QNAP TVS-h1288X NAS Hardware Review

[Music] hello and welcome back and today's hardware review is of an absolute stormer of a device this is the brand new get ready for the name tvs h1288 x this is the brand new powerhouse desktop unit from qnap following up on the still incredibly popular tvs 1282 t3 this is the optional thunderbolt xeon powered monster nas that we're going to talk about today i've already got it populated i'm already going to be using it for a bunch of tests and it is an absolute beast today we're going to talk about the hardware inside we're going to talk about what it can do what it can't do and we're ultimately going to help you decide if this deserves your data but let's get it out the way early doors this thing knocks around for about two to two and a half grand at base price that's without hard drive or ssd media across any of the three tiers that's without any kind of thunderbolt to 10 gb adapters that's without the optional thunderbolt 3 upgrade card that we will go into more detail in another video this is a system that is pricey it's probably not the most expensive eight bay i've ever featured on the channel uh in desktop form at least but i will say that it does arrive with a hell of a price tag but for what you're getting it's actually quite impressive you're getting a device that has an incredibly unique cpu that i've not seen on many systems previously you're getting an enormous amount of potential storage across three separate tiers all with their own benefits in terms of performance iops and price and all of the system is geared towards being the very fastest nasa internally and the very fastest nas externally with an enormous amount of scalability in storage expansions and upgradeability but before we go any further let's look at the basics out the way shall we so this is the unit it arrives in this enormous box here you can see the difference between the storage box and the unit the reason this box is so large is because inside is a huge amount of hard foam protection something i would compare to a rack mount device also inside there's two layers of that we have a few accessories and there's good and there's bad we have a uk mains lead super dull it's got an internal psu that's 550 watt psu inside there it's a single one it is a brick of a thing but inside there it has also got a separate power connector for a graphics card that we'll talk about later on it's optional but a uk main sleeve there you've also got keys for each of the 12 storage bays there on the front so eight hard drive bays for ssd base and again they are lockable so with highlighting they are plastic locks though so those plastic blocks they're not going to withstand someone who wants to aggressively get to the drives inside it's more to stop accidental disconnection really more than anything um we have an ethernet cable which comes with a good side comes with a bad side the good side is it is cat 6 so it is perfect for 10 gbe connectivity but there's only one cable which really surprised me so on the one hand they didn't cheap out of cat5 which too many brands do these days particularly 10g connections where you're actually going to feel the difference but on top of that the system only has one cable which seems really weird to me given that this is a dual port 10g connection and four 2.5 g connection that's six greater than one gpu connections and only one cat six included which seems a bit odd you know um you've also got screws for two and a half inch and three and a half inch media though i will highlight that each of these media bays is click and load in design so you don't need screws for installing hard drives or ssd in any of the bays even the ssd bays inside are screwless i believe i'll double check that though but what that means is is if you want to go an extra layer and secure them in the old-fashioned way you can and it might be more secure for you bit of peace of mind and finally we have got our installation our first time set up an installation guide which is a bit light on the ground if we're honest but there's lots of online guides i personally like a paper manual seems a bit weak to me and we have information on the three years manufacturer's warranty which i think is pretty good for this device given that the predecessor only had two years and that three-year manufacturer's warranty included with the lifetime warranty of the software and also includes an expansion to five years of warranty an extra two years that you can add to your warranty if you're a business user who puts a lot of stock and stuff like that and i personally am someone who cares quite a lot about warranty and those are pretty much all our accessories get rid of those get rid of the bag move the unit over there because now we want to look at this don't we now let's take a look at this giant nas now as mentioned this system is pre-populated they don't sell it pre-populated i've already populated it because we're going to be doing all of the tests we're going to be doing thunderbolt test we're going to be doing 10 g tests we're going to be doing klex tests for you guys we're going to be doing vm tests and we're going to be bench testing the performance of zfs inside this device that's right the h in the tile this has got quts hero and the zfs file system advantages in line compression in line to duplication data color lessing all of the caching benefits there in the background that these triple tier storage systems like this will really get on board with faster builds faster rate rebuilds and instantaneous ratery silver in a saint instantaneous a matter of 10 to 30 seconds it is a beast in terms of what the software can do on a file system level and then you add on qnap's own range of active applications in quts hero studying gamma everything from surveillance with qvr elite to virtual machine virtual um virtual machine utilities in virtualization station and their hyper protector application too and then with their virtual machine