Eight bays is the point where the drives cost more than the NAS. Eight new 16TB WD Red Pro drives come to about $5,700. The boxes in this guide run from about $930 to $2,100 diskless, so the drives are 70 to 90 percent of every 16TB total we priced. Pick the 8-bay NAS for its CPU, network and warranty, then budget most of the money for disks.
We checked every price, seller and spec on October 21, 2026, against the maker spec sheets and the Amazon US listings. This is a spec-verified guide, not a hands-on test. The picks are split into two jobs: a big media library, where Quick Sync and capacity per dollar decide, and a small office, where ECC, ZFS or DSM and warranty length decide. For fewer drives, the 4-bay NAS guide covers the same ground one size down.
8-bay NAS picks at a glance
We ranked the six picks by job, with the diskless price band and the total once eight 16TB Red Pro drives are added. Usable space is the same 96 TB in RAID 6 on all of them, so the populated column is the real comparison:
| Pick | Best for | CPU | Network | ECC | Box | With 8x 16TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UGREEN DXP8800 Plus | Plex or Jellyfin library | Core i5-1235U, Quick Sync | 2x 10GbE | No | $1,350 to $1,400 | about $7,100 |
| QNAP TS-832PX-4G | Cheap bulk storage | ARM Alpine AL324 | 2x 10GbE SFP+, 2x 2.5GbE | No | $1,100 to $1,150 | about $6,800 |
| QNAP TS-873A-8G | ZFS on a budget | Ryzen V1500B | 2x 2.5GbE, 10GbE by card | Supported, ships non-ECC | $1,400 to $1,450 | about $7,150 |
| Synology DS1825+ | Windows and AD office | Ryzen V1500B | 2x 2.5GbE, 10GbE by card | Yes | $1,450 to $1,500 | about $7,200 |
| Synology DS1823xs+ | Business-critical, 5-year warranty | Ryzen V1780B | 10GbE + 2x 1GbE | Yes | $2,000 to $2,100 | about $7,750 |
| UniFi UNAS Pro 8 | Rack in a UniFi network | 4-core ARM Cortex-A57 | 2x 10G SFP+, 1x 10GbE | No | $930 to $960 | about $6,650 |
Box prices differ by about $1,100 from the cheapest to the dearest. The spread between eight 12TB and eight 20TB drives is about $2,800, which is why the next section prices the drives before the box. All prices move during the 2026 shortage, so check the current price on Amazon before you order.
How the numbers were collected
Nothing here was benchmarked in our lab, so every figure has a source behind it. Each method below states where its numbers came from, and the sources file for this guide lists every page:
- Prices and sellers: the Amazon affiliate API on October 21, 2026, then a second check of the live product page with a US address, because the seller the API reports and the seller on the page disagreed for one pick.
- Specs: the maker spec page or datasheet first, then an independent review (ServeTheHome, NASCompares, ITPro, How-To Geek) where one exists.
- Usable capacity: RAID 6 keeps six of eight drives for data. The RAIDZ2 figure is 71.0 percent of raw, from the 8-wide row in our measured RAIDZ2 width table.
- Rebuild time: a floor computed as drive capacity divided by the maximum transfer rate in the WD datasheet, not a measured rebuild.
Power figures are the makers’ own unless the text names a review, and not every maker says whether drives were fitted. The TS-832PX has no independent review at all, and the text says so where it matters.
Step 1: Price the drives before the box
New drives sold by Amazon itself came only from WD on the check date. Every new Seagate IronWolf Pro listing was a third-party seller with thin stock, and every Exos below $700 was renewed or recertified:
| Drive | Per drive | 8 drives | RAID 6 usable | Per usable TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD Red Pro 12TB | $520 to $560 | about $4,300 | 72 TB | about $60 |
| WD Red Pro 16TB | $700 to $730 | about $5,700 | 96 TB | about $60 |
| WD Red Pro 20TB | $870 to $910 | about $7,100 | 120 TB | about $59 |
| Seagate Exos X18 16TB, recertified | $490 to $510 | about $4,000 | 96 TB | about $42 |
Cost per usable terabyte is nearly flat across the new Red Pro sizes: about $60 at 12TB and $59 at 20TB. Buy the capacity you need and not the size that looks cheaper per terabyte. The 12TB Red Pro is an air-filled drive rated at 34 dBA idle. The 16TB and 20TB helium models are rated at 20 dBA and draw 3.6 W idle against 6.1 W. In an office or under a desk, that makes 16TB the quieter floor.
