Page 6 - Performance and Power Consumption
For our tests, the QNAP TS-419P II is connected to our central home network with CAT5e wiring. Our test station is located two stories away from the NAS to simulate real world performance in a centralized networking environment. While this is not a very realistic installation, one Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD is configured to ensure there is no drive bottleneck in the performance benchmarks. The client computer is configured with the following specifications:
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.50GHz (Overclocked, Turbo Boost disabled)
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws-X DDR3-1866 4x4GB @ 9-10-9-28
Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 1280MB SOC
Chassis: Fractal Design Define R3 (Noctua NF-P12 PWM)
Power: Seasonic Platinum 1000W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Storage: OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB; Western Digital Caviar Blue AAKS 500GB
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1
Equipped with the uber fast Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD, our QNAP TS-419P II is ready to roll. According to the engineers at QNAP, and proven to be true in our performance benchmarks, Intel Gigabit LAN adapters -- at least on the client side -- perform much better than their Realtek and Marvell counterparts. Therefore, to prevent any bottlenecks on the client side, our ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution motherboard is connected to the network via its integrated Intel 82574L Gigabit LAN adapter (Keep in mind the QNAP NAS itself actually has a Marvell adapter). We also conducted the above test on our OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB solid state drive to ensure there is nothing limiting the performance of our QNAP TS-419P II than the NAS itself. In turn, the results were pretty darn impressive. The TS-419P II is just a little bit slower than the QNAP TS-559 Pro II, which is a much more expensive, small business product. Most home users should find its 98.72MB/s read and 61.80MB/s write speed to be more than sufficient; I can't imagine this result to be much different if you have a bunch of disks on RAID 5 (Our TS-559 Pro II posted very similar results with 3x Western Digital Caviar Blue EALS 1TB drives in RAID 5). I still think its write speed is a bit slow, so it can definitely see some improvement in this regard. With that in mind, let's see how it performs in ATTO.
ATTO disk benchmark provides valuable insight into evaluating disk performance; it is especially valuable since it is not local disk limited like Windows file copy -- but rather the network adapter itself. After first using it in our QNAP TS-559 Pro+ review a couple of years ago, ATTO has been an integral part of our storage benchmarks; used in everything ranging from USB flash drives to solid state disks. Venturing in the area of 117MB/s in read for pretty much everything 32K and up, remember that the theoretical maximum of Gigabit Ethernet is 'only' 125MB/s (1000Mbps / 8). It is just at the heels of the TS-559 Pro II, although it really can't get any faster than this, haha. SSD write performance is pegged at nearly 80MB/s for pretty much everything 32K and above as well, but as aforementioned, I feel that this figure can probably be kicked up just a notch for performance craving users like yours truly. While its peak write speed is actually a bit faster than the more powerful QNAP TS-559 Pro II business NAS, this was not reflected in the real life Windows performance tests.
With one SSD installed, this is not a really realistic test -- these drives don't normally use more than one or two watts. Here's the deal though: If you have three traditional hard disks installed, it will add only ten to fifteen watts to my figures above. In our tests, power consumption is at a very low 9W idling and 11W full load (CPU at 100% as well). What I am trying to say is, even if you have a trio of more performance oriented 7200rpm disks, rather than the SSD I am using, you will still consume less than 30W -- and this is an estimate on the high side. Power consumption will drop even further if the hard drives are configured to turn off if they are not used, or if you are using 5400rpm so-called 'eco' drives. All in all, the QNAP TS-419P II is very power efficient network attached storage. We got all the performance that should satisfy most home users, but none of the high power bill normally associated with one. Considering it is going to be running 24/7, every watt adds up!
Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. Configuration and User Interface, Part I
4. Configuration and User Interface, Part II
5. Configuration and User Interface, Part III
6. Performance and Power Consumption
7. Final Thoughts and Conclusion
