Aoostar launches affordable 11-bay NAS with OCuLink and built-in screen

Aoostar introduced the WTR Max in April 2025, and at launch, it was available with the Ryzen 7 Pro 8845HS, a capable AMD processor from the Hawk Point lineup. Now, the company has introduced a more affordable variant of the NAS, and it's powered by the Intel Core i5-1235U.

Of course, there isn't much of a difference in terms of the price, but for those who might not need the extra power of the AMD variant, the $100 savings might just be worth it. Specifically, the barebone variant of the WTR Max with the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 8845HS costs $659, while the barebone of the new Intel variant goes for $559.

Another notable difference is that the AMD variant has two SO-DIMM slots that can officially hold up to 128GB of DDR5-5600 RAM. The Intel variant, on the other hand, can be equipped with up to 96GB of DDR5-4800 RAM. Other than that, the rest of the specs are identical.

That includes the port configuration, which has one USB4 and one OCuLink port (Aoostar EG02 curr. $219 on Amazon). Thanks to the latter, this 11-bay NAS can act like a proper gaming mini PC when equipped with an eGPU. Users can also use OCuLink-based boards to expand the storage support further.

Speaking of which, the Aoostar WTR Max has five M.2 slots for PCIe SSDs and six SATA drive slots. For network connectivity, there's one 10G and one 2.5G Ethernet, and Aoostar highlights that the four-fan cooling setup can keep the internals cool under heavy loads.

Among the other highlights are a built-in screen that can show the core information at a glance, support for ECC memory, and triple-display output support.