Thecus N5200 is in fact a whole storage-dedicated computer, based on a Celeron M-600 CPU with 512 MB DDR333/PC2700 RAM (Thecus, however, lists this unit as having 256 MB RAM on their website) and a 128 MB flash drive used to store its operating system. The CPU and the north bridge chip are cooled by passive heatsinks.

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Figure 7: Inside Thecus N5200.

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Figure 8: Celeron M-600 with its passive heatsink removed.

Thecus N5200 is based on an Intel chipset (unfortunately we couldn’t read what was written on top of the north bridge chip, as its marking as almost invisible; the south bridge used is a 82801DBM, a.k.a. ICH4-M), with its two Gigabit Ethernet ports controlled by individual Intel 82541PI controller. The Serial ATA ports are controlled by a Marvell 88SX6081 chip, while the USB ports are controlled by a PLX NET2282 chip. A SMSC LPC47M182 Super I/O completes the list of main chips used.

This product uses Japanese capacitors from Chemi-Con, which is great.