Computer takes around 20 seconds before it fully starts booting.


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19 minutes ago, DevTech said:

Most GPU cards have a poorly designed cooling system. The intake is the hot air right next to the motherboard power circuits etc and then they push that hot air through a cooler to exhaust it outside the case. So take the side off your computer and blowing a fan at the GPU intake area is a quick way to test GPU cooling because in every case it will be a major improvement.

 

BTW what is the brand and model of your GPU card?

Gigabyte G1 GTX 1070

22 minutes ago, DevTech said:

Most GPU cards have a poorly designed cooling system. The intake is the hot air right next to the motherboard power circuits etc and then they push that hot air through a cooler to exhaust it outside the case. So take the side off your computer and blowing a fan at the GPU intake area is a quick way to test GPU cooling because in every case it will be a major improvement.

 

BTW what is the brand and model of your GPU card?

 

good points Dev, also bare in mind the initial Power on, most GPUs pull a full draw, as much as in full 3D mode in a lot of cases. also check Quickboot is enabled, as in not checking all system ram fully, ive seen that sometimes slow a post result also.

 

**edit** just saw you posted a 1070 card spec, what is the 12V Amps rating on your PSU? are you using any power adapters or pure PCI-e power plugs? 

1 minute ago, Mando said:

good points Dev, also bare in mind the initial Power on, most GPUs pull a full draw, as much as in full 3D mode in a lot of cases. also check Quickboot is enabled, as in not checking all system ram fully, ive seen that sometimes slow a post result also.

You will have to review the last posts on page 2.

 

The post problem was fixed with a new power supply.

 

We are now debugging a mysteriously crashing GPU and your help will be most welcome!

 

On 5/11/2017 at 10:33 PM, Emn1ty said:

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2, 80+ GOLD 750W

 

I am not hesitant on buying it, I just haven't had the time to go to the store and get one.

woah mate you dont need near that power for a 1070, heck im running a FE 1080ti on the sig rig with an EVGA 650W G2 43Amps on 12v rail. A 650 will happily power a 1070, multiple raid volumes and prettymuch anything you throw at it.

 

EVGA PSUS get a big thumbs up from me, just remember to upload your receipt and register it direct to EVGA, so you get the full 5 year warranty.

6 minutes ago, DevTech said:

You will have to review the last posts on page 2.

 

The post problem was fixed with a new power supply.

 

We are now debugging a mysteriously crashing GPU and your help will be most welcome!

 

ahh doh sorry OP :) my bad.

 

lemme put thinking cap on.

 

what is the message with the BSOD? It isnt "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" by any chance is it? If so double and triple check the PCI-e connectors are snug both on the PSU (if its modular) and the card.

Make sure they are plugged into the PCI-e sockets on the modular PSU and not any of the devices sockets, on EVGAs they fit into all of them.

Edited by Mando
1 hour ago, Mando said:

woah mate you dont need near that power for a 1070, heck im running a FE 1080ti on the sig rig with an EVGA 650W G2 43Amps on 12v rail. A 650 will happily power a 1070, multiple raid volumes and prettymuch anything you throw at it.

I merely bought it cause it's what I had previously, though I could return it for a lower power one now that I know what the issue is and save myself some money.

 

1 hour ago, Mando said:

ahh doh sorry OP :) my bad.

 

lemme put thinking cap on.

 

what is the message with the BSOD? It isnt "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" by any chance is it? If so double and triple check the PCI-e connectors are snug both on the PSU (if its modular) and the card.

Make sure they are plugged into the PCI-e sockets on the modular PSU and not any of the devices sockets, on EVGAs they fit into all of them.

That wasn't the error, but it was something similar. The error I got (which I can't remember and appears to not be in my search history) led me to the /scannow command which turned up no problems. I can however attempt to swap the old PSU in and make sure they are connected properly and if all works as normal then I might not need a new PSU at all.

So I tried to reproduce the issue with 3DMark, and got it reproduced. I also logged the system status with Open Hardware Monitor.

Open Hardware Monitor Log

 

Event Report from Windows 10

 

kQjQFT4.png

1 hour ago, Emn1ty said:

So I tried to reproduce the issue with 3DMark, and got it reproduced. I also logged the system status with Open Hardware Monitor.

Open Hardware Monitor Log

 

Event Report from Windows 10

 

 

I'm not sure what you think you are seeing.

 

Most likely you have one or more hardware issues that are causing software to fail.

 

9 minutes ago, DevTech said:

I'm not sure what you think you are seeing.

 

Most likely you have one or more hardware issues that are causing software to fail.

 

I'm not seeing anything specific, just trying to gather information to point me in the right direction (with help from others).

After several more tests with 3DMark whilst downclocking my gpu with MSI Afterburner (though the gpu didn't seem to be obeying those changes very well) I was presented another BSOD with a different error reading "video scheduler internal error". Not sure if this is a result of downclocking or a result of a slowly dying GPU.

