Aoostar WTR Max Review: The Almost Perfect NAS Mini PC

I have been super excited to get my hands on this particular NAS device – the Aoostar WTRMax. At first glance, it looks like a storage-packed NAS box, but under the hood, this machine is a powerful combination of compute, RAM, and lots of storage options. With support for up to 11 drives and the new Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, the WTRMax can be something like a hyperconverged node device for your home lab, NAS, and virtualization host. Let’s deep dive into what the Aoostar WTRMax offers and if it is a worthy purchase for your home lab fleet.

A NAS or a Mini PC?

The standout feature of the Aoostar WTRMax includes massive internal storage capacity and is a relatively small form factor. It supports:

• 6 x 2.5″ SATA drives
• 2 x NVMe M.2 slots x2 slots
• 2 x NVMe M.2 slots x1 slots
• 1 x 2280 M.2 slot on bottom side x2
• 1 x TF card reader

That’s a total of 11 storage bays. more than what most full-sized desktops or even some commercial NAS enclosures have. This makes the WTRMax a great hybrid device that can be a NAS/mini PC in terms of size and power. However, it acts like a full-fledged NAS with serious expandability.

For homelabbers looking to consolidate services, I think this little NAS unit is almost perfect for running a hypervisor or something like TrueNAS Scale with mirrored NVMe storage for VMs and ZFS pools across the SATA bays. It’s perfectly suited for roles like:

• Hyper-converged home lab server
• All-in-one media center with Jellyfin or Plex
• Self-hosted cloud storage using Nextcloud or Seafile
• Docker swarm or Kubernetes node with CephFS
• Backup target using NAKIVO or Veeam Agent

No Aoostar NAS operating system

Unlike other vendors I have tested, like Terramaster, Ugreen and others, there isn’t an “Aoostar NAS operating system” that is installed. This unit comes with Windows installed. However, I don’t think this is a downside. Rather, I think most that purchase these kinds of NAS devices don’t want or like the factory NAS operating systems that come preinstalled and one of the first things you see asked about other devices is, “Can it run TrueNAS, or can I install Proxmox?”. So with that said, I like the fact that this unit acts like and comes like just a basic mini PC.

I like to save off the Windows 11 disks on these mini PCs and play around using another NVMe drive. However, you can do what you like in this department and either use the existing drive or replace it with a drive of your choosing to load your NAS operating system like TrueNAS or a hypervisor like Proxmox.

Performance with AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS

Aoostar didn’t hold back in the CPU department. The WTRMax ships with the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, part of the Hawk Point refresh for 2024–2025. This 8-core, 16-thread chip is built on Zen 4 architecture and includes integrated Radeon 780M graphics and is one of the best iGPUs you can get today.

Specs summary:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO
• GPU: Radeon 780M (RDNA 3)
• RAM: Dual SO-DIMM DDR5, came with 32 GB (unofficially 128 GB supported)
• Storage: Up to 11 drives
• LAN: Dual 2.5GbE ports
• Video Output: HDMI 2.1 + USB-C DP

With DDR5 memory support and a 54W TDP, the 8845HS is a very performant processor. It’s more than capable of hosting several VMs, running Docker workloads or even Kubernetes. You can use it to act as transcoding compute for 4K Plex streaming. The Radeon 780M can even handle light gaming and GPU-accelerated AI inference with tools like Ollama and Stable Diffusion.

For many home labs, this will be a powerful device to host workloads and consolidate various machines into one.

Networking

The WTRMax is outfitted with dual 10 gig and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The 2.5 GbE is quickly becoming the standard in 2025 for home lab users. This allows you to perform bonding of both ports for increased throughput or separating management and data traffic across VLANs. I really like the dual 10 and 2.5 connections since this gives you 2 different speed variants to use for networking, like 10 gig for storage connections and dual 2.5GbE for management and VM traffic, etc.

Network highlights:

• 2 x 10 GbE SFP ports (Intel)
• 2 x 2.5GbE LAN (Intel)
• Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 (via M.2 module)
• HDMI 2.1 and USB-C with DisplayPort
• Multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports
• USB4 upgrade available on select models

After unboxing pics

Below are a few of the pictures I took with the Aoostar WTR Max. I think the WTR Max has a very modern and sleek look to it.

After removing the M.2 bay. You can see the M.2 configuration here. One disappointment is that the M.2 slots are not full speed. You can see that (2) slots are x1 and (2) slots are x2 slots.

This is one of the really great features and capabilities of the WTR Max – the connectivity and I/O ports. This NAS has (2) 10 gig SFP ports and (2) Intel 2.5 GbE ports. Also, there is an OCuLink port, USB4, HDMI, and Display port, along with (2) USB 3.x ports.

Here is a closer look at the ports.

On this unit, you can remove the bottom panel lid by removing the 4 screws on the bottom side of the unit. This is where the RAM is installed as well as the factory-installed M.2 NVMe drive that has Windows 11. If you want to retain your Windows 11 install, you can replace this M.2 drive with your own M.2 drive and run a different operating system. And, of course, you can install over the top of Windows 11 as well. Just a call out there.

