Synology DS1621+ Review - An INSANE Upgrade for whatever your NAS needs

[@DjNaphthalin]

I don‘t get why there is not more attention to your channel? Good stuff here! Thank you!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Hey thanks! It’s growing!

[@YTEEsenior]

I have the 1621+ with 2x Cache in read/write. With Seagate Pro NAS drives. Running both Active and Hyper backups and snapshots. Synology Drive is just awesome as I can sync the same folders from multiple virtual machines with having to store the data on each. Using Visual studio and coding projects direct from Synology Drive offline and auto sync alone makes it all worth the price tag.

[@ahothabeth]

I went with a DS1821+ and I am loving it.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I am looking to get this, or possibly the RS version soon

[@AlbertoFL]

+1 with DS1821+ and +4GB RAM, 10Gbe Card and 250GB SSD NVME Read Cache Upgrade, amazing NAS. The fat brother of 1621+ xD

[@ahothabeth]

@@AlbertoFL Max out the RAM; I didn't Synology RAM because it is obscenely expensive. If Synology RAM was a 20% -30% uplift I would get Synology, but at 3x or 4x it if just obscenely expensive. I have read that one needs be careful of/with NVMe drive.

[@ahothabeth]

@@SpaceRexWill I think that the DS1621+ and DS1821+ are the sweet spot if you don't need transcoding.

[@jonathanmatthew5631]

@@AlbertoFL why only 250GB cache upgrade? Will adding cache upgrade speed up browsing photos in the NAS?

[@tylerkolisnik5210]

I personally found the fans kind of loud even in quiet mode - I replaced them with two noctua NF-A9 fans and am happy I did. Was pretty easy to swap them too.

[@JAYJAY-ch4ik]

Would it be possible for DS920+?

[@mrhobs]

Hmm, interesting.

[@prowler1567]

Thanks for the informative review. I'm still learning about what I can do with Synology NAS.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad I could be helpful!

[@thelastdragon5551]

I just got into NAS as well. Just bought a cheap ds415+ from a friend. Along with 4 8tb drives. Let’s see what I can do. Time to do away with a bunch of externals for my videos.

[@jsmithtraveller]

Thanks Rex, your review has helped me understand the capabilities of my 1511+. Cheers

[@billycrowe4501]

I own a 1619 plus, if I was to upgrade to this and get drives to fill it and use my nas I have now as a backup. How would I transfer and make the new nas the main nas?

[@jayrowe6473]

Great video and review. Thank you!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you liked it!

[@ungraduatedmedia]

Hey bud - I love your vids and have learned a ton about NAS units from you. So I have this unit and will be filling it with 20 TB HDD’s (have 3 spinning in it now). While I will be using it for my KZbin editing as well as eventual surveillance as we’re building more on our property behind us and will need to install some cameras, my main issue is I am using it for my bluray and 4k rips for Plex. And as you state, it lacks that GPU transcoding power. I’m not direct watching because I travel a ton and am on planes and at hotels watching on my IPad with not the best signal. I want to go the intel Nuc way you mention but would love to know if you have a vid or can point me towards how to best set that up and all I should buy to keep the NAS as storage, but use the NUC for the server. Just need more insight on that process. Any advice you have would he greatly appreciate. Nice work and thank you for the great insight on your channel.

[@tracybrown8859]

Ssd no longer available on your link. Any other suggestions with 1 TB sdd that will work with Synology 1621+

[@JGorg8]

Such a good review and helpful links! Thank you!

[@JGorg8]

Would you recommend going with the 1621+ and then upgrade the ram and add a 10Gbe card, or with the 1621xs+ that already has 10Gbe and more ram?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Most users will not be able to saturate the performance of the 1621+ so you could save some money with the 1621+.

[@JGorg8]

@@SpaceRexWill I'd be looking at it specifically to edit 4k video from, and store a ton of the same. Also I'd have one PC and one Macbook Pro that I'd love to be able to work from it with a switch, or is there a dual 10Gbe PCIE card that works for it that you know of? Appreciate your help a ton! I've watched like 6 full videos of yours today lol

[@SpaceRexWill]

I would recommend getting a switch if you can. Makes it a ton easier to add stuff later You could look at this amzn.to/3s3IjCV or this amzn.to/33YG6R2 Then just get a m..2 ssd cache and you really should be set!

[@JGorg8]

@@SpaceRexWill you're amazing! Would you suggest upgrading ram on the 1621+ or is it good stock?

