CWWK X86-P6 pocket NAS puts 4 SSD's into a box the size of an Intel NUC, complete with 2x 2.5 GbE LAN ports

CWWK has a range of products that fulfil the soft router market, offering hardware that allows you to build a device that makes use of Open Source network software such as PfSence and OpenWRT. However, they also offer the X86-Px line that crams 4 NVMe SSD drives into a form factor similar in size to an Intel NUC. The latest iteration, upgrades the P5, from an Intel N100 or i3-N305 to either an Intel N150 for $195.63 or an N355 for $315.35.

While you won't see an increase in core count, the upgrade should provide around 10% additional performance over the outgoing model, offering multi-threaded benchmark scores on par with the AMD Ryzen 3 5300U or Intel Core i7-1165G7.

Complete with a DDR5 SO-DIMM socket, this will take up to 32 GB of RAM and up to 4 M.2 2280 SSD's. While the N355 offers only 9 lanes of PCIe 3.0 storage shared between all four drives, you are not going to be able to maximise the full potential of whatever NVMe drives you choose to install. However, if you do choose to install 4 drives, even at PCIe 1x you should still get close to twice the speed of a 7200 RPM spinner.

The two onboard 2.5 GbE LAN ports should ensure that you are able to saturate the full bandwidth of the drives, and an aluminium cover making contact with the drives should keep everything cool. Because this is an X86 based system, you are free to install your NAS software of choice, such as TrueNAS or Unraid, opening the door to docker containers and other 3rd party apps those ecosystems provide. The inclusion of intel Quick Sync should make this a diminutive yet capable Plex transcoder.

The X86-P6 can be purchased from Amazon under the rebranded name Siensnet, but they also get sold under the name Topton. You can read more about CWWK products here, but it's nice to see less traditional companies offering niche, yet appealing products at reasonable prices.