QNAP TBS-h574TX All-Flash NASbook Review

When it comes to eTeknix, our bread and butter is CPUs, GPUs, and motherboards when it comes to the YouTube channel, and the website, that extends to cases, power supplies, coolers and everything in between. Today however sees something slightly different coming in by way of a NAS, but this one is slightly different. Instead of being focussed on pure data storage for media pictures, videos, music, or work documents if you’re more aimed at the SMB side of the market, it’s instead aimed at content creators, and unlike a normal NAS, this is branded as a NASbook and while it may seem small, slim and understated, but when we start talking about the specs, you’ll see that it’s anything but. With 2.5G and 10GbE as standard, throughput is not going to be an issue, as long as you have a pretty robust system with those connectivity options as standard on your motherboard, or with an add-in card but what about laptop devices for when you’re on the go? Well for starters, you wouldn’t be hauling a typical NAS off on your jolly’s while sipping a margarita at your hotel, but then what we’re looking at today in the form of the TBS-h574TX isn’t your typical NAS, because beyond the fast Ethernet ports, it also comes equipped with Thunderbolt 4 for up to 20 Gbps speeds when you need it most, as well as two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, giving 10Gbps speeds as well. What I’m trying to say is that for those of you budding content creators out there, this may just be the device that ticks all of the right boxes, and that’s why I’m so excited about it. Not only are we content creators, so this appeals to us, but when we find a product that will make our day-to-day lives easier and faster, allowing us to do the tasks we do, well it makes it easier for us to write about it because there’s the extra added factor of excitement and trust me, after doing this for well over a decade, writing about something that gets you excited really gets the creative juices going and makes writing it so much easier and with Computex getting closer and closer, I think just from the initial specs, I’ve found another addition to my bag. About the TBS-h574TX Designed for film sets, small studios, small-scale video production teams and SOHO users, the compact TBS-h574TX Thunderbolt™ 4 all-flash NASbook elevates video production for optimum productivity. It packs high-speed I/O and Intel® Core™ performance required by video production, allowing creators using Mac® or Windows® to enjoy the smoothest experience ever in real-time video editing, large file transfer, video transcoding, and backup. The TBS-h574TX, as the bridge between pre-production and post-production, takes video projects and team collaboration to the next level. The TBS-h574TX runs the ZFS-based QuTS hero operating system that ensures data integrity. You can also switch to QTS operating system based on your needs. Features Ultra-fast RAW file editing With an E1.S to M.2 SSD adapter attached in each slot, you can flexibly install five E1.S or M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs for lightning-fast multimedia file editing. Stay agile for ongoing projectsHot-swappable M.2 SSD and automatic RAID disk replacement enhance system reliability, reduce the risk of data loss, and smoothen ongoing projects. Thunderbolt™ 4 for faster direct connections Two Thunderbolt™ 4 ports allow directly connecting Mac®/PC workstations to the TBS-h574TX, delivering up to 20Gbps for 4K video editing. Hybrid-architecture CPU for multitasking The 13th Gen Intel® Core™ processors with hybrid architecture (P-core and E-core) deliver high performance and efficiency. 2.5GbE and 10GbE as standard2.5GbE and 10GbE networks accelerate large file transfer and allow for more connected devices/workstations by attaching a network switch. Faster USB transferTwo USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports enable fast file import/export from/to external storage devices. For more information, please visit the official product page here. Packaging & Accessories NAS are often quite big, but this one is much more compact due to it using M.2 style drives rather than 3.5" drives. That means the box is much smaller too, and there's a lovely photo on the front, where you can see this isn't your typical NAS. Around the back, key features and clearly shown, including the supported drive formats. The TBH-h574TX is the star of the show, but today, we'll be deploying five WD Red SN700 NVMe SSDs too. The NAS is well packaged, with lots of thick cardboard keeping it all safe, and separate side compartments for any cables. It comes bundled with an external power brick, as well as a LAN cable, but overall, it's all pretty simple stuff. A Closer Look The first thing we need to do with this unit is install our drives. They all can be mounted tool-free, just slide the trays out... ...then the drives clip into place thanks to a simple plastic retention clip rather than screws. There's a front mesh cover providing airflow to the drive bays. As you can see, there are five bays in total. Simply slide the drive tray back into one of the bays. All five are now in place, they lock into place securely, and no tools are required. Clip the cover back in place, and the unit looks pretty slick, not unlike a set-top box rather than a NAS unit. Around the back, you'll find a power input, 10GbE LAN, 2.5GbE LAN, HDMI out, Type-C, and a pair of Type-A USB ports. There's also a pair of rear-mounted fans for cooling. On the underside, you'll find an air intake, as well as four durable rubber feet to provide some ground clearance. The main part of the body is a single piece of aluminium, so it's very durable, but it also has a great premium quality look and feel to it; this should also assist in cooling, somewhat acting like a heatsink. The main PCB looks pretty robust, with a fan connected to either side of it, and an additional fan in the bottom, with a large black heatsink taking up the most amount of space here. Furthermore, with the PCB taken out, the E1.S drives can mount direct in place. The drive cages are all shielded and