Minisforum N5 Air-7640 goes on sale with 174TB storage support
Minisforum’s N5 Air-7640 NAS is now available to order from $495, with five drive bays, three M.2 slots and support for up to 174TB.
Minisforum has opened regular orders for the N5 Air-7640, a smaller-price variant of its N5 Air NAS. The system starts at $495 in its bare configuration, without memory or storage, while a version with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 64GB of storage for the operating system is listed at $679.
The N5 Air-7640 uses AMD’s Ryzen 5 7640HS processor and Radeon 760M integrated graphics. Minisforum’s product page also lists a PCIe x16 slot, limited to PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds, alongside an OCuLink connection and 10GbE and 5GbE networking. Those connections give the box a more flexible expansion path than its compact size might suggest.
Storage is the main headline feature. Minisforum rates the system for up to 174TB across five hard-drive bays and three M.2 slots. The product page also lists two USB4 ports and support for up to 96GB of DDR5 memory. Its pricing does not include the cost of filling those bays, so the headline capacity is an expansion ceiling rather than an out-of-the-box storage figure.
Our opinion
The N5 Air-7640 is most interesting as a compact storage platform rather than as a conventional desktop replacement. The combination of 10GbE, 5GbE, OCuLink and a full-size expansion slot gives it a credible route into a home lab or small office, while the five-bay and three-M.2 layout makes the 174TB figure technically meaningful.
The catch is the same one attached to most bare NAS systems: the $495 starting price is only the entry point. Buyers still need memory, drives and an operating system or software setup, and the final cost will depend heavily on how much of that capacity they actually populate. The launch therefore matters because orders have opened, not because every buyer will receive a fully configured 174TB appliance for $495.