software uh software inside you've also got container station you've also got ubuntu with that great three click three to five minute um deployment of a ubuntu vm all the way up to current version lts 20. in fact in the virtual machine software you have got the ability to download windows 7 a um and 10 vms directly from the software so we've got some building works next door not a vast amount i can do about that i'm really sorry if that picks up there on the mic now if we take a close look at each of these individual bays we can get some idea about just how much storage we can play with i fully populated this device so if we open it up there i've got pre-installed ready to go again just for the software reviews we have got 10 tbw red pros inside here so again enterprise class drives with each of these values supporting up to 18 tb in the current conventions of nas hard drives and even 20 tb on the horizon if we remove each one of those drives let's get those out of there we don't really want to change the order up do we we can take a close look at just exactly what the inside of this chassis looks like behind those bays so i'll pop those there each one of these bays had its own dedicated starter connector and one thing i was surprised not to see in this but i guess because it was affect the price is i'm surprised we didn't see sas connected inside now obviously this would be quite a feat i don't really want to lose track of which drive that is there um the inside of this device has those starter connectors now maybe it's a the chipset already pushed to its extremes but sas and starter connectors maybe there'll be a sass version of this box in the future you never know i think it might they might have to change a lot of the chipset but still lovely to see those eight sata connectors there inside no loose cabling no mucking around it's all very clear and easy there inside so on the top next to those eight bays that can all support multiple raids if you choose and remember with zfs it removes that layer from the inside so you don't have to deal with volumes you are going straight on the storage pool the result is with the array configurations you choose across those drives you've got triple parity raid options you've got rate zed you have all the advantages on at least ray configurations that zfs bring to the table crossed with that of qnap's own stock storage manager now on the top we have got those sata ssds and again click and load into start indesign again no screwdriver required but you can install screws if you choose so if we put those ssds there we can have a good look inside those four bays and again these are sata ssds it's not like the 973 ax that has two sata and two u2 nvme these are just sata and again we'll get those out of this we can take a good old look then inside nice and clear all the way through now you may have noticed right there this system also has an lcd panel this is one of a few things about this device i was super pleased to see when it was first revealed because qnap have over a number of years introduced a number of very brand unique architecture components into their design and lcd panels is something that i've always loved i like the idea that the click of a button i can find out a lot of information about the ips that are connected the internal temperatures or if there is a problem that i can read what it is here on the screen or that's not the only way this system will alert you if there are problems with your storage to help you preempt and avoid any potential data loss and we'll get onto those later on on the side here you can probably see this big vent now when the system is in operation there is a giant lc led light here and there is ventilation all the way through the reason being is this system has an enormous cooling vent here on the side most nas systems when you unbox them and you get down to the chassis level you start looking around on the inside the main controller is almost always found on the side of the device and it's where all the ports will generally live it's where all the main transistors and heatsinks and components are going to be but this system because it has an immense cpu that we'll talk about more later on that xeon and it's got four memory slots again talk about later on and it has nvme ssd caching base inside that can also be used for raw storage you might add that is a huge amount of components here so what they've done in line with the giant heatsink on this six core cpu is have this giant area right here that's almost a fifth maybe even a quarter of the um width of this device with its own dedicated two fan cooling system inside that we're going to look at later in the video and the air is drawn through there on the rear of the device there is a giant cooling fan as well and those fans that are inside are an air in out system that you're going to look at with its own kind of framework that can be lifted off to access the nvme and the memory bays it's a very chassis unique system this chassis is only ever featured in a couple of other nas devices and we haven't seen it for a few years and it's great to see it back here now another thing to look at is here yes it's a usb copy button and yes it's something i really get my knickers in a twist about because i really like usb copy buttons and it annoys me when brands don't include usb copy buttons because i think they are useful i think it's nice to have a two-way usb copy mechanic and backup and sync particularly people that use the nas um in a single office environment and they use you know big cameras and external drives on the go that they need to back up i like to have a physical button that lets me know the backups taking place yes you can connect to usb port and it'll be automatic but that's not as good and i like being able to click the button and now but what makes this one particularly good is the fact that it's usb 3.1 gen2 that's right it's a 10 gigabits per second usb one touch copy on the front which in