 

This computer has been giving me trouble since day one, and I'm kind of at my wits end as to why I'm getting so many problems with presumably brand new hardware.

6 minutes ago, Emn1ty said:

I'm not seeing anything specific, just trying to gather information to point me in the right direction (with help from others).

After several more tests with 3DMark whilst downclocking my gpu with MSI Afterburner (though the gpu didn't seem to be obeying those changes very well) I was presented another BSOD with a different error reading "video scheduler internal error". Not sure if this is a result of downclocking or a result of a slowly dying GPU.

 

This computer has been giving me trouble since day one, and I'm kind of at my wits end as to why I'm getting so many problems with presumably brand new hardware.

It does not feel to me like there is any problem with your GPU. BTW slowing down the RAM in the card is probably more useful as a test.

 

You have brand new hardware all around so the most likely culprits are initially defective components and incompatibilities between specific components. I have seen hardware incompatibilities that end up only being repairable by swapping good hardware into computers where it wants to work. Other times a BIOS update or system update does the trick. Almost never will it be a video device driver issue due to the fact there are only NVIDIA and AMD so the telemetry those guys have is insanely huge - no video problem stays hidden to AMD and NVIDIA.

 

One area to watch closely will be any sort of chipset/cpu drivers or utils from AMD to fix issues in their new Rizen stuff. In the past that sort of thing has appeared in the AMD forums well before it gets pushed out as an update from Microsoft.

 

Also make sure your BIOS mode is Manual and you have a reasonable idea of what settings to change by reading the manual etc. Try running the PCIe bus at 99 instead of 100 to make sure it is not being auto overclocked. Also slowing down the system RAM about 30% during the period of solving this problem is a good idea. Underclocking the CPU by 20% for a while is also useful to eliminate auto settings in the BIOS.

 

bit of a curveball, but is your PC connected to a surge protected socket at all? 

21 hours ago, Emn1ty said:

I merely bought it cause it's what I had previously, though I could return it for a lower power one now that I know what the issue is and save myself some money.

 

That wasn't the error, but it was something similar. The error I got (which I can't remember and appears to not be in my search history) led me to the /scannow command which turned up no problems. I can however attempt to swap the old PSU in and make sure they are connected properly and if all works as normal then I might not need a new PSU at all.

dont get me wrong, its a cracking PSU the EVGA, a bit of overkill for the 1070 but a good PSU.

 

I never scrimp on the PSU on a game srig, its the heart of the system, good stable clean power.

1 hour ago, Mando said:

bit of a curveball, but is your PC connected to a surge protected socket at all? 

It is connected to a surge protected power strip.

 

11 hours ago, DevTech said:

It does not feel to me like there is any problem with your GPU. BTW slowing down the RAM in the card is probably more useful as a test.


You have brand new hardware all around so the most likely culprits are initially defective components and incompatibilities between specific components. I have seen hardware incompatibilities that end up only being repairable by swapping good hardware into computers where it wants to work.

First thing I'm going to try is putting my old GTX 770 in and see if I get similar crashes. That should rule out the PSU pretty quickly.

 

Quote

Other times a BIOS update or system update does the trick. Almost never will it be a video device driver issue due to the fact there are only NVIDIA and AMD so the telemetry those guys have is insanely huge - no video problem stays hidden to AMD and NVIDIA.

I will check for another bios update for the motherboard and drivers for the chipset. I agree it could just be new hardware, but seeing as searches are pulling up topics from Jan/Apr this year I feel this is something that's already been fixed or is a different issue entirely.

 

Quote

Also make sure your BIOS mode is Manual and you have a reasonable idea of what settings to change by reading the manual etc. Try running the PCIe bus at 99 istead of 100 to make sure it is not being auto overclocked. Also slowing down the system RAM about 30% during the period of solving this problem is a good idea. Underclocking the CPU by 20% for a while is also useful to eliminate auto settings in the BIOS.

I'll look at how to accomplish these things. While I am not new to building computers, I am new to having such obscure and difficult to diagnose problems. It may seem like common sense to some people but I've never had to deal with this kind of thing in previous builds. It's all new territory as I typically don't like messing with anything; preferring to leave it stock.

  • 3 weeks later...

So, I think I figured out the problem. My RAM was not properly clocked. I change a setting to a preset of 2666MHz and now the 3DMark benchmark passes. Am going to install the most recent gfx drivers after setting a restore point and run another benchmark to see if it's still stable.

 

That took a long time, and it was definitely something stupid simple.

2 hours ago, Emn1ty said:

So, I think I figured out the problem. My RAM was not properly clocked. I change a setting to a preset of 2666MHz and now the 3DMark benchmark passes. Am going to install the most recent gfx drivers after setting a restore point and run another benchmark to see if it's still stable.

