tvs 682 g4400, configuring

[flubadub]

Hi All,

Another newbie here. I have been spending a lot of time in this forum learning about NAS and how it might work for me. I am strictly a home user running an older Seagate Central "NAS" system throughout my house. I use it to stream HD video to a few tablets, couple of TVs and a theater room. I also use it to store more and more video of my kids as they grow up. Anyway my system is getting constrained with the amount of storage I require, especially if I consider proper back up and as I figure to enter the realm of 4k my current setup might just start to wilt.

Given all the info I absorbed here in the last couple of months and the bits that I retained I have order the following; QNAP TVS 682 G4400, 4 x 6TB WD Reds and I also purchased an i7-4790T (not S) cpu that I plan to use to replace the G4400 chip. I will run Plex for my video. I am thinking that at some point I might also use this NAS to run a VM instead of purchasing a new desktop for home use. The VM, possible 4k usage got me to the i7 upgrade. I went with the 4790T cause I am worried about running too hot. I plan to have this setup for a long time so I am hoping for a neater, more robust and over designed setup for current needs but will also work well into the future.

I figure to set up the HDDs in a raid 5 or 6 config and in the future if I need extra space I would get one of those UX-500P enclosures (I have read some negative things about these but I think they would be fine for my home use). I have thought about adding RAM but as yet have not purchased it.

My questions are, should I set up the NAS and "migrate" all my data over and run it for while before I switch out the CPU? Does it matter what raid configuration I use? How difficult is it to replace the Ram, should I consider doing this during the CPU switch? Any help or comments will be appreciated.

I very much appreciate this forum, lots of information to digest! Thx!

[flubadub]

Well my QNAP TVS 682 is up and running. This is a nice piece of hardware! I am still scratching the surface on what I can and can not do with this thing.
I installed a 16GB Ram kit from Crucial (CT2K8G4DFD8213) into the two remaining slots to get a total of 24GB of Ram. I also installed 2 SATA M.2 SSD drives (Crucial CT525MX300SSD4) 525 GB each. I was worried about overheating and instead of using what seems like the little plastic heat sinks that came with the TVS 682 I purchased Enzotech BMR-C1 "memory ramsink", these things are forged copper. Anyway they came with the 3M adhesive backing. I just removed the SSD sticker and stuck 3 of these things on each card.
I have not changed the CPU as yet. I wanted to make sure that the NAS started up fine before I violated the warranty. The NAS started up fine, recognizing the M.2 drives and finding the added Ram. I went through the configuration process and decided to set up the 4 x 6TB HDDs in a Raid 5 configuration and also set up the read/write cache acceleration. Everything seems to be operating fine. I have started to populate the NAS with my video files. There seems to be a few different ways to do this (my data is in a few internal and external drives) but I am just transferring it through my network, which is a slow steady process. I have also added Plex and I am very satisfied with this! I even upgraded to plexpass and having fun with all the trailers that Plex adds to my content in its metadata searches. I have been able to install Plex on all my devices (Kindles, IPads, Blu Ray players) and it seems to work fine.

I have been watching the temperatures on my drives (while populating the drives and streaming HD video) and I think the highest temperatures I have come across is 43-45C on the M.2 SSDs, so so far so good.

In a couple of weeks I will upgrade the CPU to the i7 and once stable I will go from there.

Been very happy so far, ignorance is bliss!

[flubadub]

I am laughing at my last comment above. Ignorance is not bliss when you are not aware of the different cpu socket configurations. When I did my research here looking at other QNAP TVS's I did not know that the TVS X71s cpu socket are LGA 1150s and my TVS 682 cpu socket is an LGA 1151! The i7 4790T I had would not fit (instead of sending it back I was able to upgrade another computer and it is working incredibly well).

I ended up getting an i7-6700T CPU and it installed in my TVS 682 without any issues and is running fine. I chose the 6700T because of its lower power consumption. The Pentium G4400 I replaced has a TDP 54W (CPU Mark 3601). The i7-6700T has a TDP 35W (CPU Mark 9075). So it has much lower power consumption and an almost 3X greater benchmark score.

For comparison purposes the i7-6700 has a TDP 65W (CPU Mark 10035) and the i7-6700K has a TDP 95W (CPU Mark 11118). I did not want to increase the power consumption, where I eventually plan to use the NAS I might have difficulty keeping the environment cool and I really don't want to fool around with active coolers or retrofitting anymore. The i7-6700T seems ideal.

installation was not that hard at all. There are 3 screws to remove to take off the case and then you just need to remove 4 spring loaded screws holding the large CPU heat sink in place and then you have access to the 1151 socket. I used some Arctic MX-4 thermal compound on the new CPU. Installation seemed MUCH simpler on my 682 than what I have read about on the x71s.

Anyway, from what I have learned, I would definitely purchase the TVS 682 with the Pentium G4400 and upgrade myself again. Just know your socket configurations!

Unless I post again, everything is working well. Satisfied.

[kalantan]

I just took delivery of a TVS-682. I'm putting two 500 GB SSDs and four 8 TB Seagates into it. I intend to use it primarily as a 4K Plex box. Do you think a processor / RAM upgrade will be necessary for me to use it for this? A QNAP pre-sales rep said the box is good for 4K with this config., but as I am new to this world, I need as much advice as folks are willing to give...

[dolbyman]

4k could be a wide range of resolutions + codecs + bit depths + extensions

so just saying it should work with 4k is plain wrong ... from what I have heard,plex does not do 4k transcoding yet ..so you would only get (up to) 1080p so far

also throwing ssd's at a media server is also pretty much wasted money ... no speed increase just ramped up costs (unless you stream the same file(s) to dozens of clients simultaneously)

[kalantan]

Plex does support 4K now. I've tested it with another setup. I intend to use the TVS-682 as a media server primarily, but since I'm new to the world of NAS, I may find that it can do some other things that I want to experiment with. In your opinion, I don't need ANY SSDs in it? Thanks for the advice in advance.

[dolbyman]

If you plan do do other things (VM's, Containers, Databases) SSD's caching is useful, but for media streaming not really

Remember SSD caches load the information from the HDD's (on read) so only repeated access to the same file, speeds access up.

Saving files to the NAS can be sped up by the cache, but only if you have very fast Ethernet (10GbE), otherwise the regular disk RAID array is faster than your network (=cache wasted)

[kalantan]

For the streaming and / or HDMI 4K playback I intend to use this for first, do you recommend any RAM, or CPU upgrades? Thanks Again!

[dolbyman]

Best to check the Plex forums for recommendation on processors and RAM.

I stream with twonky and need next to no CPU and RAM for it (multiple 4k streams (+ HDR and HD audio) on a low power ARM processor with 512MB RAM)

[kalantan]

Sooooooo - Considering all of the above, does it seem the the TVS-682 is vast overkill for what I want to do? Maybe a QNAP TS-453B is a more reasonable (cheaper) choice for my needs?

[dolbyman]

If you want to use Plex, you might need a lot of CPU power for clients that insist on transcoding

But you find more answers on an actual Plex forum