QNAP TBS-h574TX - All Flash NASbook With Thunderbolt 4 Connectivity

[@mj1s735]

Thanks for the review. Glad to see that all NVMe NAS devices are becoming more common place. Been looking at this one and the ones by Asustor. It is temping to get one of these, but since I only use my NAS for storage and I don't have the need to video edit directly off of it, I really can't justify the cost of the devices, the NVMe drives and the lost of storage capacity if I were to switch to one of these units. Please do some follow-up videos on this NAS.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback and I plan on doing a couple more.

[@JasonsLabVideos]

Sweet video, good info. This something i have been looking into for my video storage..

[@MikeFaucher]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for the feedback!

[@lylefabian1691]

thank you mike for such a great video.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thank you. Appreciate the feedback!

[@AhmadQ.81]

Great efforts 🎉🎉

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback!

[@markifi]

this is a good start, but a consumer grade version would be a dream come true. "only pay for the speed you need" quoting a mikrotik sales rep

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback. Interesting idea.

[@ruek66]

Hi Mike, ok that was a straight forward review, but to be honest there's nothing new to it more then the nvme's. What you should do to be different is to do a real-life review i.e how to set it up in the wild (off network) use it as a creator and then how you hook it up to your network, transfer the file to back-office NAS etc. Otherwise it's just another fast NAS. What's the usability it?

[@MikeFaucher]

Great point. The interoperability of the Thunderbolt and network is unique, but the point is taken. I will add this topic to a follow up. Thanks for the feedback!

[@jackcarr2763]

@@MikeFaucher I have had lots of Issues with the TB being stable when using IP that is part of the rest of my main network. I have had more luck when it's 169.0.0.0 network. I have disabled my wifi also

[@jimsvideos7201]

Can it do SMB multichannel using both LAN connections?

[@MikeFaucher]

Yes, It can do multichannel, the lans are not the same bandwidth so I will have to test to see if it over the 2.5G and 10G.

[@FarrellMcGovern]

It would be nice to see this compared to the Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X, another M.2 based SSD NAS.

[@MikeFaucher]

It would be interesting however most of the spces favor the QNAP including thunderbolt. Would be a great shoot out though. I wish I had one to compare too. I had reached out to Asustor several times over the past year and they have not been very responsive.

[@FarrellMcGovern]

@@MikeFaucher Tell them now that you have looked at QNAP's competitor to their product, you would like to compare the two of them. Both are products that would appeal to #VANLIFE dwellers as, for example, Living The Van Life showed he had a dozen of those Sansdisk SSD drives for his raw footage of the last big trip to the top of Alaska. Having SSD based NAS would make his life simpler.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@FarrellMcGovern I will give it another try.

[@FarrellMcGovern]

@@MikeFaucher Good luck!

[@mattrg3]

If NVMe speed is 5-7GB/s and Thunderbolt 4 is 5GB/s, then why does this device only work at 1.5GB/s?

[@mattrg3]

What if disabled T2E? I already have a QNAP NAS. I’m looking for really fast external NVMe raid. If this could get between 3-5GB/s (faster than a Lacie Rugged Pro at 2.5GB/s) that would be amazing.

[@mattrg3]

Won’t matter. QNAP website says 1.6-1.7 GB/s for one computer. It can do that same speed each for two computers though. I’m also reading that thunderbolt 4 max is 2.8-3.0 GB/s and wont reach the 5 GB/s anyway.

[@MikeFaucher]

Great question. QNAP specs call for 20 Gbps not 40 Gbps so it is performing at what you expect for 20 Gbps given the ZFS overhead as well as the overhead caused by thunderbolt to ethernet conversion. Remember this is not just an external SSD and treats the thunderboarl connections as a network adapter.

[@MikeFaucher]

That would be interesting. The Lacie is a straight SSD that does not offer all the features of a NAS so it is a trade off.

[@MikeFaucher]

They are stating 20 Gbps. I will check on the two computers at once to see the performance. That said, thunderbolt is a bit strange. If we look at the Thunderbolt 4 specs, it states there is maximum 40 Gb/s of throughput, however built in to the spec is a dedicated 8 gigabits that can only be used for video, really leaving you only 32 Gb/s for data. That said, additional bandwidth could be allocated if you are running a 4K display further reducing the 40 Gbs capacity. To further complicate things, there is also some overhead from the controller so the best case is that it will leave you with approximately 22-28 Gb/s for dedicated data throughput depending on the controller in your system as well as the video load. When I convert that into MB/s, you end up with a range of around 2750 - 3500 MB/s that you should expect from any external storage regardless of what the SSD or enclosure is capable of when using a thunderbolt 4 controller such as the ones equipped on all newer MAC units. This limitation would also apply to Windows Thunderbolt controllers as well. I will post an update when I have a chance to test two computers.