WD rates Red Plus for up to 8 bays and Red Pro for any bay count, so a full 8-bay box sits at the Red Plus ceiling. Red Plus is allowed, but Red Pro is the default we would buy for a box that runs office workloads around the clock. Our NAS hard drive guide ranks both by price per terabyte. Every drive here is CMR, which matters for the reasons in our CMR vs SMR explainer.
Recertified drives cut the drive bill by about $1,700 on eight 16TB units. The trade is the warranty: the goHardDrive listing quotes a six-month Seagate replacement warranty, against five years on a new Red Pro. Our recertified drive guide covers when that trade makes sense, and a parity array with a second copy of the data is the case it fits.
Step 2: Size the array for RAID 6 or RAIDZ2
At eight drives of 12TB or more, RAID 6 or RAIDZ2 is the layout to run, because a rebuild reads every surviving drive end to end. The floor for that read, from the transfer rates WD rates them at, is half a day or more:
| Drive | Rated max rate | Rebuild floor | RAID 6 usable | RAIDZ2 reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD Red Pro 12TB | 267 MB/s | 12.5 h | 72 TB (65.5 TiB) | 68.2 TB |
| WD Red Pro 16TB | 259 MB/s | 17.2 h | 96 TB (87.3 TiB) | 90.9 TB |
| WD Red Pro 20TB | 285 MB/s | 19.5 h | 120 TB (109.1 TiB) | 113.6 TB |
These floors assume the outer-track rate for the whole drive and no load from users, so real rebuilds run longer. A single-parity array spends that whole rebuild one drive failure from losing everything, which is the case against RAID 5 at these sizes.
RAIDZ2 reports less space than RAID 6 for the same eight drives, 113.6 TB against 120 TB on 20TB disks, because of ZFS padding and the slop space ZFS reserves at the default record size. The full width table is in our RAIDZ2 drive count guide, where eight is also the widest vdev a single 8-port HBA can run.
Eight 20TB drives also hit a Synology limit. Both Synology datasheets say a volume over 108 TB needs 32 GB of memory or more, and both boxes ship with 8 GB. A single 120 TB RAID 6 volume on either one means raising the RAM to its 32 GB maximum, or splitting the pool into two volumes.
Step 3: Choose a box for a big media library
A media library needs hardware transcoding for remote streams, enough network to move large files, and the lowest box price that still does both. Only one current desktop 8-bay box under $1,500 has an Intel iGPU with Quick Sync.
UGREEN NASync DXP8800 Plus
The DXP8800 Plus runs a 10-core Core i5-1235U with Iris Xe graphics, which gives it Quick Sync for Plex and Jellyfin. It ships with 8 GB of DDR5 (64 GB maximum), two 10GbE ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two NVMe slots, a PCIe x4 slot and a 128 GB boot SSD. UGREEN rates it at 70.39 W in access and 28.99 W with the drives hibernated, and sells it on Amazon itself.
- Drives: third-party drives are supported, with a compatibility list but no lock.
- Other operating systems: the UGREEN warranty page says the hardware warranty stays unchanged if you install a third-party system, which is why it is a common TrueNAS and Unraid box.
- Memory: the DDR5 is on-die ECC only. Intel lists no ECC support for the CPU, so this is not an ECC NAS.
- Warranty: 3 years under the UGREEN warranty policy, even though one block on the product page shows 2.
Skip it if the data needs true ECC or a mature business suite. It is already the high-capacity pick in our Plex and Jellyfin NAS guide. The DXP Ultra guide covers the DXP8800 Ultra at about $1,750 to $1,800, which changes the CPU and the RAM ceiling (96 GB) and little else.
QNAP TS-832PX-4G
The TS-832PX is the cheapest desktop 8-bay box with 10GbE built in, with two 10GbE SFP+ ports and two 2.5GbE ports. Amazon sold it at about $1,100 to $1,150, with five left on the check date. QNAP rates it at 50.9 W typical and 27.9 W in standby with drives fitted.
The CPU is a 4-core ARM Alpine AL324 at 1.7 GHz with 4 GB of non-ECC RAM in one slot (16 GB maximum), and it runs QTS only. That limits it to serving files: no transcoding, no ZFS, and little room for containers or VMs. Its single PCIe slot is Gen2 x2, and QNAP itself notes that a card there will restrict 10GbE performance. The warranty is 2 years, against 3 on the UGREEN, DS1825+ and TS-873A and 5 on the DS1823xs+. We also found no independent review of it. We kept it as a pick anyway. QNAP publishes full specs and power figures, and it is the only desktop 8-bay with 10GbE at this price.
