QNAP makes a variety of NAS devices that range from smaller desktop models with two drive bays to larger rack mount units with 24 or more drive bays. At CES 2016, QNAP announced the TBS-453A M.2 SSD NAS. Along with M.2 SSDs, the TBS-453A contains a built in four port 1 gigabit switch. Initially, I was a little confused as to where this product would fit in. SSDs are more expensive than traditional mechanical hard drives and on top of it, M.2 SSDs tend to be slightly more expensive than 2.5" drives. As well, the consumer SSD market has less capacity per drive than mechanical hard drives. However, do not mistake my confusion for disinterest. From a throughput standpoint, SSDs offer very little performance advantage over a mechanical hard drive on a gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connection as mechanical hard drives can saturate a single 1 GbE link. The QNAP TBS-453A is offered in two versions. One model contains 4 GB of RAM while the other is offered with 8 GB of RAM. Packaging Traditionally QNAP plays the minimalist in terms of packaging; meaning they do not put a lot of artwork and graphics on their packaging. The same holds true for the TBS-453A NAS. The NAS is packaged in a plain cardboard box with a small sticker that contains product information such as product specifications and features. The TBS-453A is protected from scrapes and scratches by a plastic bag. Two 6' Ethernet cables, a power adapter, a media center remote control, and a quick start guide accompany the TBS-453A in the packaging. Specification Ordering P/N TBS-453A-4G TBS-453A-8G Processor 14nm Intel® Celeron® N3150 quad-core 1.6GHz, burst up to 2.08GHz Floating Point Unit ✔ Hardware Encryption Acceleration ✔ (AES-NI) GPU 8th generation Intel HD Graphics System Memory 4GB (2 x 2GB) 8GB (2 x 4GB) Maximum Memory 8GB Memory Slot 2, SODIMM DDR3L-1600 (*For dual-DIMM configurations, you must use a pair of identical DDR3L RAM modules.) Flash 4GB Drive Type 4 x M.2 2280/2260/2242 SATA 6Gb/s SSDs Pre-installed M.2 SSDs - - Raw Capacity Optional purchase Optional purchase Default Capacity (Factory Configuration) Optional purchase Optional purchase Network 5 x Gigabit LAN ports (Port 1 and any of the four ports from 2-1 to 2-4 are available to the 2 built-in network cards, and the remaining three ports can work as switch ports.) USB Port 4 x USB 3.0 & 1 x USB 2.0 ports Support USB printer, pen drive, and USB UPS, etc. Video Output 2 x HDMI, up to 4K 2160P 30Hz Ultra HD support Audio Input 2 x 3.5mm microphone jack (dynamic microphone only) Audio Output 1 x built-in speaker, 1 x line out jack (for amplifier or headphone amplifier) LED Status/Power, USB, SSD 1-4 Button Power, USB one-touch-backup, Reset, Volume Up, Volume Down IR Receiver ✔, support QNAP RM-IR002, RM-IR003 and MCE-compatible Remote Control(DM) Security Kensington security slot Dimension (HxWxD) 25 x 230 x 165 mm / 0.98 x 9.06 x 6.50 inch Weight 724g / 1.60lbs. 724g / 1.60lbs. Power Consumption (W) System sleep mode: 0.98W SSD standby: 13.05W In operation: 15.2W Sound Level** Sound pressure (LpAm) :10.8 dB(A) Working Temperature 0-40˚C Relative Humidity 5~95% RH non-condensing, wet bulb: 27˚C Power DC10V-20V wide input range Fan Compact internal fan Package Contents NASbook, 65W 19V AC adapter, power cord, quick installation guide, Ethernet cable x 2, remote control, SSD installation kit A Closer Look at the QNAP TBS-453A The QNAP TBS-453A does not look like a NAS at all. NAS devices are designed to hold two or more 2.5' or 3.5' hard drives which means they have a minimum foot print slightly larger than the drives it was designed for. The TBS-453A looks more like a desktop switch. This NAS is just about an inch tall and the dimensions are .98 x 9.06 x 6.50 in (25 x 230 x 165 mm). The front of the NAS features a One Touch Copy Button, dual USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, drive bay 1-4 LEDs, volume and power buttons. On the right side of the TBS-453A there is an additional USB port however, it is USB 2.0. Vents and speakers are located on the sides behind the louvers. The back of the TBS-453A is where the networking and I/O live. On the back there are dual HDMI ports that support 4k/30Hz. Two USB 3.0 ports, one 3.5mm audio out and two 3.5mm mic jacks, five RJ45 1 GbE network ports and the power port. The bottom of the NAS is where the SSDs and memory are installed. The bottom panel also includes information on the default networking configuration. By default, the four networking ports that are grouped together are in switch mode. This means that port 2-1 would connect to a router/modem that connects to the internet and devices such as PCs, printers, etc. would connect to ports 2-2 through 2-4. Each device would have access to the internet through the switch. This configuration can be changed in the web interface. The included power adapter is made by the FSP Group and is rated for 65 watts. QNAP includes a remote control