reinforced, providing passive cooling, and additional ventilation ensures airflow can pass through them. It actually looks like someone shrunk down a 1U server rack. Under the heatsink, you'll find the CPU, with two versions available. The i3-1320PE features 4P+4E cores at up to 4.5GHz and 12GB of onboard memory, and the i5-1340PE features 4P+8E cores with 16GB of onboard memory. The heatsink is pretty hefty too, so even under intensive workloads, cooling shouldn't be an issue. Setup Honestly, this may be an extremely advanced and powerful NAS, but it's no harder or more complicated to set up than any other NAS product we've ever used. The drives plug in tool-free, you hook up a network cable, and power cable, turn it on, and it'll walk you through the setup process step-by-step. With it being equipped with a powerful CPU, and 16GB of RAM and being operated with SSDs rather than mechanical drives, the setup process went incredibly fast. On first boot, it detected that there was a new update, so again, just follow the steps. That completed and rebooted in a few minutes, and was ready to rock. The basic setup process is simple enough, again, just enter some user details and you'll be set up in no time. Creating an admin account, user accounts, and privileges is just a few simple clicks away. Once done, you get a little introduction showing you the key features, but again, it's all very straightforward stuff. Performance With the NAS logged in you can easily select which drives you have and choose how you want to configure them. We set up ours in RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, and Raid-TP, which is as simple as ticking the drives, ticking the mode, and letting the RAID rebuild. Again, with this being a fast CPU and SSDs, the rebuild time is extremely fast compared to a traditional NAS, taking just 5-10 minutes, while my 5-bay HDD NAS can take a couple of hours. We used this NAS for our editing, and honestly, we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, as it's exactly what we need. The speed of this NAS is insane, and from our usage, it felt just as fast and responsive as any of the fastest flagship internal SSDs we have on our systems. RAID 0 It's no surprise that the drive felt snappy, as it managed to saturate the 10GbE connection in every RAID configuration. I was a little sceptical given that the M.2 drives we're using are only 3500mbps drives when the M.2 we use in our desktops are anything from 8000-12000mbps. However, in any RAID configuration, the combined speeds of these drives are enough to give us 10Gbps read and write, which is simply amazing. RAID 5 RAID 6 RAID-TP CPU Usage This is the graph showing the CPU usage of this drive during the file transfers, with the network pushing 10GbE, the CPU barely showed even the slightest blip, it barely used any memory, and the NAS continued to run very quietly. Temperatures The drives never seemed to go past 50c, even under sustained loads, so clearly cooling is not an issue. How Much Does it Cost? There's no easy way to put it, but it's certainly not cheap. With the price of the QNAP 5 Bay TBS-H574TX-I5-16G Desktop NASBook Enclosure comes in at £1799.99 and that doesn't include any drives. This certainly makes it one of the most expensive 5-bay NAS on the market, but at the same time, it's also one of the fastest and most powerful. NAS often have lower-powered processors, but this one has the i5-1340PE, it also has 10GbE networking and supports both M.2 drives and the newer E1.S drives, and all of those things add to the overall cost. Overview This certainly isn't the NAS for everyone, and if you're just at home wanting some backups, and somewhere to dump your Plex server for a few movies, it's complete overkill. However, suppose like us you need to move massive files between multiple devices for content creation, be that game development, video editing or music production. In that case, it can be a very powerful tool indeed. The biggest benefit here, as far as I can see, is the 10GbE networking. When you combine that with the blazing-fast speeds that are possible on either M.2 or E1.S drives, you can far exceed the performance of more traditional 3.5" drive NAS configurations. With traditional HDD you need to use RAID5 with 10 drives just to get to around 900-1000mbps transfer speeds, however, with M.2 you can use relatively cheaper NVMe drives without RAID, and still get even higher speeds. While we only used 1TB drives you can go much more beyond that on M.2 and E1.S with 4TB and sometimes 8TB drives being viable options if you've got deep enough pockets for them. Furthermore, the new E1.S drives are built bigger than M.2 drives and allow for more robust feature sets, that can further enhance your NAS experience. With support for a range of RAID configurations, have plenty of flexibility on how you choose to deploy the five available bays. The powerful processor, extremely fast networking, and fast SSD support, make light work of keeping up with heavy workloads and I doubt having a large set of users accessing this drive would pose any issue for it, and while the performance we saw in our own testing is impressive, it's still barely scratching the surface oh how fast you could push this unit. With support for Windows and Mac users, the QNAP runs the TBS-h574TX runs the ZFS-based QuTS hero operating system, however, if you prefer a more traditional QNAP experience, you can run the QTS operating system too. Should I Buy One? The NAS itself may not be cheap, but you do get what you pay for. With support for very fast hard drives, but retaining a compact design with impressive cooling capabilities, extremely fast networking capabilities, 20 Gbps Thunderbolt 4, 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2, and a powerful processor to deal with things like real-time 4K video transcoding, and in a form factor that is both compact and stylish, makes this one of the most exceptional NAS we've ever had the pleasure of testing. Sure, it's total overkill for a lot of people, but when it comes to content creation, it's a very powerful tool that can significantly speed up your workflow.