Anything on the box that needs a CPU rules it out. Buy it as a backup target or a bulk media share whose players do their own decoding.
Step 4: Choose a box for a small office
An office box is judged on what happens when something fails: ECC memory, a file system with snapshots, a warranty that covers the service life, and a supported upgrade path to 10GbE. Four picks cover that, from a budget ZFS box to a rack unit for UniFi sites.
QNAP TS-873A-8G
The TS-873A is the cheapest pick here with ZFS and an ECC-capable CPU. It runs a 4-core Ryzen Embedded V1500B with 8 GB of RAM (64 GB maximum). It boots QTS or QuTS hero, the QNAP ZFS system with snapshots and inline compression. Two PCIe Gen3 x4 slots take a 10GbE card and a second card; the onboard ports are two 2.5GbE.
ServeTheHome measured 26 W idle with no drives and a 58 W maximum in its 2021 review, and QNAP rates it at 54.1 W typical with drives. The platform dates from 2021, and its two M.2 slots are Gen3 x1, so NVMe cache is slow. The stock 8 GB is not ECC. QNAP says ECC memory requires removing the pre-installed modules, because ECC and non-ECC cannot be mixed, so matched ECC SODIMMs are an extra cost on top of the box price. Price a 10GbE card from the QNAP compatibility list in from the start too, and plan for 16 GB of RAM for ZFS deduplication; ITPro recommends 32 GB for QuTS hero once 10GbE is added.
Look elsewhere if you want ECC or 10GbE without extra parts, or fast M.2 storage.
Synology DS1825+
The DS1825+ is the pick for an office that already runs Active Directory and wants DSM. It has the same Ryzen V1500B as the TS-873A, with 8 GB of ECC DDR4 (32 GB maximum) and two 2.5GbE ports. Two NVMe slots and a PCIe Gen3 slot with an x4 link for a 10GbE or 25GbE card complete it. Two DX525 expansion units take it to 18 bays, and Synology rates it at 60.1 W in access.
On DSM 7.3 or later, the 2025 Plus models accept unlisted hard drives for new pools again. Unlisted M.2 drives are still limited to migration, with no new pool or cache, so buy Synology SSDs if you want NVMe cache. The full policy is on the Synology drive compatibility page, and our Synology alternative guide compares it with the other vendors.
On the check date, the page seller was RockyStone Electronics, a third party, at about $1,450 to $1,500. The Amazon catalogue listed Amazon as the merchant at the same time. Check who sells it before you order, and buy from an authorized Synology reseller if warranty support matters. Our small business NAS guide covers the DSM and AD setup, and the neo+ vs Plus comparison covers the cheaper DS1825neo+.
Synology DS1823xs+
About $600 more than the DS1825+ buys three things: a 5-year warranty, a faster 4-core Ryzen V1780B, and 10GbE on the board next to two 1GbE ports and a management port. It has 8 GB of ECC memory (32 GB maximum), the same Gen3 slot with an x4 link, and 18 bays with two DX517 units. Synology rates it at 87.93 W in access. Amazon sells it directly.
As a 2023 xs model, it is outside the 2025 drive policy change, because Synology says that change does not apply retroactively. Owners report “unverified” warnings in DSM when they fit third-party drives. It also has no SHR, only standard RAID levels.
Pass on it if you plan to fill it with WD or Seagate drives and do not want those warnings, or if anything needs transcoding.
UniFi UNAS Pro 8
UniFi built the cheapest box here and the only rack unit among the picks: 2U, 480 mm deep, with rails in the box. It has two 10G SFP+ ports and one 10GbE RJ45 port, a 4-core ARM Cortex-A57 with 16 GB of soldered RAM, and two hot-swap power supply bays. NASCompares measured about 800 to 850 MB/s sequential read from eight 8TB drives in RAID 5.
- Price: Ubiquiti lists it at about $800 before a checkout surcharge. On Amazon it comes from a third-party seller at about $930 to $960 on October 21, 2026; check the current price.
- Power: one 550 W supply is included, and the second for redundancy costs about $159.
- Storage: RAID 5, 6 or 10 with a hot spare, shared over SMB and NFS. There is no iSCSI and no app or container platform, and the trays for its two M.2 cache slots are sold separately.
