PowerNAS launch CMA Central Hub NAS

At the PC Retail Boot Camp up in Northampton, British storage specialists PowerNAS has just launched its latest consumer and small business products, including a unit known as the Converge Media Appliance or CMA for short.

Based up in Tamworth, Staffordshire, PowerNAS specialises in creating custom storage set ups and system integration. The team has over 15 years' experience – primarily in the business to business environment – but will now be creating more products for consumers and small business owners.

The Converge Media Appliance is expected to retail at around £599 and is expected to land shortly through M2M.

We spoke with PowerNAS specialist Mark Lambert who told us, “We see the PC, NAS and media centre coming together, so decided to create a system that sits at the exact point where those technologies will converge. The CMA centres on a Windows 8.1 install using Storage Spaces”.

“Microsoft has been pushing hard in this area for the past 3 years and we're finally beginning to see the way it will develop going forward”, he told us.

In terms of specification, the CMA uses a Gigabyte mainboard with a 3GHz Intel dual core processor, 4GB of 1600MHz DDR4 and it boots from a 60GB SSD.

As well as dual integrated gigabit LAN ports, it also has 801.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless with an antenna. It has dual HDMI ports and the DVI-D means you can support 3 screens in total. As well as Windows 8.1, it also has Kodi Media Centre.

“We've used a high quality chassis, high efficiency 250w power supply and worked hard to keep noise to a bare minimum with the CMA”, Mark told us. “It is, in effect, a completely functional PC, that also has high end media centre capabilities and four hot-swap SATA-3 bays that can support a combined total of 24TB”.

Here's the PowerNAS/M2M team at the launch, Mark is on the left.

KitGuru says: It will be interesting to get the CMA into the KitGuru Labs and see if this combination of functionality really does serve a useful purpose.

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