to run the TBS-453A when used as a media center using the HybridDesk Station (HDStation) and is compatible with installed applications such as Kodi and Plex. A Closer Look Continued To access the internal bays of the TBS-453A, you'll need to pull up the four rubber feet located at each of the corners. Under the rubber feet are thumb screws that hold the bottom panel on. Unscrew them and pull the panel up. The user accessible bays inside include four M.2 SSD drive slots and two SO-DIMM slots. The M.2 slots use M.2 SATA SSDs. The M.2 slots support M.2 drives with lengths of 80, 60, and 42mm and screws are included with the TBS-453A to secure the M.2 drives in their slots. The slots also have a film thermistor to measure the temperatures of the SSDs. The TBS-453A also includes small heatsinks for the controllers on the SSDs. This helps dissipate heat and helps to keep the controllers from throttling. Two slots are provided for RAM. Our review unit shipped with 4 GB of RAM but can be ordered with 8 GB. The maximum supported RAM for the TBS-453A is 8 GB. The memory that was shipped with our unit was two 2 GB Transcend DDR3L 1600 modules. The fan for the TBS453A is a Sunon MagLev blower style fan and is easily replaced. During testing, fan noise from about 3 feet away was not noticeable when the NAS is set to automatically control the fan speeds. However, when using manual control, the fan could be heard when the fan was turned up to around 42%. There are actually two network controllers on board the TBS-453A. The four network ports grouped together are managed by a RealTek RTL8367N 5-port network controller. The RTL8367N is a full featured managed solution that supports technology such as spanning tree, 802.1Q VLANS, Access control lists, etc. The single port is controlled by an Intel i210 network controller. The i210 is no slouch either and is compatible with the same technologies as the RTL8367N. With this configuration, physically you have 5 network ports available but logically it is set up in a 4+1 configuration. Four of the ports will be usable as one network while the other is used on another. Storage function for the M.2 drives is handled by a pair ASMedia ASM1062 SATA controllers. Each ASM1062 supports two ports of Serial ATA up to a max of 6.0 Gbps. A pair of everything seems to be the on going theme with the TBS-453 as there is a pair of ASMedia ASM1442Ks that drive the dual HDMI ports. Both ports are capable of 4K @ 30Hz and when the NAS is connected to monitors, keyboard and mouse, the NAS functions as a lightweight Linux desktop and the displays can be extended or duplicated. System Configuration Case Cooler Master Cosmos II SE CPU Intel i7 4770K Motherboard MSI Z97m Gaming Ram 2 GB G.Skill F3-12800CL9q DDR3-1600 GPU MSI GTX 970 OC Hard Drives Samsung 840 EVO 256gb SSD Western Digital black 500 gb 7200 RPM HDD Power Supply NXZT Hale v2 1000 Watt power supply Kingston provided four 240G SSDNow drives specifically for this review. A dual port Intel network card was installed in the test system. A single static volume was used in all tests. Network Layout To test the QNAP TS-453A and since there is a built in switch, I used the built in 4 port switch. The test PC was plugged into port 2-3 and 2-1 was connected to the router for internet access. Software All testing is done based off of a single client accessing the NAS. To test NAS Performance I used The Intel NAS Performance toolkit and Crystal Disk Mark. The Intel NAS Performance toolkit simulates various tasks for storage devices such as video streaming, copying files and folders to and from the NAS as well as creating content directly on the NAS. To limit caching, a 2GB G.Skill memory module was used in all tests. All options in the Performance toolkit were left that the defaults. The NAS performance test is free to download. You can pick up a copy for yourself here. All tests were run a total of three times then averaged to get the final result. RAID 0, RAID 10, and RAID 5 are all tested. Tests were run after all the RAID arrays were fully synchronized. For real world testing, I copied a 4.3 gigabyte ISO file from the SSD in the test PC to the shared folder on the NAS. 4.3 gigabytes of MP3 files were copied over as well. While the TBS-453A is an all flash NAS, I needed to compare it with currently available NAS devices. I used results from our past reviews for the QNAP TS-563 and the Synology DS1515+. Both of the previous NAS reviews only used drives in the performance tests. RAID Information Images courtesy of Wikipedia JOBD or Just a Bunch Of Disks is exactly what the name describes. The hard drives have no actual raid functionality and are spanned at random data is written at random. RAID 0 is a stripe set and data is written across the disks evenly. The advantage of RAID 0 is speed and increased capacity. With RAID 0 there is no redundancy and data loss is very possible. RAID 1 is a mirrored set and data is mirrored from one