 

That took a long time, and it was definitely something stupid simple.

May 24: "It does not feel to me like there is any problem with your GPU. BTW slowing down the RAM in the card is probably more useful as a test."

 

Modern GPU RAM has almost no headroom. And very little effect on real world performance either. My standard advice is always run GPU RAM at stock and if the card is "factory overclocked" just set the stupid mild RAM overclock back to stock speeds anyways.

 

Might be a dumb suggestion, but have you disabled devices on the motherboard you aren't using, specifically the onboard GPU?

 

I have a mobo from 2013 (Asus H87-Plus) and I get to Windows Desktop in around 5 secs. I haven't configured any RAM settings (all auto) for the 16GB I have :p

1 minute ago, Steven P. said:

Might be a dumb suggestion, but have you disabled devices on the motherboard you aren't using, specifically the onboard GPU?

 

I have a mobo from 2013 (Asus H87-Plus) and I get to Windows Desktop in around 5 secs. I haven't configured any RAM settings (all auto) for the 16GB I have :p

He is talking about the RAM on his NVIDIA 1070 video card.

 

His boot problem was solved by a replacing a power supply which then allowed him to focus on a GPU problem. In some ideal world, I guess this would have properly been separated into two forum threads.

 

Just now, DevTech said:

He is talking about the RAM on his NVIDIA 1070 video card.

 

His boot problem was solved by a replacing a power supply which then allowed him to focus on a GPU problem. In some ideal world, I guess this would have properly been separated into two forum threads.

 

Ah right cheers! I have a 1050Ti GTX and it doesn't require additional power connectors, well happy with it!

8 hours ago, DevTech said:

May 24: "It does not feel to me like there is any problem with your GPU. BTW slowing down the RAM in the card is probably more useful as a test."

 

Modern GPU RAM has almost no headroom. And very little effect on real world performance either. My standard advice is always run GPU RAM at stock and if the card is "factory overclocked" just set the stupid mild RAM overclock back to stock speeds anyways.

 

The thing is, I had tried downclocking the ram to no effect.. However, upon selecting a preset in the BIOS for the ram at 2666MHz it's now working. It was sort of just a shot in the dark but it seems to have worked. Was able to play Mass Effect for about an hour and a half with no crashing.

 

I apologize if I took longer to get to the bottom of this issue than expected, while I have been trying to fix this issue I've not been able to give it my full attention for some time. Most of it has been restricted to tinkering here or there and since I work full time writing and designing software my mind isn't always able to transfer from 9 hours of code to another 2-3 hours of troubleshooting a computer in the evening. Sometimes I just want to turn my brain off.

3 hours ago, Emn1ty said:

The thing is, I had tried downclocking the ram to no effect.. However, upon selecting a preset in the BIOS for the ram at 2666MHz it's now working. It was sort of just a shot in the dark but it seems to have worked. Was able to play Mass Effect for about an hour and a half with no crashing.

 

I apologize if I took longer to get to the bottom of this issue than expected, while I have been trying to fix this issue I've not been able to give it my full attention for some time. Most of it has been restricted to tinkering here or there and since I work full time writing and designing software my mind isn't always able to transfer from 9 hours of code to another 2-3 hours of troubleshooting a computer in the evening. Sometimes I just want to turn my brain off.

Actually, it's unclear whether you have been talking about the RAM on your 1070 or your main system RAM on the mobo.

 

I have been talking about the GDDR5 RAM on the GPU NVIDIA 1070.

 

2 hours ago, DevTech said:

Actually, it's unclear whether you have been talking about the RAM on your 1070 or your main system RAM on the mobo.

 

I have been talking about the GDDR5 RAM on the GPU NVIDIA 1070.

 

I have been talking about the system ram to clarify. If I was talking about my gpu's ram I'd have specifically made that statement, however I am sorry for any confusion.

8 hours ago, Emn1ty said:

I have been talking about the system ram to clarify. If I was talking about my gpu's ram I'd have specifically made that statement, however I am sorry for any confusion.

Clarity is always good.

 

GPU RAM is tightly speced and is completely NOT worth altering.

 

The system RAM will work with a large overclock depending on the RAM and also a huge underclock. For RAM speed to be changed it must run asynchronously to the FSB speed, otherwise there will be horrible results. On a modern CPU, async RAM is just fine. Also on a modern CPU, RAM speed is not much of a performance factor due to extensive CPU RAM caching, so it's always a good idea to avoid pushing RAM to favor increased system stability instead, particularly as RAM of 32 gigs and 64 gigs is getting more common.

 

You must have failed to put the mobo BIOS in full manual so when you changed the RAM speed the FSB was also being altered or more likely the reverse where you were altering the FSB speed and seeing a corresponding RAM speed change without noticing the other instabilities being introduced. Something along those lines.