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Storage

Storage is where the WTRMax becomes a class of its own. Most mini PCs offer one or two NVMe slots. The WTRMax gives you:

• 2 x M.2 NVMe (PCIe 4.0 x2)
• 2 x M.2 NVMe (PCIe 4.0 x1)
• 1 x 2280 M.2 slot on bottom side (PCIe 4.0 x1)
• 6 x 2.5” SATA bays (with hot swap support)

The six SATA bays are accessible behind a front-loading panel, and while they’re not hot-swappable like enterprise NAS trays, they’re easily user-serviceable. Each bay is powered and cooled via the internal backplane, and Aoostar includes a large quiet fan to handle thermal load.

With Proxmox or TrueNAS, you could run mirrored NVMe boot drives, a striped SATA pool for high-speed access, and a cold archive mirror for longer-term backups. Few other systems in this form factor offer that level of storage tiering and performance.

Memory supports ECC!

Yes, you saw that correctly. This unit supports ECC memory which is above and beyond what you get with a lot of mini PCs or NAS devices in this space. You can see that option here on the Aoostar configuration page:

Power draw and thermals

One of the important aspects of a home lab, especially ones that are running 24×7 is the power draw and thermal considerations. This can definitely add up over time, in terms of your electricity bill and cooling costs.

Aoostar designed the WTRMax to balance performance and thermal efficiency. The 8845HS is a 54W chip, the case includes:

• Large rear exhaust fan
• Internal CPU blower-style cooler
• Open airflow channels around all drive bays

In my testing of both idle power draw in Proxmox to full power load with the Linux stress utility in Proxmox and S-TUI loaded. I saw the following.

Idle power draw in Proxmox hovered anywhere from 36-40 watts.

With all cores at 100%, I saw roughly 95.7 watts of power draw.

Compatible with most: Proxmox, VMware, TrueNAS, Ubuntu, and more

Out of the box, the WTRMax comes with Windows 11 Pro, but let’s be honest—most buyers are going to install Linux, Proxmox, or TrueNAS. The hardware is well-supported:

• Proxmox VE 8.x – installs and runs with full NVMe and 2.5GbE support
• VMware – the WTR Max has Intel 10 gig network adapters, so yes it is compatible!
• TrueNAS Scale – detects all six SATA ports and boots from USB or NVMe
• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS – runs with full GPU acceleration for desktop or container workloads
• Debian, Rocky Linux, and Arch Linux are also reported working

Also, it is compatible with VMware ESXi. All of the adapters are Intel based, including the 2.5 GbE and 10 GbE adapters.

Pros of the WTR Max

There is a LOT to like about this NAS unit. In fact, it is one of the best that I have tested and had my hands on. Note the following pros that I think are good with this unit.

• It supports ECC memory!
• The CPU is a uniform process with 8 cores and 16 threads
• Max power draw is sub 100 watts which is actually really good. My efficient older supermicros drew around 100 watts with the old Xeon-D processors. This is a much newer and more powerful CPU and draws around the same
• Good cooling on the unit. Lots of fans in the unit to keep things cool
• Lots of storage! To say this thing has a lot of storage options is an understatement
• Great for hybrid storage, since it mixes both spinning disks and M.2 storage
• Easy to get inside of. It has thumbscrews to remove the back fan panel and also 4 screws to remove the bottom lid to expose the RAM and internal M.2 slot.
• It has an OCuLink port for adding an external video card if you want for AI/ML workloads
• It has all Intel-based NICs in the unit which means it is compatible with just about anything you want to install, including VMware ESXi.
• Drives are easy to install with a somewhat toolless design
• Price – see below!

Downsides and Things to Know

No device is perfect, and there are a few things about the WTR Max to note that are bummers:

• High idle power draw – This processor is not the most efficient at idle since it draws around 35-40 watts without any workloads idling in Proxmox.
• M.2 slots are not full PCIe-4.0 speeds. All are either x1 or x2 slots which at best cuts the speed in half
• Limited expandability: There are no PCIe slots, so what you see is what you get in terms of hardware. However, there is the OCuLink port so it kind of makes up for this missing expandibility option internally.
• Some noise under load: The fan is quiet at idle but ramps up when all bays are populated with spinning disks.

Still, these are reasonable tradeoffs for such a compact, storage-dense device.

Price

The Aoostar WTR Max is extremely reasonably priced in my opinion. You can get it directly from Aoostar for $699 with no RAM/SSD/OS, which in my opinion is EXTREMELY reasonable for the hardware you are getting.

• AOOSTAR WTR MAX AMD R7 PRO 8845HS 11 Bays Mini PC（Pre-sale, shipping o – AOOSTAR Mini PC

Should You Buy the Aoostar WTRMax?

If you’re looking to build a compact home server in 2025 that can:

• Run Proxmox, TrueNAS, or Docker containers
• Transcode 4K media with iGPU acceleration
• Host virtual machines or containers
• Store up to 11 drives in one box
• Support both 10 gig and 2.5GbE networking for fast NAS and lab traffic

…then I think the Aoostar WTRMax is one of the most versatile mini PCs on the market.

Its biggest strength is its flexibility. You can use it for full virtualization stacks, storage-dense NAS duty, and I think it is efficient enough to leave running 24/7 without blowing your power budget.

Wrapping up

The Aoostar WTRMax hits a sweet spot in the home lab and mini PC market. In 2025, more users want devices that can be used for workloads without sacrificing performance or expandability. I think the Aoostar WTR Max delivers. With Ryzen 7 8845HS performance, Radeon 780M graphics, dual 10 and 2.5GbE, and room for 11 drives this thing is a home lab power house.

For home server enthusiasts, content creators, homelabbers, and even small offices, the Aoostar WTRMax is worth a serious look.