line with the way things are changing with external drives with most of us now largely demanding particularly with external ssds usb 3.1 gen 2 as the connection on the rear it's great to see that as a usb copy button there that in line with the lcd panel there on the front and the multi-tiered storage bays on the front i'm already quite impressed with this but maybe we should go down to something a tad more negative let's keep our feet on the ground shall we first it is a metal chassis through and through this is not the quietest desktop nas out there and if you're gonna work in close proximity with it and you're gonna use enterprise class drives like i'm gonna it's gonna make a racket it's gonna make a noise and you are going to hear it on the go obviously if you go for slightly quieter drives shy of 6tb or you're going to utilize a pure ssd setup that noise will be reduced but remember this has three fans on the rear and it has two fans on the side the result is that this whole system is going to make a hell of a racket while it is in operation and it's done with the best interest in mind it's done to keep things lovely and cool because you know the components inside this is going to be working and you want those components to be nice and cool but this is by no means the quietest nas out and i'm sure on the screen it has detailed at some point or another lots of information regarding noise levels and power consumption now power consumption on this device obviously i've mentioned it's a 550 watt psu on the rear that we're going to see in a moment but bear in mind of course you're not going to utilize that at the start it is there provisionally to support the things that you add inside and of course the more things you add the more enhanced pcie cards be they thunderbolt or not if you use graphics cards inside if you use denser hard drive media if you utilize high-class ssds running at full speed that can get quite hot all of that means those fans are going to ramp up and although the rpm can be adjusted manually i will stress that that rpm and the rotations of the the actual settings towards that should be left automatic you shouldn't adjust them or play with them now the other thing i'm a little less keen on is that the system has no ventilation there and no ventilation there normally qnap systems seem to have ventilation on the sides either slip panels or the q logo the qnap cue ventilated the base has a crap load of ventilation and the front even with the drives inside has plenty of ventilation and maybe it's because this is a system that's drawn to make sure it can control the airflow and therefore control the internal temperatures i can't say that with conviction because i don't know if it's true but that's the only way i can kind of justify the lack of side ventilation something i see all naz brands seemingly feature and they've got to include that for a reason right so those are really my only two qualms so far before we go any further though and let's turn it around first let's talk about the internal structure of this device now the cpu as mentioned is a xeon inside it's the w1250 that is a six core graphically embedded xeon that is not a common cpu it's one that we've very rarely seen in the market particularly in the field of nas and to have that with zfs on top you're using a very demanding file system with a huge amount of features and functionality with a cpu that can get it done it also arrives with either 16 or 32 gig of ddr4 memory that can be upgraded up to 128 gig and that is ecc ddr4 memory udem as well so again high class memory and high class functionality now the cpu as mentioned that six core um it is a 3.3 gigahertz per core processor that can be burst up to a stonking 4.7 gigahertz on each of those six chords and the embedded graphics uhd p630 is comparable to that of an intel core so again we are talking i5 i7 we've done the comparisons are in the article if you read the description below now that that cpu and its embedded graphics rank insanely well on cpu benchmark i believe the score was in excess of 15 000. i think it was like something silly like 15 070 or whatever and a 3d mark on the embedded graphics was generous as well it's very high scoring on it and again as a core architecture that is incredibly impressive and again only goes to highlight the need for the enterprise-grade cooling inside this that i would compare to a rack mount device now it does support gpu cards as mentioned the range of nvidia cards that are supported by qnap is available on the compatibility list and a number of the cards allow you to utilize it for transcoding and multimedia others can only be used in virtualization and others let you do both the range is always growing of supported cards but the psu inside is that 550 what internal although i'm generally not in love with an internal psu you can't avoid it at this scale it has an additional power cable for a gpu card inside as well we will remove the lid at the end of the video so that is what the hardware inside this is capable of like reaching its top peaked performance and remember those two nvme bays inside pcie gen three times four each means that this system supports four thousand megabytes per second for each of the nvme bays which can be used for caching in a three-tier storage system with q-tier or as each one of those tiers with their own raid and own live access bench testing um by qnap themselves there they've got a live video coming out on their uk channel coming soon i was lucky lucky enough to be able to see that using the just the nvmes inside they're able to reach speeds of between 12 and 1500 megabytes per second on a single thunderbolt connection that was damn impressive and very very good throughput for this device just using those nvmes so there is an enormous amount of internal potential in terms of performance available to you on this and the zfs file system gives you better performance than what we've seen in ext4 or btrfs at the same time