NVMe expansion options for TS-253D?

[palmerac]

Just purchased a TS-253D and would like to add the fastest available PCIe expansion card to accommodate a pair of NVMe drives.

According to the 'Compatibility List' on QNAP's website, the QM2-2P-384 expansion card is compatible with the TS-253D. This seems like the fastest available expansion card that will work with a TS-253D, but can someone confirm this?

I understand that each drive will only get 50% of the PCIe card's throughput, but I am wondering if a PCIe card in the T-253D can actually utilize 8 lanes of data? So, each NVMe drive will get 4 lanes? Or does the onboard Intel HD Graphics 600 processor use too many lanes, thereby reducing the number of lanes available to an expansion card?

[QNAPDanielFL]

TS-253D has a gen2X4 PCIe slot. That means if you put in a QM2-2P-384 you can use 1/4th of the bandwidth of the card. I would recommend a lower-end card that has 2X4 PCIe like QM2-2P-244A. It should perform about the same in this NAS and cost less money.
The 2X4 can only access 4 lanes of data. And only at gen2 speeds. Since gen2 is about half the speed of gen3, that is why it is about 1/4th the bandwidth of the QM2-2P-384

[palmerac]

Thank you, QNAPDaniel.

Does QNAP make any 2-bay or 4-bay models with a gen3x8 PCIe slot? I haven't yet set up the TS-253D and I'm thinking maybe I should trade up to a NAS that's capable of utilizing gen3 (or even gen4) NVMe drives at full bandwidth.

[QNAPDanielFL]

We have the TS-473 which has 2 PCIe slots of 3X4. Not 3X8 but still about 2 times the bandwidth of the slot on the TS-253D.
We are about to release the TS-473A also with 2 3X4 slots but a better CPU.
But what is the use case. 73 series is great for almost everything except 4K transcoding. It has to software transcode instead of hardware transcode so it should be fine for 1080P but not 4K.
For almost everything else, the 73A series should perform much better than the 53D series.

[palmerac]

I don't use Plex. I do have a few H.265 and H.264 video files that I stream occasionally to a 4K TV, but generally don't need transcoding for tablets or smaller devices.

I'm reading pre-release specs on the TS-473A and it looks like it has two internal M.2 NVMe SSD bays, PCIe Gen 3. But can each internal bay on the TS-473A utilize 4 lanes?