[@reelintensity3263]

Hi… if this device does not have embedded graphics and the 1621 doesn’t have it either, which device is the best for me to get for video editing as well as using it as a Plex server? I want to EDIT 4K video, and also have PLEX playback 1080 and 4K video as well. Is an embedded GPU necessary? What’s the alternative?

[@danielwilder7835]

I'm looking for a Synology, i bought a 1 bay to start my plex adventure on... 12 tb drive, i'm running out of space. I would like a 6 bay synology with RAID level 6, can you recommend a synology? i intend on starting with 6 x 4tb drives, that way i can increase my space without disruping the array

[@yankee-in-london]

I have 6 6tb drives in this puppy (which I love) ... is there any way to pull back to less drive bays and bigger drives without killing myself?

[@SpaceRexWill]

sadly not

[@TheYorkshireBikeMechanic]

Really enjoy your videos but Im having a nightmare with my mac and imovie library files on a sonology 220j, are you able to advise? if I explain my issues.

[@RyanReddell]

SLOW USB. I hooked up an external storage encloser with 13TB of data in a RAID 0. It is USB3. When I attempt to move just one folder I get about 80-100 MB/s. However, when I try to copy everything I am only getting between 2-3 MB/s. At this speed, it will take over a year. Is this a hardware issue?

[@SpaceRexWill]

That is really strange. It could possibly be still figuring out the size of the disk and is wasting reads for the first while. I would leave it going overnight to see if it speeds up

[@jub7]

Shall I buy this 1621+ or go for the new one 1522+ ? No need to run plex, but I am big on sharing photos and running dockers etc.

[@SpaceRexWill]

The 1621+ has more performance than the 1522+

[@marcgil256]

Would you say the 1621+ or the 1522+ is better for Plex?

[@SpaceRexWill]

1621+

[@AndyHTu]

I'm looking for something to back up my photo/video contents and I need a ton of space. I also want to be able to work off of it. Is this something I should be looking at?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yeah I think you would be really happy with it. If you need even more storage you can also look at the 1821+ which is this just with 2 more bays

[@AndyHTu]

@@SpaceRexWill Do you have to have it on a network? Or would it be able to connect usb3 or something faster directly to PC?

[@sylvainalain6637]

Can you do a video about the inline rebuilt feature that dsm 7.0 offer and the new fast repair feature?

[@strongium9900]

Can you do a video with the DS1621+ or DS1621xs+ where you use the NVME internal slots and a expansion card with the NVME slots populated too. I want to see the benefits if any of having 4 NVME drives in the server. Is there any benefit of doing this. Thanks

[@SpaceRexWill]

So speed wise you really would not get much due to the fact that NVMe drives are already crazy fast. The only advantage would be additional NVMe space

[@MauricioBond23]

Hi there, thanks for all your helpful videos. If you had to choose between de DS1821+ and the DS1621+, which one would you choose and why? Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

So if you think there is any chance you would need the data in the future I would get the 8 bay and just fill it with 5 drives today. Then if you need storage add more later. Gives you tons of flexibility

[@madisonsmith509]

Thanks for this review man

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you liked it!

[@PeanutChuAdventures]

Hi Will, great video. I just began researching and not sure what would the best for me. I just started doing wildlife youtube videos and I getting on average about 1-2 tb a week of data. Right now I store the current data on samsung T7's. I have 6. I go through the data and delete what I don't want, but now that data is surpassing the speed that I can go through it since, I am working on other things. And older data I am putting on slow g technology 5tb external drives. I just bought an apple studio with 8tb ssd and now I am putting data there until I figure this out, and soon it will it a bottleneck of data. What do you suggest? I need something where I can store data and be able to access pretty quickly. Most of the files are larger 4k video files. Thank you for any suggestion that you can give.

[@sergio3770]

The Play does not use as an Intel CPU, it uses Realtek RTD1296. DS1621+ uses AMD Ryzen V1500B. I don't see how the play for 1/5th of the price could possibly transcode well. I own a DS920+ and it already does a fair bit of transcoding so long as its hvec 265

[@michaelrobinson9643]

I'm stumped by the ESATA connection being used for an expansion. Isn't that going to severely limit the speed of an expansion c.f the 10Gb network bandwidth?

[@SpaceRexWill]

The only compatible units are 5 bays so if you have hard drives no

[@LuisCruz-yg6rs]

This video was very easy to understand. Your knowledge about Synology Nas products is simply amazing. Thank you for sharing it.

