With the Turbo Station TS-932PX, QNAP offers an exciting NAS for users who want to use a mix of HDDs and SSDs.
The TS-932PX offers 5 HDD and 4 2.5 inch SSD slots. The NAS also has 2.5 Gbit and 10 Gbit LAN!
QNAP wants around €900 for this, which is not little, but not too much considering these technical data. Let’s take a look at the TS-932PX in the test!
At this point, many thanks to QNAP for providing the TS-932PX for this test.
QNAP Turbo Station TS-932PX im Test
The TS-932PX is an exceptional NAS thanks to the mix of 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch drive bays.
So we have 5x 3.5 inch slots in the upper area, which are intended for HDDs (but can also be used with SSDs) and an additional 4x 2.5 inch SSD slots in the lower area. All SSD/HDD slots on the NAS are made completely tool-free.
This mix makes the NAS comparatively compact for 9 slots.
Each of the slots has a status LED. The same also applies to the network connections.
Connections of the TS-932PX
In addition to the many memory slots, the connections are an absolute highlight of the TS-932PX.
2x 2,5 Gbit LAN
2x 10 Gbit SFP+
3x USB 3.0
The Turbo Station TS-932PX- initially has 2x 2.5 Gbit LAN ports, great! If these aren’t enough for you, we also have 2x 10 GBit SFP+ ports.
SFP+ is certainly a bit more exotic, but with 10 Gbit speeds, SFP+ network switches are often even cheaper than the normal RJ45 models. Therefore, I am very satisfied with the network equipment!
No PCIe or NVME
So far I am very satisfied with the features of the TS-932PX. However, the NAS lacks a PCIe slot or NVME SSD slots in general.
I don’t think it’s a big deal that we don’t have an additional PCIe expansion slot, since 10 Gbit is already on board, but 1-2 NVME slots would have been nice.
1x RAM Slot
The TS-932PX is available with different RAM configurations. Typically you will buy this with 4GB or 8GB of RAM.
But the RAM is not permanently installed! Inside there is a SO DIMM DDR4 slot, so you can upgrade the RAM yourself. According to QNAP up to 16 GB.
In principle, 4 GB is completely sufficient for a normal file server. But more RAM never hurts, especially since Linux also uses it as a kind of cache for data transfers.
Software, QTS 5.1
At the time of testing, the TS-932PX is running QNAP’s QTS 5.1 operating system.
QTS is a Linux-based operating system that runs directly in your web browser. When you access the NAS’s IP address, you don’t get a simple web interface, but rather your own little operating system in your browser. When you first connect, you will be asked to set up the system and create a user account. The NAS will automatically download the latest version of QTS. Once this process is complete, you can log into QTS and be greeted by a desktop. On this you will find various tiles and menu elements.
Different functions and settings are hidden behind each tile. The following would be the most important:
Control Panel: Here you can find all settings such as users, shared folders, services, software updates, etc. File Station: This is the local file browser. Storage & Snapshots: Here you can see the installed hard drives/SSDs, add them to a pool, create a RAID, etc. App Center: As the name suggests, the App Center is the app store of the QTS system.
The first step in QTS should take you to “Storage and Snapshots” where you can set up the storage drives. QTS is generally user-friendly, but compared to Synology it seems to be aimed at a slightly different audience. While Synology NAS systems are designed for easy operation, large text and images, etc., QNAP’s QTS seems a bit more professional and technical. This is particularly evident in the hard drive setup and snapshots. QNAP offers some options that Synology does not allow.
The keyword here is Thin Volume, Thick Volume, Static Volume, SSD Over-Provisioning, etc.
There are also numerous extensions in the App Center. There are hundreds of apps here and we can’t go through all of them. The container station is particularly interesting on the TS-932PX. This allows you to conveniently run LXD and Docker containers on the NAS in an attractive and clear user interface.
Performance and performance of the TS-932PX
Excitingly, the TS-932PX does not rely on a processor from AMD or Intel, but on the Annapurnalabs AL324.
Annapurna Labs is a semiconductor company specializing in the development of energy-efficient chips and processors, particularly for use in networking devices, storage solutions and other embedded systems. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2015 and plays a key role in developing hardware for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other cloud services.
So we definitely have a server grade processor in front of us, even if it uses the ARM architecture.
