up to the NAS in the future; The rest of the features are basically as simple and efficient:
For users who like to toss and are not satisfied with simple built-in functions, DX4600 also has Docker to play, and the functions on other people's NAS can be realized by installing Docker containers. Although Greenlink Cloud has a built-in album that supports face recognition and scene recognition2.0, and a built-in cloud film and television service that can scrape media information, these two services can meet the needs of general users, but for users like me who specialize in DX4600 to collect movies and television, they must use a more powerful and professional Jellyfin to manage, and the album can be replaced by Photoprism that supports AI recognition, and after turning on GPU hardware decoding, it can achieve 4K online transcoding, There's nothing wrong with using it to build your own library and watch movies on other devices, and I've previously posted tutorials on deploying Jellyfin and Photoprism on the DX4600, so I won't repeat them here. Not supporting the official virtual machine is the current shortcoming of DX4600, and the implementation of virtual machine in Docker is more complex and difficult to maintain, and I hope that the R&D team can make the virtual machine as soon as possible.
9.APP, client, and intranet penetration experience
DX4600 with Greenlink Private Cloud currently has Windows, MAC OS, IOS, Android, TV clients, which can basically adapt to all mainstream computers and mobile phones, and now it also supports direct login and access to web pages. You only need one mobile app to use all the functions on the NAS, unlike other NASs that require you to install several apps, which is very convenient to use, and you can play the NAS without a computer. At present, there are two shortcomings in the APP experience, one is that the shutdown path is too deep, and it needs to be clicked several times; The second is that you can only turn on or off Docker on the APP, and you can't create Docker in the APP, but this can be solved through browser access.
Greenlink Cloud comes with intranet penetration, and it can be used without any settings. Nowadays, most broadband operators do not provide public IP addresses, and with intranet penetration, you can access the files in your home NAS at any time in the field. I tried to use the mobile phone 5G network outside to download the files on DX4600 through the intranet penetration, the actual transmission speed is between 400KB/S-600KB/S, and you can transmit about 1.8G in an hour, this speed is actually not bad, some brands provide intranet penetration can only reach more than 100K, and this is still provided for free. If you have a public IP address, it is even better, and the actual measurement can fully load the broadband uplink bandwidth.
10. Intranet transmission speed, power consumption, noise and others
Greenlink DX4600 comes with two 2.5G network ports, and the actual transmission speed can reach 280MB/s from NAS solid state drive to computer in the local area network, which can basically run the 2.5G network, saving more than half of the time compared with the gigabit network. At present, dual 2.5G network ports can be connected to switches at the same time for link aggregation, and if virtual machines are launched in the future, it is possible to use NAS as a soft router:
In terms of power consumption, the DX4600 is equipped with two M2 solid-state devices, two 8G memory modules, two 14T mechanical hard disks, one 10T mechanical hard disk, and one 5T mechanical hard disk, and the measured power consumption fluctuates between 28-40W, and the power consumption is about 30W when there is no data transmission. After all the hard disks enter the sleep state, the power consumption is only about 18W. According to the average calculation of 30W, it will not be turned off for 24 hours, the total power consumption in 1 month is about 22 kWh, and the monthly electricity cost is only 10 yuan, which is almost negligible. As for the noise of the NAS, all of it comes from the hard disk, which is related to the noise of the hard disk you use, the NAS only has one rear cooling fan, and the fan has 3 levels that can be adjusted. My two 14T HDDs are very noisy, and the noise is particularly obvious when I put the NAS on the desk, so I usually put the 4600 in the network cabinet in the corner.
Greenlink DX4600 is a cost-effective "stacking" NAS server, the built-in software is simple and easy to use, the main disadvantage is that the built-in software is too simple for users with strong hands-on ability, but fortunately, there is Docker to toss. The price of less than 2K starts, I think it's worth it~ The above is my summary of the Greenlink DX4600 after using it for a year and a half, and I hope that the manufacturer can continue to develop and update.