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The Synology DiskStation DS212j features a very clean professional looking design. Like many of Synology’s lower end products the DS212j is white rather than black, which seems to be reserved for the high-end products. Even so, the plastic white case is very clean and should blend into most environments very well.
The design really is very simple as the outer housing is an almost featureless shell. Whereas the DS712+ and many other Synology products feature removable hot-swappable bays, the DS212j is a fall back to the old ways.
In order to install the hard drives the entire case cover must first be removed, which means the hard drives you install into the DS212j are really meant to stay in there. This is probably not so much of an issue for home or small office users, and it is a cheaper design which helps Synology keep costs down. From the front the DS212j has a dark gray strip down the right hand side which features the power button and a number of imbedded LED lights which indicate system status, network activity and of course hard drive activity.
Around the back is a custom 92mm fan grill, two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port and a 12v DC input. It’s a very simple setup really and the DS212j does not support the USB quick copy feature that we often find on the more expensive models. The DS212j measures 165 x 100 x 225.5mm and weighs 940 grams without any hard drives installed. In terms of power consumption when active the unit sucks down just 17.6 watts, while it can consume as little as 5.5 watts when in hibernation mode.
As we mentioned earlier the DS212j is driven by a 1.2GHz processor, the Marvell Kirkwood 88F6281 (88F6-B1A2) SoC (System on Chip). This controller chip includes a 256KB L2 cache and typically operates between 1.0 and 1.2GHz. The Marvell chip doesn't feature any kind of passive cooling even when operating at 1.2GHz, as is the case in the DS212j. The Kirkwood 88F6281 also supports a pair of Gigabit Ethernet connections, USB 2.0, two SATA 3Gb/s ports and a PCI Express x1 port. The DS212j utilizes the Gigabit Ethernet support using a single connection, while the SATA ports are used to support two hard drives.
The motherboard has no SATA data or power connectors as found on early models. Rather there is a PCI Express x1 port which connects to another PCB featuring the hot-swappable connectors that rise up into the hard drive bay area. There are also two 3-pin fan headers located on the PCB which are used by default to power the single 92mm fan. Unlike past Synology NAS devices that we've looked at, the DS212j doesn't feature a SO-DIMM for its memory. Instead, memory is soldered directly to the PCB. There is a single DDR2 memory chip providing a 256MB capacity, the Hynix H5PS1G63EFR S6C module works at 800MHz using CAS6-6-6 timings.
There is just one more obvious ingredient that must be added: the hard drives. The DS212j compatibility list is quite broad, supporting a wide range of Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital hard drives. |
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