The AL324 has 4 cores with up to 1.7 GHz. This is certainly not an “absolute high-end processor”, but is it enough to transfer the full 10 Gbit?
To test this, I switched 2x SATA SSDs to RAID 0, because one SSD alone is not enough for the full 10 Gbit speed. Even two SATA SSDs are tight.
With CrystalDiskmark I got 1185 MB/s reading and 807 MB/s writing. Great for 2x SATA SSDs!
I also did a test with 3x SATA SSDs in RAID 0, but that didn’t bring any major changes.
About 800 MB/s writing seems to be the maximum via 10 Gbit LAN.
As usual, we get slightly worse values via Windows File Explorer than in CrystalDiskMark. Here we fluctuate in the range of 650 MB/s to 750 MB/s writing and just over 900 MB/s reading.
Encryption
You can encrypt entire storage volumes with the TS-932PX. How does this affect performance?
Reading this doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. However, when writing, this limits our data rates to around 500 MB/s.
Power consumption of the TS-932PX
Power consumption, especially for systems that run 24/7, is more important than ever! How much power does the TS-932PX need?
Of course, this depends extremely on the drives installed. HDDs require 5-10W each, but the NAS can’t do anything about that.
Therefore, I am testing the NAS here with only one SSD, so this is more or less the “pure” consumption of the NAS.
The TS-932PX requires approx. 19W in normal operation!
Under normal network load, this value can increase to just over 20W, but in general the NAS is quite economical as long as you also install economical drives.
Why QNAP and not Synology?
When we talk about NAS systems, there are two manufacturers that excel here and they are QNAP and Synology.
Why should you choose a QNAP NAS over a Synology NAS? First of all, we can’t say that in general terms, both manufacturers have their strengths and weaknesses!
Synology’s strength is clearly the software and its “design”. Synology has tons of high-quality apps that are also very user-friendly. Especially if you are a complete newbie, I would rather go with Synology.
Synology’s big weakness is the hardware or how much hardware you get for the money. Synology NAS systems are incredibly poorly equipped, especially when it comes to LAN ports. The DS1522+ or DS1821+ would probably be comparable to the TS-932PX.
Both only have Gbit LAN. Although they can be “expanded” to 10 Gbit, this is of course not optimal and causes additional costs. In addition, Synology artificially restricts SSDs from third-party providers.
With QNAP, on the other hand, you get more hardware for the money and, especially when it comes to the core functionality of a NAS, more options and setting options. With Synology, these functions seem very simplified compared to QNAP, which offers you more.
In return, the “special apps” at QNAP are often not quite as stylish or high-quality as at Synology.
To put it bluntly, Synology seems to be aimed a little more towards “home users”, QNAP a little more towards “professionals”. Both systems are suitable for both, but that seems to be the basic orientation for me.
Conclusion
The QNAP Turbo Station TS-932PX is super exciting and extraordinary thanks to its case and the Annapurnalabs AL324 CPU!
The mix of 5x HDD and 4x SSD slots makes perfect sense! Especially with QNAP with the QTier system, which automatically distributes data to HDDs and SSDs.
HDDs continue to be the “most cost-effective” way to store data, but SSDs are also increasingly making more sense in NAS systems, especially if they have fast LAN ports.
Here the TS-932PX offers 2x 2.5 Gbit LAN and 2x SFP+ 10 Gbit LAN! Perfect! Of course SFP+ is a bit more exotic, but there are also many cheap and economical switches that work great in the home environment.
The Annapurnalabs AL324 processor is certainly not the most powerful chip, but it still achieved over 1000 MB/s reading and around 800 MB/s writing in the test, which is impressive!
The TS-932PX is also quite energy efficient, with less than 20W in normal operation.
But what speaks against the TS-932PX? The Annapurnalabs AL324 is sufficient for a storage server, but if you are looking for extra “virtualization power” then this is not the right NAS for you. Smaller Docker containers are of course no problem, but I would only conditionally recommend anything that significantly exceeds “Raspberry PI” hardware requirements. The NAS also does not have NVME SSD slots.
In short, if you are looking for a storage NAS and plan to use a mix of HDDs and SSDs, then the QNAP TS-932PX is a great choice, especially thanks to the fast network ports!