drive to another. The advantage of RAID 1 is data redundancy as each piece of data is written to both disks. The disadvantage of RAID 1 is write speed is decreased as compared to RAID 0 due to the write operation is performed on both disks. RAID 1 capacity is that of the smallest disk. RAID 10 combines the 1st two raid levels and is a mirror of a stripe set. This allows for better speed of a RAID 0 array but the data integrity of a RAID 1 array. RAID 5 is a stripe set with parity. RAID 5 requires at least 3 disks. Data is striped across each disk, and each disk has a parity block. RAID 5 allows the loss of one drive without losing data. The advantage to RAID 5 is read speeds increase as the number of drives increase but the disadvantage is write speeds are slower as the number of drives is increased. There is overhead with RAID 5 as the parity bit needs to be calculated and with software RAID 5 there is more of a performance hit. RAID 6 expands on RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block to the array that is distributed across all the disks. Since there are two parity blocks in the array more overhead is used with a RAID 6 array. For a full breakdown of RAID levels, take a look at the Wikipedia article here. RAID configurations are a highly debated topic. RAID has been around for a very long time. Hard drives have changed, but the technology behind RAID really hasn’t. So what may have been considered ideal a few years ago may not be ideal today. If you are solely relying on multiple hard drives as a safety measure to prevent data loss, you are in for a disaster. Ideally you will use a mutli-drive array for an increase in speed and lower access times and have a backup of your data elsewhere. I have seen arrays with hot spares that had multiple drives fail and the data was gone. Do yourself a favor and read up on the different types of RAID arrays and plan accordingly. Personally, I use a RAID 10 array with an automated backup to the cloud. I feel with that setup, I’ve done what I can to keep my data safe. Intel NAS Performance Toolkit Results Test Results Continued QTS comes with a build in drive speed test and will give you the results in both sequential read and IOPS read results. After running the speed test, I noticed that drive 3 and 4 were significantly slower than drives one and two. I swapped the drives to see if it was a drive issue or a controller issue. After the drives 1 & 2 were swapped with drives 3 & 4, I re-ran the test and got the same result. I created two separate RAID 0 arrays using 1 & 2 in one array and 3 & 4 in another array and ran the Intel NAS Performance tests. The results of the tests showed that each RAID array was with in 1% of each other. While the network performance is right on par considering even the slowest on-board test result is slightly over 3x the theoretical max of gigabit Ethernet. The QNAP TBS-453A supports hardware encoding when watching videos through the web interface or when transcoding is needed; for example watching a HD movie on a mobile device. When hardware transcoding is turned on, the movies should play smoothly and CPU utilization should remain low. For this test, I took a 4K video stream and set the interface to transcode the stream down to 1920x1080. The first image below is the movie with hardware transcoding turned off. The CPU usage never dropped below 50% and the movie was extremely choppy and practically unwatchable. Along with the playback issues, the fan inside the unit kicked up to about 50% and sounded like a small jet ready for take off. The second image shows the same movie set to transcode down to 1920x1080 with hardware transcoding turned on. Playback was buttery smooth and the CPU utilization never rose above 15%. SSDs throttle speeds when a certain temperature is reached. However, QNAP includes small heatsinks for the SSD controllers and the fan does a pretty decent job of keeping the SSDs temperatures under control. During heavy copy operations, I saw in the control panel that the drives reached a reported temperature of 46°C. I popped the bottom off of the TBS-453A and started a 200 GB file copy operation and took the image below. While it's hard to make out with the white lettering, drive one temperature reading during the test was 38.0°C. QTS Switch configuration We've gone over QTS in depth in the past. The TBS-453A adds another piece of configuration. The TBS-453A adds 5 physical ports in a 4 + 1 configuration. The switch and switchports can be configured using the Network & Virtual Switch app in the QTS control panel. The application essentially breaks the switch ports down into tow adapters. Adapter number 1 is the single physical port to the far right when looking at the switch ports and adapter 2 is the four ports to the left of port 1. While initially I thought maybe the TBS-453A could be used as a router of sorts, it cannot. It is purely a switch. When all four ports in adapter 2 are