- Warranty: the UI Store page lists no base term, only UI Care, which extends cover to 5 years for about $199. US resellers list a 1-year limited warranty, which would make it the shortest base cover here.
Skip it if you need Docker, iSCSI, ECC or any software outside UniFi Drive. Buy it if the rack already holds UniFi gear; our first rackmount server guide covers depth and rails for a home rack.
Step 5: Price a DIY 8-bay build
A DIY build with Quick Sync and eight SATA ports on the board costs about the same as the DXP8800 Plus at current DDR5 prices. This basket uses a Jonsbo N3 case and a Mini-ITX board with eight SATA ports, so no HBA is needed:
| Part | Pick | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Case | Jonsbo N3, 8 hot-swap bays | about $160 |
| Board | StoneStorm Q670 Mini-ITX, 8 SATA | about $210 |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-14400 | about $210 |
| Memory | Crucial Pro 2×16 GB DDR5-6000 | about $540 |
| Power | Cooler Master V750 SFX Gold | about $125 |
| Boot | WD Green SN3000 500 GB | about $95 |
| 10GbE | TP-Link TX401 | about $60 |
We priced the basket at about $1,400 for 32 GB of RAM, against 8 GB in the DXP8800 Plus at about the same price. A lean version with 16 GB and a Core i3-14100 comes to about $1,050 to $1,100, though the i3 was listed for a later ship date. Several parts were sold by third parties with thin stock. The specs for the board come from its Amazon listing only, and that listing does not state the PCIe slot, so confirm it before you buy the 10GbE card.
DIY no longer saves money at this size, so build one for the freedom to run any OS. Unraid at eight drives also needs its Unleashed licence, about $109, on top of the basket. There is also no ECC on a Q670 board. The case options are in our NAS case guide, the power and cost comparison is in DIY NAS vs prebuilt, and the OS choice is in TrueNAS vs Unraid.
Step 6: Match the network to the array
Eight hard drives in a parity array read faster than a 2.5GbE port can carry. NASCompares measured 800 to 850 MB/s from eight 8TB drives in RAID 5 on the UNAS Pro 8. A 2.5GbE link tops out near 280 MB/s, so a 2.5GbE-only box leaves most of the array idle on large transfers.
- 10GbE on the board: DXP8800 Plus, TS-832PX, DS1823xs+ and UNAS Pro 8. On the DXP8800 Ultra, ITPro measured 9.2 Gbit/s read and 8.8 Gbit/s write in the Iometer synthetic test, and 3.8 and 3.0 Gbit/s copying a 25 GB file.
- 10GbE by card: TS-873A and DS1825+. Use a card from the QNAP or Synology compatibility list for each box.
- The switch: a 10GbE NAS needs a 10GbE port at the other end, which our 10GbE switch guide covers.
A 1GbE or 2.5GbE network is fine for streaming, because a single 4K stream needs a small fraction of either. The 10GbE port pays off on backups, video editing and VM storage, and the box belongs on a UPS whichever network it runs, as our NAS UPS guide explains.
Models we left out and why
Several 8-bay boxes looked right in a search and failed a check. Each one is excluded for a specific, verifiable reason:
- QNAP TS-855X: the Amazon title says 8 bays, but the box has six 3.5-inch bays and two 2.5-inch bays.
- Synology DS1821+: discontinued. Its US product page now redirects to the download center, and the remaining Amazon listings are third-party bundles above $3,700.
- Asustor Lockerstor 8 Gen3 (AS6808T): true ECC and 10GbE, but about $1,820 or more everywhere, third-party only on Amazon, and no written independent review.
- TerraMaster U8-500 Plus: a 2U unit with a Core i7-1255U and 10GbE at about $1,530, but no independent review we could find, and its RAID grows only by swapping in larger drives, not by adding drives.
- TerraMaster U8-423: a 2U unit with a Celeron N5095 that does hardware transcoding, two 2.5GbE ports and a 2-year warranty, at about $825 direct from TerraMaster but not sold on Amazon US.
- TerraMaster F8 SSD: all-flash, covered in our all-flash NAS guide.
- QNAP TVS-h874 and TS-855eU: out of stock or used only on the check date.
QNAP also previewed an 8-bay AI NAS at Computex in June 2026 without US availability, so it is not in this guide until it ships. Past eight drives, the next step is an expansion unit or a DAS or JBOD enclosure, not a bigger NAS.
