Minisforum S5 bare-bones NAS costs $599, with savings depending on SSDs

Minisforum’s fanless S5 network-attached storage system pairs five NVMe slots with 10GbE networking, dual USB4 ports and local AI processing. The bare-bones model costs $599, discounted from $749, and includes 12GB of LPDDR5x memory and 128GB of UFS storage. Buyers add compatible SSDs separately.

The five slots support up to 40TB of solid-state storage. The system uses an Intel Core 3 304 processor with five cores and boost speeds up to 4.3 GHz. Minisforum claims sequential reads can be six times faster than hard drives and random reads up to 100 times faster; actual results depend on the SSDs, workload and configuration.

Connectivity includes one 10GbE port, one 2.5GbE port, Wi-Fi and two USB4 interfaces rated for up to 40 Gbps. The fanless design uses heat pipes and cooling fins. Minisforum says the CPU draws about 15W during combined stress testing at 25°C ambient temperature, a figure that does not represent total system power use. The S5’s NPU is rated at 15 TOPS for INT8 operations.

Minisforum lists its preconfigured 20TB model at $3,759, down from $4,699. Based on online 4TB SSD listings, five Silicon Power UD90 drives bring the bare-bones system total to $3,148.85, a $610.15 difference. Five WD Black SN850X drives total $3,621.45, a $137.55 difference. Five Crucial T500 drives bring the total to $4,594, which is $835 more than the discounted 20TB model. These comparisons exclude taxes, shipping and other costs.