populated, the clients all exist on the same IP network. QTS supports virtualization as well. Along with virtualization of the PCs, network virtualization is available as well. This allows the virtual PCs to connect to the physical network. The TBS-453A can also act as a DHCP server to assign IP addresses to both local virtual and network connected PCs. With multiple network adapters that could exist on different IP networks, a default-gateway needs to be assigned. Without it, the NAS wouldn't be able to see other IP networks or the internet. You can set the default gateway manually or have the NAS automatically set the default gateway based on which interface can get to the internet. Conclusion and Final Thoughts Without considering cost, when I initially heard about the TBS-453A I was partially excited by the product. As a network tech I have to give credit to QNAP for thinking outside the box. However, I was also partially confused and disappointed as QNAP chose to use SSDs in the TBS-453A with gigabit Ethernet connections. The max bandwidth on a gigabit connection is around 125 MB(megabytes)/s and the slowest drive test showed a speed of 391.65 MB/s which, at first look seems like a massive missed opportunity to throw down some 10 gb/s love to fully take advantage of the speeds the SSDs are capable of. Then I started to factor in cost of storage. The price per megabyte for the QNAP TBS-453A is significantly higher than a traditional NAS due to the fact that it is SSD storage exclusively. However, as this review progressed, other factors came up that I hadn't thought of before and while it lessens the pain of the missed opportunity above it doesn't quite eliminate them. With a traditional NAS, it is designed to sit on a shelf or a desk and not move around. However, the TBS-453A uses SSDs and SSDs are less likely to get damaged when dropped (for example). This means the TBS-453A can be thrown in your luggage for travel. Since it comes with a built in switch, that also means there's less gear to tote around. So taking the NASbook on a trip allows you to share and collaborate with little risk of damage from shock. In addition to the internal drives, the USB ports and SD Card reader can be shared. Add a supported USB wireless adapter and you can sit in a coffee shop with a few friends/coworkers and have access to the same data. At just under an inch tall, the TBS-453A makes a nice addition to the media center. The device supports 4K resolution and playback. While this NAS didn't come with KODI natively, it can be installed and works just fine. Playback at 4k is smooth and the interface scales well too. The NAS supports dual monitors as well if you a inclined to use it as a light weight Linux desktop PC. But again, it will be expensive as SSDs cost more than traditional hard drives. The TBS-453A is a unique NAS in a market that is saturated by mostly the same ol' same ol'. During the performance test, I purposely put the TBS-453A against larger and more powerful NAS devices to show that this device isn't really that much different in terms of performance. What is different is the use case. Sure, you can sit this on your desk or a shelf in a networking closet and it will work. It will be expensive, but it will work just fine. Or, if you travel a lot, you can pack it with you and take data along with you and use it as a sort of mobile office. I think it is going to be a few years before networks can really start to leverage SSD based storage devices. Right now, 10 gigabit Ethernet is too costly to implement at home. 10 gb network adapters run from $300-$500 (depending on model) and a 10 gigabit switches start around $850. Which is the cost of doing business as 10 gigabit was designed for large data centers. However, all is not lost. Recently there were two new standards ratified for 2.5 gigabit and 5 gigabit Ethernet. My hope is that we will see home use 2.5 & 5 gigabit with in the next year or so. With the new standards we should start seeing SSD network devices leveraged more as 2.5 gigabit should yield ~312 MB/s and 5 gigabit breaking into the 600 MB/s mark. Overall, the TBS-453A performs well. What is going to determine if this NAS is right for you is the use case. If you need to take large amounts of data with you in your travels with a decent amount of assurance that your data will be available when you reach your destination, then the TBS-453A NASbook should fit the bill. Honestly, I'm torn when it comes to the TBS-453A. It just doesn't fit in one box perfectly which, happens when thinking outside the box. On one hand, finally there's a device that breaks away from the standard hard drive model, adds extra features such as a built in network switch, dual 4k HDMI connections but, on the other it shows no 10 gigabit love to take advantage of the SSDs. Aside from total cost (NAS + SSDs), I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the TBS-453A as it performed in our testing flawlessly.