[@Mcfoxter]

Amazing review thanks! I’m a video editor with a small production business (mainly editing 4K multi-cam corporate videos) and I’m the position to buy a 1621+ which is six months old, still under warranty, and a really great price, cheaper than a brand new 1522+ in fact. However, it would come populated with 6 x WD 8TB Red Plus drives (Sata 3). I watched your previous videos on these WD drives regarding the three year limitation. Do you think this is something to stay clear of and opt for a system I could pair with Iron Wolfs.

[@kmdesign355]

Assuming I can have multiple Storage Pools on this beast: 4 bays in SHR (RAID), the 5th bay as a backup drive (Time Machine from multiple computers) and the 6th bay as a NVR drive..? Good / bad idea? Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Separating the NVR drive is a great idea as its going to be written to constantly. As for the Time Machine I would just put it in the same pool and limit the size via the shared folder

[@michaelcarraghan512]

With ds1621+ can I stream 2 4k movies at the sametime if I transcode a nuc would work with DS1621+

[@SpaceRexWill]

If you do not transcode then yes

[@michaelcarraghan512]

@@SpaceRexWill What if I use m1 mac mini to transcode to tv?

[@jonathanmatthew5631]

If i will only use the NAS for 1) Synology Photos and 2) file backup (no virtual servers, no plex), would i still benefit in getting the DS1621+ vs the DS920+ ? (say we remove the +2 bays of the 1621+)

[@SpaceRexWill]

Only would upgrade to the 1621+ in that case if you wanted 10GbE

[@jonathanmatthew5631]

@@SpaceRexWill so the processor and other things in the 1621+ wont give me any benefit if only used for photos and file backup? Won't the new AMD cpu speed up browsing through the photos? I want my photos to be fast and snappy. (will adding an nvm ssd cache be beneficial?). note: there are only 3 home users and they will only use photos lightly (no photographers or graphic designer, only normal home users who take some photos via iphone)

[@SpaceRexWill]

So things will be snappier for sure. But I would not say worth $250. The 920+ has a solid CPU

[@pkminpkmon]

Great video, thank you! I'd like to ask if you have time. I'm debating whether to get a 920+, 1520+, or 1621+, which currently have £150 diff between them. If I want to use them just for myself and don't need to stream, and mainly store photos, videos, and 3d files, and am fine with working on those files by downloading and working on them locally, do you think the 1520+ and 1621+ are overkill? Or if it will be worth the investment in the long run?

[@SpaceRexWill]

So there are 3 reasons you would upgrade to the 1621+ 1) you want 6 bays, 2) you want to have 10GbE (most compelling) 3) you need a more powerful CPU (unlikely). The most compelling reason would be if you wanted to go to 10GbE

[@pkminpkmon]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks for replying! I’m still trying to wrap my head around GBE, does it matter much if I’m a solo user? Is there a lot of benefit to it when backing, writing and reading files?

[@sylvainalain6637]

How many hdd do you need to push to the limit the 10GB nic ? Maybe we can push to the limit of the nic with nvme drive ….

[@SpaceRexWill]

Covered that here kzbin.info/www/bejne/hGG4aJeFgc92j5o And also here (for dual 10GbE) kzbin.info/www/bejne/qJCbf4GsoM9qb80

[@Nocturnes1984]

Great review.

[@ajschot]

How much power does it take in idle (with or without spinning disks) and when is in high use? Because most times i see reviews with power use but i remembered my readyNAS used almost as much as my self build FreeNAS box with the same disks but my freenas box was very much more powerfull

[@SpaceRexWill]

Without drives ~25 Watts, then whatever your drives are

[@sscoop1]

I just bought the 1621 XS+ for a video production studio .....because it was the latest and greatest...Good Idea or NO.....Thanks so much

[@SpaceRexWill]

That unit will do you great for that. I would recommend adding in a Read only NVMe cache as well as maxing out the ram in the unit for the maximum performance

[@mrhobs]

I guess I was banking on getting some huge readonly NVMe cache sticks. (1TB to start, maybe a second? Any bottlenecks I should watch out for?) I really need to add up the price here...

[@JohnSmith-zl8rz]

why in hell this not trans code 4k and the lower models does?

