Your file server's either a single spinning drive that'll croak mid-backup, or a deep rack unit that ate half your cabinet. You need eight bays of hot-swap storage, enough grunt to run VMs and serve a team without lagging, and it has to fit the space you actually have.
The TS-873AEU-RP-4G does all three. 2U chassis at just 297 mm deep — drops into a small media cabinet or a tight rack with cabling already in there. AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B quad-core (8 threads, 2.2 GHz) runs virtual machines and multi-user file access without breaking a sweat. Two 2.5GbE ports keep transfers snappy without a separate NIC. Redundant 300W PSUs mean one power hiccup doesn't take your whole setup offline.
Four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (2× Type A, 2× Type C), two M.2 PCIe Gen3 x1 slots for NVMe cache or Edge TPU AI image recognition, and a PCIe Gen3 x8 slot if you later want GPU pass-through or a 5/10GbE adapter. Ships with 4 GB DDR4 — expand to 64 GB when your workload grows. Wake on LAN keeps it manageable from across the office
| brand | QNAP |
| model | TS-873AEU-RP-4G |
| form_factor | 2U Rackmount |
| cpu | AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B 4-core/8-thread 2.2 GHz |
| architecture | 64-bit x86 |
| system_memory | 4 GB SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 4 GB) |
| max_memory | 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) |
| memory_slots | 2 x SODIMM DDR4 |
| flash_memory | 5 GB (Dual boot OS protection) |
| drive_bays | 8 x 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s |
| hot_swappable | 1 |
| m2_slots | 2 x M.2 2280 (PCIe Gen3 x1) |
| ethernet_2_5gbe | 2 ports (2.5G/1G/100M, also 10M) |
| wake_on_lan | 1 |
| pcie_slot | 1 x PCIe Gen3 x8 |
| usb_ports | 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) – 2 x Type A, 2 x Type C |
| encryption_engine | AES-NI |
| depth_mm | 297.4 |
| power_supply | 300W PSU (x2), 100-240V |
| fans | 3 x 60mm, 12VDC |
| operating_temperature | 0 - 40 °C |
| led_indicators | HDD 1-8, Status, LAN, USB, Power |
