GIGABYTE GR-EZI04H 4-Bay NAS

Here we get our first look at the GIGABYTE GR-EZI04H 4-Bay NAS. The front door locks to help keep your drives secure. The front door is plastic, but this unit is designed for your home or small office so we don't expect CIA level security.

With the door open, we have easy access to the four drive sleds.

The power button is at the top and hides behind the door. This is important for security since you don't want others coming long and turning your NAS off. There are a number of status LEDs on the unit, eight in two rows and a power status light in the middle of the NAS on the left side.

Each drive sled has a locking mechanism on it so you can add another layer of security to the storage components.

The NAS has a small footprint and uses a closed cover design so all of the airflow passes over the HDDs.

Cooling comes from dual 80mm low speed fans. The system is quiet at all times, a must for a home NAS.

Here we have the connection panel. At the top is a VGA display port. Further down we found dual USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports and then the dual gigabit Ethernet.

You may not realize how important the bottom of a NAS is, but when you have a unit without rubber feet, you learn really fast. Vibration can transfer from the drives to the desk and vibrate everything including items off your desk. GIGABYTE did a good job and the GR-EZI04H 4 and we couldn't hear the Western Digital RED HDDs even when seeking random data.

The drive bays are solid and can hold both 3.5"� and 2.5"� form factor drives.

We popped the top to have a look around the NAS. Sadly, the SODIMM slot wasn't located on this side of the board, so user upgrades aren't as easy as they could have been.

Here you can see how tightly packed everything is inside the NAS. This is how GIGABYTE managed to keep the overall size reduced to such a small footprint on your desk or shelf.