[@SpaceRexWill]

That’s like saying why does my Ferrari not tow a boat when my Ford can. They are built for different things. Same thing happens with Intel Xeons. You don’t buy this machine to be a Plex beast. That’s what the 920+ is for

[@tonyvalenti6614]

Hey Will! Another great video! This one resonates with me because I have the DS1621+. Would have gotten the 1821+ if they had announced it at the same time. 😖 Anyway, I added (6) 14TB Drives, (2) 16GB sticks of RAM, and (2) 1TB of NVMe Cache along with a 10GbE Network Card. I simply love it. I have my Plex Server running on an Intel laptop, store my media on the Synology and it works just great. My question is this, as I mentioned, I have (2) 1TB NVMe sticks of cache memory. Right now I have on set for read and the other write. Others from Synology FB group and Reddit insist I should make them both read. Even suggesting that using write cache could fail much quicker and cause me to lose data, worse crash my storage pool. I get it, but wanted your thoughts since you talked about making them both read. Am I at great risk? Should change them? Thanks so much!

[@SpaceRexWill]

So you actually are setup as read write (both sticks are storing both read and write data) So there is a question about data security with a write cache apon a power outage. But the big reason you should go to read only is performance. When you are writing to a NAS you generally are writing sequentially. Then when you read you might be reading randomly needing the cache. TLDR I would highly recommend using a read cache as it will just get you the best performance

[@tonyvalenti6614]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks so much for the super fast reply! Just to ensure I do this correctly, I can just simply make the change in the DSM settings, correct? Nothing more to do? I assume after doing so I’d have to reboot my NAS too? Again, thank you for a thoughtful recommendation, I trust your judgement more than most! 👍🏻

[@SpaceRexWill]

@Tony all you have to do is remove it through dsm (will take a while to flush all of your data from the drives) then reinstall it through dsm and this time as a read only cache

[@tonyvalenti6614]

@@SpaceRexWill Perfect! Will do! Thanks very much! 🦖👍🏻

[@edwingrajo]

Power consumption?

[@post-ebb151]

100w

[@Mark_Chandler]

the cpu is under 24 watts and has four cores and eight threads

[@ajschot]

@@post-ebb151 really 100w? Damn i keep my truenas box then because it is using just 20 more but still much more power

[@SpaceRexWill]

100w is wayyyy too high. its 25w without the drives

[@richardchiswell6517]

Great and really helpful. Just ordered a 1621+ as my DROBO number 2 died yesterday. I would find it really helpful (maybe you've done it already) to have a tutorial on the best memory and cache upgrades to go for with a 1621+. Many thanks.

[@SpaceRexWill]

So for the RAM you want to make sure it’s good and that others have used it with that synology before. There are ones on Amazon I think “arch replacement for xyz” that I use and recommend, but I have had a client who came to me because the ram they used bricked their NAS. It was fine after removing it and doing a soft reset. For the NVMe drives they tend to be so fast that quality is not crucial (as long as they are NVMe) if you want read write having power loss protection is a nice to have

[@richardchiswell6517]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks - can't get Arch.. in the UK. I'll check on the synoforum. BTW a tutorial on what first Cache or RAM would be helpful.

[@Gizmor43]

I'm glad this video came into my feed haha, i was planning on buying a Synology NAS with a AMD in it (because i'm a AMD Fanboy) but i do run plex on one of my NAS systems(RS3212xs) and thought AMD could be doing a better job but i guess not. My main 918+ model still works great and with DSM 7.0 its workes faster also, when the time comes to replace it then it will be for a AMD model i guess.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yeah having a CPU with quick sync is just going to make a huge difference if you are trying to transcode. But everything else the 1621+ is a beast

[@evelynyarborough1282]

Like the shirt!

[@michaelbobarev]

From where “another” noise ??? Noctua fans … i don’t hear them … no load ( cpu ) at all … and very noisy from inside … what’s going on ???😤😤😤

[@SpaceRexWill]

That’s the hard drives you put in

[@michaelbobarev]

@@SpaceRexWill no, no, no … same drives were installed in ds3018xs … and it was silence …!

[@michaelbobarev]

@@SpaceRexWill finally … noise goes from the fan inside power supply ( DPS-250AB-89B) … interesting moment, when trying to load synology ( hyperbackup ) noise goes way smaller …! :((((

[@Noodles.FreeUkraine]

It's "Better FS".

[@miguelbarajas9892]

I have one 😎

[@shaugen33]

Intel nook? I’m not familiar.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Its a NUC: amzn.to/3mYtApM

[@shaugen33]

@@SpaceRexWill wo $400 to add onto a NAS? That’s spendy 🤑

[@SpaceRexWill]

True, really depends on what you have already lying around (old laptops running linux can be perfect for this) or find on eBay

Sooo expensive. They could use anything else besides that Xeon. Could have used an AMD APU with support for ECC memory. This can't even do hardware encoding on Plex... disappointing

Oh, this isn't the xs+. Forget what I said.