Page 7 - Performance and Power Consumption
Does this picture look familiar? Hint: It has never appeared in another review before.
For our tests, the Thecus N2560 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 OCZ Vertex 3.20 240GB SSD is configured to ensure there is no drive bottleneck in the performance benchmarks. For the power tests, we have installed one Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB in addition to the SSD. The client computer is configured with the following specifications:
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.50GHz
CPU Cooling: Thermaltake WATER2.0 Pro (Noctua NF-F12)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws-X F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL 4x4GB
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 2GB OC
Chassis: Lian Li PC-B12
Storage: OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB; Western Digital Caviar Blue AAKS 500GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1
Compared Hardware:
- Thecus N2560
- ASUSTOR AS-202TE
- QNAP TS-419P II
- QNAP TS-470
- QNAP TS-559 Pro II
With the OCZ Vector 3.20 240GB SSD in the driver’s seat, we can hit the gas and see what the Thecus N2560 can deliver. On an aside, from past experience, we have found Intel Gigabit LAN adapters – on the client side – to perform extremely better than the competition, usually against Realtek and Marvell counterparts. Therefore, to remove any slowdowns on the client side, our ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution motherboard is connected to the network via its integrated Intel 82574L Gigabit LAN adapter. We conducted the above tests with the OCZ Vector 3.20 240GB SSD to ensure that the only limiter of speed is the Thecus N2560 itself. Of course, you have already seen these graphs in the ASUSTOR AS-202TE review last week, so there are not too many new things to talk about. We do not expect the Thecus N2560 to outperform the QNAP TS-470, and the results reflect this. Managing write speeds of 70.94MB/s and read speeds of 100.37MB/s, it is quite impressive to see the N2560 outperform the AS-202TE in both areas. For the write performance, the N2560 is second only to the TS-470, which is quite a bit more expensive, but it comes in at quite a gap.
If you are not a stranger around APH Networks, you will notice ATTO is used quite a bit in our testing. 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. We started using it in the QNAP TS-559 Pro+ three years ago, and now ATTO has become a standard for our storage benckmarks; used in everything from USB flash drives to solid state disks. In regards to the Thecus N2560, it is able to compete quite well for write performance, but falls a bit short when measuring read speeds. Maxing out at 108.9 MB/s write and 110.9 MB/s read, this is still pretty impressive, considering the theoretical maximum of Gigabit Ethernet being ‘only’ 125MB/s (1000Mbps/8) with overhead. Comparing with the ASUSTOR AS-202TE, results are mixed, as the Thecus N2560 is better in writing, while the AS-202TE is better for reading. While not the most intuitive of results, we cannot argue with the numbers.
With one SSD and one hard drive installed in the drive bays, power consumption is around 21W idle and 26W under load. Of course, these numbers will be reduced further if the power management tools are utilized to allow for the hard drives to sleep. As well for your knowledge’s sake, startup peak power is 44W. The Thecus N2560 is a pretty efficient network attached storage, and lives up to its reputation to be an energy efficient NAS. During operation, the entire Thecus is quiet and barely makes any sounds from the fan. The only noises are beeps to tell users when the NAS has powered up and when it has powered down, both of which can be enabled or disabled by the end user via software.
Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware (External)
3. A Closer Look - Hardware (Internal)
4. Configuration and User Interface, Part I
5. Configuration and User Interface, Part II
6. Configuration and User Interface, Part III
7. Performance and Power Consumption
8. Final Thoughts and Conclusion
