Page 10 - NAS Performance, Power Consumption
For our network attached storage tests, I have used the renowned QNAP TS-470 connected to our central home network with CAT5e wiring. The QNAP TS-470 is one of the company's SOHO/SMB systems, and is one of the fastest NAS we have tested here at APH Networks. The client computer was configured with the following specifications:
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.60GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 (Single fan)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury HX426C15FBK4/32 4x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Chassis: In Win 805
Storage: OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB; Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB; SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
Power: Seasonic Platinum 1000W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Loaded with different hard disk drives, our QNAP TS-470 was 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 -- traditionally performs better than their Realtek and Marvell counterparts. Therefore, to prevent any bottlenecks on the client side, our Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 motherboard was connected to the network via its integrated Intel Gigabit LAN adapter. We also conducted the above test on our SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB solid state drive on the client side to ensure there was nothing limiting the performance of our QNAP TS-470 than the NAS itself. In the write test, the Red WD60EFRX came in second; coming in at 108.69MB/s, just behind the Red Pro 6TB at 111.88MB/s.
As with our previous results, we had four WD40EFRX 4TB for testing, so a quad HDD RAID 5 array was built to see how the Red drives performed in a real life network attached storage system setup. Because running a RAID 5 array does have quite a bit of operation overhead, especially when it comes to write speed, it was perfectly reasonable to see a performance drop, as you can see in the first graph above. The speed drop was due to factors contributed by the NAS box itself, as well as the hard drives to some extent. I only had one WD60EFRX for testing, but it is safe to assume a similar performance drop if you were to place several WD Red 6TB drives in the same RAID 5 configuration.
In the read test, all drives in single mode came out to be extremely close to each other, with the Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB producing yet another competitive result in the overall race at 109.25MB/s. With that in mind, let us see how it performs across the curve in our remote ATTO benchmarks.
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 back in 2010, 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 118MB/s in read and write for pretty much everything 32K and up, remember that the theoretical maximum of Gigabit Ethernet is 'only' 125MB/s (1000Mbps / 8) with overhead -- this is downright impressive. Interestingly, the regular Red 6TB virtually tied with the Red Pro 6TB. With four Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB hard drives running in RAID 5, there was a speed penalty at 32K and above, as expected. Again, I would assume a similar performance drop if four Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB hard drives were configured the same way.
With one hard drive installed, our QNAP TS-470 consumed the most power with Western Digital's Red Pro WD6001FFWX 6TB installed; tying the HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB and Western Digital Red Pro WD4001FFSX 4TB, both 7,200 RPM models. Consider most network attached storage systems will be running 24/7, and there will more than likely be multiple hard drives installed, every watt will definitely add up on your power bill. When idling, the entire system equipped with both regular WD Red variants took only 25W, whereas the same system configured with the speedy but hungry 7,200RPM Hitachi Deskstar NAS and Western Digital Red Pro took 28W -- a whopping 3W difference for just one drive alone. Interestingly, this was not the case in our load tests. The system equipped with the WD Red 6TB burned two more watts than the 4TB model.
With four WD40EFRX installed, you can really see how it all adds up. While idling, the system took 35W; loading it up boosted this figure to 52W. How will this compare if we were to have four Red WD60EFRX 6TB disks? To extrapolate the graphs a bit, this means running quad WD Red 6TB drives concurrently will probably take 35W idle and 60W load at my guess. The Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB, a large capacity NAS drive, remains to be extremely efficient. It also consumed the least power at idle, which was excellent.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Features, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. NAS Performance, Power Consumption
11. Conclusion
