TechRadar Verdict
The TerraMaster T12-500 Pro is great in some places and a little disappointing in others.
It has plenty of CPU performance, memory, and drives.
But it lacks Thunderbolt, tray locks and the option for a second PSU.
Its affordable, but the NAS is only a small part of the cost of ownership.
Therefore, the T12-500 Pro is competitively priced.
And thats without any NVMe drives.
Accept now that the cost of the T12-500 Pro might be the cheap part of this project.
All the external connections are on the back.
But this wasnt an option that TerraMaster engineers ever considered or rejected.
The other feature that Id expected but wasnt present was a PCIe slot, even a low-profile one.
They consist of a thin piece of perforated steel with a spring-loaded latch on the front.
But accidents happen, and senior people, in particular, cant resist pressing things without considering the consequences.
Though, it might need a 90-degree slot adapter to fit.
In the same vein, there are four fan headers, but only one is used.
The basic power demand is only 15W, though it will turbo to 55W if needed.
That power profile includes the 96 execution units of the integrated Iris Xe GPU.
The graphics performance of the Iris Xe has been overshadowed by processors with the Intel ARC components.
There is a slight caveat to the GPU specifications.
Thats the old UHD specification.
I didnt have the modules to discover if that reverts with two DDR5 modules, but I suspect not.
For TerraMaster, a sale is a sale, evidently.
This NAS might have twelve SATA bays, but only three drive cables are coming from the motherboard.
How does that work?
This specific hardware allows for the segmentation of backup operations at the connection and storage levels.
When I first fired up the T12-500 Pro without drives installed, it pulled a meagre 9 watts.
But a failover PSU would have been a useful option.
It can live anywhere between a Docker development environment and a backup server, with many layers in between.
Should you buy a TerraMaster T12-500 Pro?
Out of the box, its 20GbE in total and no link aggregation.
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