[@GOVAUS1]

Thanks. Can you test the communication through its NICs?

[@MikeFaucher]

I did test the 10G nic on this video but I can tell you the 2.5G transfers around 235 MBps. I should have included it. Thanks.

[@z3mr2-yo4or]

Hello Mike, thank you for the informative video. However, I feel that I'm missing something. Why would someone pay more for NVMe drives if It would be limited to 10Gbps ethernet. I feel that using SSD would get you the same speeds in 10Gbps ethernet and be more cost efficient. Even direct attached to Thunderbolt 4 (which is just a glorified Thunderbolt 3 port because they share the same 40Gbps bandwidth) the best speed you would see is 2000~2400MB's at best which is better, but still not taking full advantage of NVMe drives.

[@MikeFaucher]

Great point and on specs and on the transfer performance and you are absolutely right, but there are other things such as VMs, Dockers, and applications that you can run on your NAS at the same time that will take advantage of the additional untapped speeds without impacting the performance of your transfers. Also their is cost. NVMe drives are basically the same cost and in some cases are becoming more affordable than SATA SSDs. They are also much smaller which may or may not make a difference but in a somwhat portable device, space matters I have a TrueNAS server that has 6 SATA drives in a RAIDz1 and it is not nearly as fast and draws more power. It boils down to to everything you want this to do, and the value. I appreciate your perspective and thanks for input.

[@mj1s735]

Hello Mike, I wonder how this NAS can handle a large amount of data transfer? Will the drives thermal throttle? Will the device over heat or malfunction because of the NICs getting too hot. Example, I once was tranferring my music collection to a portable NVMe device from my QNAP NAS with a USB 5G NIC, the NAS was handling the TBs of data tranfer fine, just the USB 5G NIC over heated And shut down. Once I unplugged it and let it cool down, it was fine once I plugged it back into the NAS. This was over a 10G network. All the other devices handled the large data transfer just fine, only the 5G USB NIC over heated.

[@MikeFaucher]

The NICs along with the NVMe's in this unit are cooled by the system fans. I routinely copied 500G and 1T and did not see any issues other than the fans will spin up when things get hot. I have only had the unit for just over a month but so far it has been awesome.

[@jserenity]

Have anyone tried putting 8TB NVME? Like putting 5 x 8TB nvme?

[@MikeFaucher]

Have not tried it but it theoretically supports it. Would love that configuration.

[@jimsvideos7201]

If only you could use the Thunderbolt port as a redundant power input.

[@MikeFaucher]

That would be cool but as this comes with a 120W supply it could exceed the power. Great idea.

[@user-pl4kc2eg8x]

What about noise? Is it comfortable to use on a desk?

[@MikeFaucher]

Great question. If you put it right next to you on your desk and your room is very quiet, you will hear the system fans, which spin around 2000 rpm but not much different than any NAS or PC with a cooling fan. I place mine on a shelf about 5 feet away and can't hear it under normal use. If you hit it with a lot of data, 400 - terabytes of data at once, you will hear the fans spin up to 10K until the unit cools, and at that speed, you can definitely hear it as it is fairly loud. These are 40MM fans, so at that speed, you will hear them. Fortunately, they spin back down after everything cools down, and adding some inexpensive heartsinks like the ones I use in the video really helps, as well as setting the fan speed to quiet mode. I have used this every day for video editing for the past few months and have only heard it spin up a few times and my unit has 5 drives in it, all with heatsinks. Unfortunately, all NVMe produce a lot of heat when they are stressed for an extended time but with the use of heatsinks, it improves day-to-day use quite a bit.

[@BigIrisProductions]

I'm a little confused. Weren't those read and write speeds at 1 Gbps and not 10? You showed over 900 mbps. Shouldn't 10Gbps be 10,000mbps? Seeing as these nvme SSDs are capable of up to 7000mbps read and around 6000 write. And Qnap adversises read speeds of (something like) 2300 for this machine. In any case, I should be able to edit 6K video just fine but was curious. 20:16

[@MikeFaucher]

Good question, 1G is a one thousand gigabits not gigabytes. The maximum throughput of 1G is 1000 gigabits or 125 Megabytes per second or 1000/8. At 10g it would be 1250 Megabytes per second at the theoretical maximum (10000/8=1250) Hope that helps.

[@pedrosa144]

$2000! No thanks.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback. They awe pricey.