Synology launches the S13610 and SA3410. Both devices are rack-size storage servers with space for twelve drives. The devices are expandable with additional capacity and must guarantee speed and performance, although Synology opts for a somewhat antique Intel chip inside.

NAS and storage server specialist Synology introduces two devices: the SA3610 and the SA3410. Both storage servers have space for twelve hard drives. These can be both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch SAS or SATA drives. They have four onboard memory slots with room for up to 128GB of DDR4 ECC RAM, but come with 16GB of RAM in a single DIMM.

The only significant difference between the SA3610 and SA3410 is the processor. For the SA3610, Synology chose an Intel Xeon D-1567 with twelve cores clocked at a base frequency of 2.1 GHz. The SA3410 contains a Xeon D-1541 with eight cores that maintain the same base clock frequency.

Retired

We find Synology’s choice of chip striking, since both Intel processors will gradually belong in a museum. The chips are based on the 14 nm Broadwell architecture and have been in circulation since early 2016. That means Synology is building two brand new pieces of hardware around chips that are over seven years old.

The processors are undoubtedly still powerful, but there are now significantly more up-to-date, modern and economical alternatives, both from Intel and AMD. Synology often fails to equip its new servers with the most modern chips, and that in itself isn’t a disaster: as long as the performance is sufficient and the user experience is great, the age of the internals doesn’t matter much. In this case, Synology goes way back in time.

More specifications

The rest of the specs are less hairline scratches. For example, Synology equips the server with six RJ45 ports, four of which only support 1GbE, but two still support 10GbE by default. All support link aggregation and failover. Synology also offers a dedicated out-of-band management port for remote management and monitoring via Active Insight service.

The device itself can read and write files at 6.2 GB/s and 3 GB/s respectively, although of course the actual speed depends on the combination of HDDs and SSDs and the configuration chosen. The servers come with the latest version of Synology DiskStation Manager, including applications such as backup, sync, and a built-in hypervisor for virtual machines.

Synology also states that both devices are expandable with up to seven RX1222sas expansion units. This means that the maximum total capacity of the systems is 1.7 PB.

The SA3610 and SA3410 are available now. The recommended retail price for the SA3410 is 5828.90 euros. For the SA3610 you pay 7698.90 euros. The prices are exclusive of VAT.