Minisforum N5 Max 395 Review: A 5-Bay NAS with Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Power for Local AI, Storage, and More

The Minisforum N5 Max 395 combines the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 platform with a five-bay storage chassis, dual 10GbE networking, high-speed USB4 expansion, and a tool-less drive design. This review walks through the hardware inside and out, the system's software experience, and measured performance and power figures for AI inference and general workloads.

■ Hardware Overview
- Front and rear I/O, LED indicators, magnetic cover, and the five 3.5-inch tool-less drive bays
- Dual 10GbE ports (Realtek RTL8127), HDMI, USB 3.2 Gen 2, and two USB4 v2 Type-C ports at up to 80Gbps
- The trade-off of dropping the PCIe card slot in favor of internal power supply and external USB4 expansion
- Cooling layout and the removal of the external power brick

■ Internals and Specifications
- Five M.2 slots (one PCIe Gen 4 x4, four PCIe Gen 4 x1) and SSD purchase considerations
- Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with Radeon 860S GPU, Gen 5 cores, and 64GB of soldered LPDDR5X memory
- Comparison with the N5 Pro, including the option situation around 128GB configurations

■ Software and Setup
- Pre-loaded Miniscloud software, remote KVM setup flow, and running Ubuntu or Proxmox instead
- ZFS RAID-Z2 arrays, SMB/NFS shares, Docker containers, and running models such as Qwen 3.6 via Ollama

■ Performance and Power Measurements
- Token generation results and the role of memory bandwidth and capacity
- Noise levels at idle and under load, plus power draw figures from idle to peak

If you are considering an all-in-one box that serves as a NAS, a local AI workstation, and a general-purpose desktop, this walkthrough helps you decide whether the specifications and trade-offs fit your setup. It is aimed at homelab builders, storage enthusiasts, and anyone evaluating local AI hardware, and gives you the context needed to plan your own configuration and OS choice.