Synology DiskStation DS418j NAS Review
A Closer Look at the Synology DS418j
DS418j is physically identical to DS416j. The only difference between DS416j and DS418j is the small print of ‘DS418j’ in the front of the enclosure. The rear configurations are identical as well. Here we have a proprietary power connector, Gigabit LAN connector, two USB 3.0 connectors and a pinhole reset switch.
In order to install drives in to DS418j you need to remove four screws from the back of the device and remove the cover. The drive sleds are conveniently placed for the users to remove them as need to. The whole enclosure is actively cooled by two 80 mm fans. These fans are not PWM enabled however, it is possible to adjust their RPM from within the OS. (Full-Speed Mode, Cool Mode, Quiet Mode, Low-power Mode)
Motherboard of DS418j is well designed without any glue or visible silicone. The first thing that jumps out is the passive heatsink over what it seems a metal plate. And as you can see from the image above is off centered. The ‘metal plate’ is actually a protective enclosure for ram. Later in the review we will take a look at the CPU which is passively cooled.
LAN connections are filtered by a 1000 base-t magnetic module Bothhand USA (24hss1041a-2) These type of magnetic modules are used in order to minimize the noise on the network. We see these kind of modules on almost all NAS devices.
Chip that is responsible for PCI Express, Serial ATA and USB 3.0 connection on DS418j is Asmedia (ASM1061 b1nk2001a2 1651) This particular controller enables transfer speeds up to 6Gbps on Serial ATA connections.
Just like in DS 416j all of the voltage requirement are being controlled by Altera (5m80z) module.
CPU of DS418j is provided by Realtek CPU RTD1293PN. This is a new type of CPU from Realtek so I wasn’t able to find much of information on it. However here is the link to RTD1186 for general understanding what this series of CPU is capable of. One of the signature features of this CPU is that it is able to transcode at higher frames per second for H.264 and MJPEG. This Dual Core CPU is clocked at 1.4GHz with 64 bit architecture. Around the CPU is where the 1GB DDR4 is located. Unfortunately I could not remove the metal shielding to show you the DDR4.
Daughter board that connects drives to motherboard is also identical to the one in DS416j. Synology is using the same SAS connectors on this board however, still no support for SAS drives.
Front panel are identical as well however I did found some flux residue on the connectors and the master switch.
Just like DS416j DS418j comes with plastic hard drive sleds. Installation of the drives is very simple. Just mount the HDD or SDD in the appropriate holes and secure them with enclosed screws. I will be using HDD and SSD drives in my benchmarks.