and remember this is a two to two and a half grand system but the components we talked about so far have already pushed it towards two grand even in the conventional sense let's talk about what else we're getting with this so if we look at the top we can see those two oh and i should say three sets of pcie there now we have already pre-installed there a pcie gen 3 x 8 slot and in that slot we have a 2 port 10 g card that is what this arrives with a 2 x 10 gbe copper connection on its own dedicated controller card that means that you've already got up to 2 000 megabytes per second throughput potential on this device without thunderbolt now because it's on its own card it takes a lot of the hard work off the core system yet it's taking up cpu pcie lanes just being there but still it is great to have that now on the other side we have pcie gen three times four slots two of them each one of those slots supports up to a four thousand megabytes per second throughput card and you can install two of the thunderbolt cards inside so you can have either two or four thunderbolt usb type c ports inside stand about three ports i might add and that allows you for all of those users to be able to edit on this device live along with 10g connections now those of you that have kept track of what i've just said are probably wondering what i'm wondering why is there a 2.10 g card in the three times eight slot and the thunderbolt cards are being built into the three times four now a lot of that comes down to the architecture of thunderbolt thunderbolt upgrade cards and ensuring that it's the best controller 10g card available you can install other attention cards of course but they have gone big on that card hopefully it's broken down on the specs there but there is mentioned in the review done a full strip down of the device now as mentioned that thunderbolt card is an additional purchase we will be doing a dedicated video to this but it is as seen the first generation of thunderbolt 3 upgrade cards it's an official qnap card it's got a model id it's an official box and this allows you to spread the cost of getting a powerhouse nas without overpaying for thunderbolt a number of you that have purchased the 1282 t3 recently if i say that in the last year or so more than likely purchase that device without even using the thunderbolt it's just the hardware architecture with 10g on board two ports and it's intel core i7 cpu inside and up to 64gb memory ddr4 on that model which is not available elsewhere at that price point but you paid for thunderbolt and you paid a premium for the thunderbolt you may not even use the number of 872xt users have spent 1600 to 2 grand on a system because of that six core i5 and part of that price point was made up by the thunderbolt they may not even use thunderbolt nas is a good thing and it allows lots of content creators to edit and re imagine and rework their entire workflow with um post-production um distribution metadata handling and sharing all in a single system with its own backup options around it but if you don't want the thunderbolt option it's a shame you have to pay for it so i'm glad to say that thunderbolt nas and the r d that's gone into it from qnap has finally reached a point where upon people can get hold of the technology gradually now right now that card doesn't support many systems it only supports the 88x right now and other systems that feature the 1250 xeon inside this device so that is a limitation but i'm hoping that we are going to bench test that card in a number of systems and of course i'm going to try it in a synology i don't know if it will work but it's worth a bloody go isn't it but what i'm saying is you get a huge amount of throughput externally on this device even without that connection by default now at the top here we have lots of um attention towards audio out now i mentioned earlier on with the lcd about having real-time information available to you at the click of a button about what's happening with the device in the event of an alert audio in and out and speakers is something that qnap have gradually faded out of a lot of their most recent hardware but luckily it is present again and i'm pleased to see it so if when the system is booting if there's a firmware update if the raid needs rebuilding if there's a problem there's lots of voice prompts ai voice prompts that come out of that speaker also you can use a kvm setup or attach it to an existing audio system where if you want to make sure that if there is a problem with your server that you hear it over the audio system that may exist in your office now i quite like that particularly when it's used in conjunction with surveillance and kvm there's also an hdmi out i should add and usb ports for keyboard video mouse but this does open the door to the second thing i was a little disappointed by in the hardware architecture of the this device something that i know isn't really qnap's fault they've weighed it up and they've made their choices the hdmi out on this is 1.4 b so that is 1080p 60 frames per second 4k 30 frames per second now most of us will know that almost all of the hdmi solutions qnap are put out the last year and a half are all hdmi 2.0 60 frames per second 4k the reason for it is as good as this system is and it's harder architecture the cpu inside only supports 30 frames per second hdmi it only supports hdmi 1.4 b which means that there was no point putting or better on a better hdmi out now hdmi is very rarely used by most users it's a very small percentage of people that take advantage of it but those that do are going to look at this insane xeon system that has an hdmi a very rare thing i might add hdmi equipped xeon systems and just be a little sad that 4k direct low latency output over hdmi is restricted at 4k 30 frames per second but again cpu limitation and on balance of all the processors qnap could have chose other than an i9 um or an i7 ninth or 10th gen i think this is probably the best i could