 

The current stock settings should work out just fine.

 

  • 1 month later...

Why do some computers seem to do nothing at boot up?

 

I have one that is pretty good (I don't even see the POST screen, it just gets straight to the logo).

 

I have another one (with 6 hard drives attached) that takes longer (okay, that's clear, it's checking the drives), but then regularly has a black screen with a flashing dash at the top left.  The screen sort of "blinks" a few times, then it gets to the logo.

1 hour ago, Sir Topham Hatt said:

Why do some computers seem to do nothing at boot up?

 

I have one that is pretty good (I don't even see the POST screen, it just gets straight to the logo).

 

I have another one (with 6 hard drives attached) that takes longer (okay, that's clear, it's checking the drives), but then regularly has a black screen with a flashing dash at the top left.  The screen sort of "blinks" a few times, then it gets to the logo.

Is network boot enabled for that PC? Or maybe just check the boot order? :p

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It seems like other customers have lodged complaints about them, as TerraMaster now includes two spare rubber feet in the box, in case any of the preinstalled ones are lost; however, this seems more like a papering over the cracks solution rather than actually fixing the issue with better quality rubber stand-offs. There are also four screws that must be removed in order to access the internals. Teardown Upon removing the four screws, you can slide the device out of its shell to reveal the three NVMe M.2 slots (PCIe 3.0 X1) and single SODIMM slot connector, which is populated with a single 16GB DDR5 4800MT/s module. I added a couple of MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs (2 x 4TB) that can be availed on Amazon for $492.99 that TEAMGROUP supplied us with, along with a 250GB 970 Evo Plus that my colleague Chris White sent me by accident and let me keep a few years ago. As I have said in previous reviews, TerraMaster support staff actually encourage installing whatever you want on their devices, and happily, the USB port for the bootloader is now easily accessible should you want to use it for your own flavor of NAS OS, such as TrueNAS, Unraid, or maybe Xpenology. Yes, because TerraMaster has now switched to a 256 GB NAND Flash card (3rd photo above) for the TOS bootloader. This is also replaceable, but you can also simply add a USB bootloader, access the BIOS, and tell the F4-425 Pro to boot from that instead of the Flash card. Unlike earlier iterations of TerraMaster NAS, you don't have to tear this down any further than the four screws on the outer shell in order to be able to access and manage the memory, NVMe slots, and USB bootloader. However, if you need to access the NAND Flash card or CMOS battery, then eight more screws (four on each side) need to be removed in order to take off the rear panel with the 120mm fan, and then the motherboard can be lifted off and removed from the SATA connector PCB. There's also no risk of threading the screw holes, because the four that hold the shell in place are metal on metal, while the screws that hold the rear panel on do screw into plastic. Either way, like last time when I reviewed the F4-425 plus, I was just happier to see larger screws being used. Overall, it follows some great improvements in build quality from the 2024 series and earlier. Setup BIOS The F4-425 Pro includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to the USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to a USB stick with an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Setup is roughly the same as the F4-425 Plus, along with the new TOS 7 setup dialogs, so there will be no surprises here. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4-425 Pro can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local. If that doesn't work, you can use the local address assigned via DHCP, which you can find using the TNAS PC desktop application, which is essentially a TerraMaster NAS finder. The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. It must be noted that the Security Advisor still contains (in my opinion) a pretty major bug in that if you enable SPC and then do the required rebooting, the Security Advisor still says that SPC is disabled. TerraMaster provided the following statement about it: It is disappointing that TOS 7 has been in beta since December, and this OOBE issue is still there. Shutdown option has moved Instead of a Taskbar option to manage the NAS, all of these options have been moved to a "Start panel", initially I didn't see it and my contact had to show me how to power off the F4-425 Pro. To logout, reboot or power off you can find those controls at the top right of the Panel. It is also possible to power off through the TNAS mobile app beta. Storage setup Above, you can see the steps I took to create the Storage Pools and Volumes. I made a second Storage Pool using TRAID on two 4TB MP44Q SSDs (which, in this instance, is similar to RAID 5), and finally, I added the 250GB 970 Evo Plus drive as Hyper Cache on Storage Pool 1 in Balanced mode. Registering If you decide not to lock down the F4-425 Pro in Security Isolation Mode (blocking all external connections), then you could set up a TNAS device ID through the Remote Access setting in the Control Panel (which must be unique). This works in combination with an online TerraMaster account. TOS 7 TNAS Online Creating a TerraMaster account and linking the device online activates the warranty when you provide proof of purchase and the serial number, but it also gives you access through the TNAS mobile app, which allows you to complete certain operationsб including powering off and restarting the NAS remotely. A TNAS mobile update is required to gain access through TOS 7, and this is provided on the TerraMaster website, as it is not yet on Google Play. The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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