How Much Does a NAS Cost?

How Much Does a UGREEN NAS Cost?

UGREEN NASync are sold diskless, so the enclosure price is only the first part of the budget. In the configurations below, a two-bay NAS with two 8TB drives costs $929.97 to $1,099.97 before backup, electricity, or a UPS. A four-bay RAID 5 setup with four 8TB drives costs $1,759.95 to $2,049.95 and provides 24TB of decimal usable capacity before system overhead.

Prices and specifications checked August 10, 2026. All figures are in U.S. dollars. UGREEN hardware totals use regular list prices rather than temporary discounts. The drive calculations use the compatible Seagate IronWolf 8TB ST8000VN004 at $329.99 each. Taxes and shipping are excluded.

Quick Answer: What Does a NAS Setup Cost?

The first-year figures include the enclosure, internal drives, a UGREEN 120W DC UPS, and one year of estimated electricity. The five-year figures include five years of electricity under the same usage assumptions.

These base totals exclude independent backup, workload-specific upgrades, and unplanned drive replacement. Those costs depend on how much data you protect and how you use the NAS.

Over five years, the modeled cost per usable terabyte is:

• DH2300: $140.15 per usable TB
• DXP2800: $163.56 per usable TB
• DH4300 Plus: $83.18 per usable TB
• DXP4800 Plus: $99.80 per usable TB

Four-bay systems cost more in total, but their RAID 5 configurations provide substantially more usable capacity for each dollar spent.

The Enclosure Is Only Part of the Budget

A working NAS requires an enclosure and storage drives. A more resilient setup also needs power protection and an independent copy of important data.

The examples use the same Seagate IronWolf ST8000VN004 CMR drive throughout. That exact part number appears in the UGREEN NAS compatibility list for the models compared here.

Two drives cost $659.98. Four cost $1,319.96. At the prices used in this comparison, the drives represent 71% of the DH2300 core hardware total and 64% of the DXP4800 Plus core hardware total.

Drive price is therefore the most sensitive part of the calculation. Every $25 change in the price of one drive changes a two-drive build by $50 and a four-drive build by $100.

RAID also changes the capacity you receive:

• Two 8TB drives in RAID 1 provide 8TB of decimal usable capacity.
• Four 8TB drives in RAID 5 provide (4 − 1) × 8TB = 24TB of decimal usable capacity.
• After decimal-to-binary conversion, those capacities appear as about 7.3TB and 21.8TB in interfaces that label binary capacity as TB.
• System and filesystem reservations reduce the final available capacity slightly further.

Use the UGREEN RAID Calculator before ordering a different drive configuration.

Three UGREEN NAS Budgets

DH2300: Lowest Upfront Cost for Family Backup

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 has a regular list price of $269.99. Adding two 8TB drives brings the core hardware total to $929.97.

With RAID 1, the two drives provide 8TB of decimal usable capacity rather than 16TB. Adding the $137.50 regular price of the UGREEN UPS produces these base totals:

• First year: $1,078.22, including $10.75 of modeled electricity
• Five years: $1,121.22, including $53.75 of modeled electricity
• Five-year cost per usable TB: $140.15

The DH2300 fits households that need phone backup, computer backup, photo management, shared files, and direct HDMI or DLNA playback. It has two SATA bays, 1GbE networking, 4GB of fixed memory, and no M.2 slots.

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Do not buy the DH2300 to host Docker-dependent applications. It does not support Docker, Plex Server, Jellyfin, Emby, Home Assistant, or virtual machines. It can store media for a server running on another computer, but it cannot host those server applications itself.

If the storage capacity is sufficient but you need applications, faster networking, or expandable hardware, the next step is the DXP2800.

DXP2800: More Application Capability at the Same RAID Capacity

The UGREEN NASync DXP2800 has a regular list price of $439.99. With the same two 8TB drives, its core hardware total is $1,099.97.

The DXP2800 costs $170 more than the DH2300 enclosure, but the two systems provide the same 8TB decimal usable SATA capacity in RAID 1 when fitted with identical drives. The additional cost pays for different capabilities:

• Intel N100 processor
• Docker and virtual-machine support
• Intel Quick Sync for compatible hardware-transcoding workloads
• 2.5GbE networking
• Two M.2 slots for SSD cache or a separate SSD storage pool
• Memory expansion from the included 8GB to 16GB

Adding the same UPS produces these base totals:

• First year: $1,251.67, including $14.20 of modeled electricity
• Five years: $1,308.47, including $71.00 of modeled electricity
• Five-year cost per usable TB: $163.56

Choose the DXP2800 when your library fits a two-drive RAID 1 configuration and you plan to run Plex, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, containers, or a small virtual machine. Choose the DH2300 when storage and backup are the priority and those applications are unnecessary.

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Both systems still have only two SATA bays. If your projected library will exceed one drive’s usable capacity, moving to four bays may cost less than buying two increasingly large drives and replacing both later.

Four Bays: Higher Total Cost, Lower Cost per Usable Terabyte

Four bays increase the upfront drive purchase, but RAID 5 uses three of the four drives for usable capacity. With four 8TB drives, the result is 24TB decimal before system overhead.

That gives the four-bay examples a lower cost per usable terabyte:

The UGREEN NASync DH4300 Plus is the lower-cost four-bay option in this comparison. It provides 2.5GbE, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, fixed 8GB memory, and Docker support. Its ARM processor works best with ARM-compatible containers. Plex and Jellyfin can run on this model, but its lack of Intel Quick Sync makes Direct Play a better target than demanding hardware-transcoding workloads.

The UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus adds an Intel Pentium Gold 8505 processor with Quick Sync, memory expansion up to 64GB, two M.2 slots, virtual-machine support, one 10GbE port, and one 2.5GbE port. Its additional $290 enclosure cost makes sense when those capabilities are part of the planned workload.

Buying the DXP4800 Plus for 10GbE can create additional costs. A 10GbE connection also requires a compatible switch or direct connection, a 10GbE adapter in the workstation, and suitable cabling. The NAS port alone does not upgrade the rest of the network.

RAID 5 tolerates one drive failure, but the array has no remaining drive-failure tolerance during a rebuild. Large-drive rebuilds can take hours or days and place sustained load on every surviving drive.

This is the wrong place to save money with an unverified desktop or SMR drive. Use compatible NAS-rated CMR drives designed for sustained multi-drive workloads, and maintain an independent backup in case the rebuild does not complete. Review the RAID 5 rebuild tradeoffs before choosing capacity purely by cost per terabyte.

If you are still deciding whether the lower absolute cost of two bays outweighs the expansion advantage of four, use our two-bay versus four-bay NAS comparison.

The NAS Costs Buyers Commonly Miss

Independent backup

RAID keeps the storage pool available after a supported drive failure. It cannot restore a file deleted by mistake, overwritten by synchronization, corrupted by an application, or encrypted by ransomware. Fire, theft, electrical damage, and complete NAS failure can also affect every drive in the enclosure.

Budget the backup against the amount of important data stored, rather than the NAS’s maximum empty capacity. Using the same $329.99 drive price:

• Backing up 8TB requires at least one additional 8TB disk, plus an external enclosure or dock — cost $329.99 in bare drive.
• Backing up 24TB requires at least three additional 8TB disks, or $989.97 in bare-drive cost before the external hardware.
• If only 4TB of a 24TB NAS is irreplaceable, you can begin by protecting that 4TB instead of purchasing 24TB of backup capacity immediately.

Cloud backup replaces the external-drive purchase with recurring storage, retrieval, and possible egress charges. Our NAS versus Google Drive five-year cost comparison covers that subscription calculation separately.

UPS

A UPS gives the NAS time to continue briefly or shut down safely during an outage. It does not create a backup copy.

The UGREEN 120W DC UPS has a regular list price of $137.50 and supports the four models used in these examples. If you need to power the NAS, router, switch, and other equipment from one UPS, calculate the complete load and required runtime instead of sizing it from the NAS alone. Our NAS UPS buying and setup guide explains that calculation.

Electricity

The first-year and five-year totals use a U.S. residential electricity rate of $0.1811 per kWh, based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s January-through-May 2026 average.

The mixed-use estimate assumes eight hours of drive access and sixteen hours of drive hibernation each day.

A NAS running Docker containers, virtual machines, surveillance recording, downloads, or an active media server may never enter drive hibernation. Use the continuous-access column as the stronger starting point for those workloads.

Drive replacement

Hard drives are wear items, but a replacement is a contingency rather than a guaranteed five-year expense. The base totals above therefore do not assume that every owner will replace a drive.

If one 8TB drive requires an out-of-warranty replacement during the five-year period, add $329.99 at the price used in this comparison. An owner replacing a drive under warranty may pay less, while a future drive could cost more or less than the current price.

Replacing a failed RAID member restores redundancy only after the rebuild completes. It does not replace the independent backup, and the replacement drive must provide at least the capacity required by the existing array. 

Memory, SSDs, and networking

These upgrades belong in the budget only when the workload requires them.

Additional memory helps with multiple containers, virtual machines, indexing, and concurrent applications. M.2 SSDs can provide cache or a separate SSD storage pool on supported models. A complete 10GbE upgrade can include the NAS, switch, workstation adapter, and cabling.

Buying these parts without a defined workload raises the cost without guaranteeing a noticeable improvement.

When the Cheapest NAS Becomes More Expensive

A low enclosure price does not guarantee the lowest ownership cost.

Before choosing the model, estimate the storage required over the next three to five years:

Projected usable capacity = (current data + annual growth × years) × 1.20

The extra 20% provides working headroom for updates, snapshots, temporary files, and normal storage management.

The cheapest choice commonly becomes more expensive when:

• You calculate from raw drive capacity instead of RAID-usable capacity.
• A two-bay system runs out of space and both drives must be replaced earlier than planned.
• Small drives are replaced while they still work because the library grows faster than expected.
• An unverified or SMR drive performs poorly during sustained writes or a RAID rebuild.
• You pay for 10GbE but continue using a 1GbE switch or client.
• RAID 0 or JBOD is selected for capacity, followed by an additional purchase to correct the lack of drive-failure protection.
• Memory or SSDs are purchased before the workload shows that they are necessary.

Build Your NAS Budget

Use these calculations before selecting the enclosure:

Five-year base cost = enclosure + internal drives + UPS + five years of electricity

Complete five-year budget = five-year base cost + independent backup + required upgrades + actual drive replacements

Cost per usable TB = ownership cost ÷ usable capacity after RAID

Projected usable capacity = (current data + annual growth × ownership years) × 1.20

Once you know the required capacity, bay count, applications, and network speed, the UGREEN NAS Selector can narrow the lineup around those requirements.

You can also browse and filter UGREEN NAS models by SATA bays, M.2 slots, RAID support, memory, maximum capacity, and network ports.