have gone for and i'm still pleased by it now i mentioned usb ports there are four more usb 3.1 uh 3.2 gen2 10 gigabits per second ports here both c and a now bear in mind those are not to be confused with thunderbolt ports don't look at these and assume that those are the thunderbolt ports on the device just because they're usbc they are for connecting client devices when they're a technology technological relationship is this system being the host this is when you are communicating with the device and these are for external storage or supported peripheral devices if you try to connect to this you're not with a pc or a mac you can't communicate with the device you're going to need that thunderbolt card there you've got the three cooling fans and again as mentioned the rpm can be adjusted although personally i would not touch that i wouldn't change those too much i would certainly let them do their job and keep things cool to the degree that they believe is the right way to go in the system so let's get our screwdriver and start getting the top of this chassis off and have a good look on the inside of this device so we've got the screws off the back there were eight screws holding that rear chassis on there and again metal and now we get to see just how clear this device is because the first thing that struck me when i've taken the chassis off is i expected there to be more inside than this if we look at the dull side first so inside there you can see just how much space is inside there for airflow now of course bear in mind i have removed all of the storage media but look at that area of cavity there over that 550 watt psu if we look at the rear of the device and angle it up you're able to see down there that there's no loose cabling there's nothing knocking stuff around and the main controller board at the base is clearly connected to that psu now on the sides there we can see more ventilation based around the hard drive bay area there and if we look at the top we can see that 10 g card we have a look there i hold it in a way that isn't going to trash the device we can see the 10g card at the bottom right the screen there with this dedicated controller and it has a fan on the base of that card so underneath it has its own cooling fan another calling measure inside it's a heatsink and a cooling fan but the real interesting part let's be honest is this this is the twin cooling system that's built in and this is our giant heatsink for that zeon there and again with air being drawn through the system keeping things lovely and cool underneath there we've got our memory bays and we have got the nvme storage so let's remove the top of that where to put the screwdriver at the top there remove that out and again this is my first time disassembling this device so fingers crossed that this is going to come out first time pop that there and then we can remove that giant call mounted heatsink there twin fan there and it's pretty impressive it has to be said inside there we have got the covering if we remove it there we've got the heat heatsink let's bring that more to camera so we have the large cpu there on the side we have got those nvmes as you can see here that's the twin nvmes and again they are screwed in so they did need a screw to go inside and we've got those memory bays right there that's ddr4 ecc memory now it is very well valued out and i imagine this cooling system makes all kinds of noise you can even make out the two pcie gen three times four slots here for that thunderbolt connectivity on the device or other supported cards the cooling system not only is a giant heat sink there over the processor but there's also copper piping inside as well which there'll be more photos of this in the hardware review in the description there's a little dom there that takes can uh takes command of the software the zfs there which does have regular updates over time and ultimately we're seeing a very well presented and well spaced out storage system but with the added benefit that it has better calling than most qnap nas i've ever seen in desktop form and i think that's one of the main ways in which we can distinguish this absolute beast of an as with others in terms of software you've got this as a complete package in terms of hardware this is absolutely unparalleled and as a hardware review which is what this is i can't fault this what small problems i have are so small as if to be completely immaterial if i had to fault it i do think that the noise may be a problem for some i applaud qnap's um kind of decision for optional thunderbolt as an addition you know as an optional thing that a lot of people are going to invest in and i am looking forward to seeing the performance results when we run this in both a mac and a windows environment as mentioned the big sur update came out for apple recently with improved anabolic controller um updates to it so we're hoping that will also make its mark when we're showing this bad boy off but this has been my hardware review of the qnap tvs that v very important tvs h 1288 x the 12 slash um the 8 12 16 bay storage system do check out my software overviews and performance tests coming very very soon and as mentioned do check out qnap uk's overview of this coming soon i wouldn't normally plug another channel so heavy but they did get some great performance benchmarks on this and they were using an environment way better than my own so i do check those out for the better our idea about what this can do but thank you so much for watching go into the description to read the review the full review it's a longan it's about seven eight thousand words so strap in for this device as well as my performance testing very very soon click like if you enjoyed the video click subscribe to learn more and i'll see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

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Id: wHRds0GPqHc

Length: 31min 42sec (1902 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020