A Look Inside

It's now time to strip the NAS down to take a look at what components it hides inside its casing.


Breaking apart the AS-204TE was a story that involved many screws; however, it was pretty straightforward since we have come across NAS servers that were much harder to crack open. As you can see, its chassis is fully metallic, and we can assure you that is very sturdy and incredibly well built.


The mainboard is really small and under-populated, but houses all the necessary components a NAS server needs.


Like in the AS-302T, the solder side of the mainboard is protected by a plastic shield which we removed to provide you with a clear view to the components installed on this side.


The NAS is equipped with one of Intel's fresh Atom dual-core processors (most likely the CE5315), and it is clocked at 1.2 GHz. This processor is actually a SoC (System on a Chip) and has the code name Evansport. It supports Hyper-Threading, HDMI 1.4a, USB 3.0, PCI Express 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and has a hardware H264 trans-coder. The CPU is cooled passively by a large enough heatsink, thanks to its low TDP.


The DDR3 modules are directly soldered to the mainboard, so you cannot upgrade the RAM. Four K4B2G1646Q-BCK0 Samsung ICs combined total 1 GB of RAM.


For additional USB 3.0 ports, an Entrontech EJ188H controller is used.


This DC-DC converter includes a TPS54310 synchronous buck (or step-down) converter that takes 3 V to 6 VDC input voltage and outputs down to 0.9 V with 99% accuracy.


The single PCIe port of the mainboard. It is occupied by the PCIe expansion card that holds all SATA connectors.


The mainboard's battery is installed vertically.


The PCIe expansion card with its SATA connectors. On it is an Asmedia ASM1051 SATA controller.


On the solder side of the main board is a Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver, which is weird since the Atom SoC includes a Gigabit Ethernet controller.


The NAS's flash memory, an FL128SA1F00 IC, is located on the solder side of the mainboard.


The NAS's PSU is by FSP and has a capacity of 150 W. 120 W are available on the +12V rail alone, which is definitely more than enough to meet the needs of the AS-204TE.


The fan is by YS Tech, and its model number is FD121225HB (120 mm, 12 V, 0.48 A, 2600 RPM 106.1 CFM, 44 dBA). This particular fan uses double ball-bearings to ensure it lasts a long time, and while it won't bother you in auto-fan-speed mode, it is quite noise at full speed.