Thecus N5200BR NAS Server

by Jeff Bouton — Monday, July 07, 2008, 10:30 AM EDT

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Power Consumption and Transfer Rates

Once the system was configured and setup, we performed some basic tests to assess general power consumption and transfer speeds. For reference, we used a QNAP TS-201. In each scenario, both systems were configured with two identical 500GB Western Digital Caviar drives configured as a JBOD array.

First, we cycled each system on and logged the peak wattage each system drew using a Kill-a-Watt meter. The QNAP TS-201 was more steady hovering around 48w while the Thecus N5200 hit a peak of 85w for a few seconds before settling down to 58w. Once each system booted fully, we left them sit for 10 minutes and logged the wattage draw while the drives were spinning. The Thecus N5200 consumed 7w more than the TS-201 system, however, considering the size and increased processor and memory compliment of the Thecus N5200, this was fairly impressive. Once the drives spun down, however, the Thecus N5200 consumed nearly double that of the TS-201. This is further compounded by a 30 minute minimum cycle vs. the QNAP TS-201's 5 minute minimum as well as a system fan that runs continuously rather than spinning down when there is no load on the system, a feature the QNAP TS-201 benefits from. During the file copy process, both units increased their consumption by 6w compared to sitting idle with the drives spinning.

	Thecus N5200	QNAP TS-201
Post Wattage Peak	85w	48w
Idle - Drives Spinning	55w	48w
Idle - Drives Standby	41w	22w
File Copy	61w	54w
4.3GB File Transfer - Rate	41MB/s	10.8MB/s
4.3GB File Transfer - Time	1:51	7:20

With respect to transfer rates, the Thecus N5200 truly shined. Using a 4.3GB ISO, we initiated a file copy from a Gigabit ready PC to each NAS server. In this test, the Thecus N5200 ran nearly 4x faster than the QNAP system, moving over 4GB of data in less than two minutes. Unfortunately, when we tested this same process with the USB feature, the unit was not testable, with frequent pausing and freezing during the transfer that would result in the file copy taking over an hour to copy.

Tags: NAS, server, Enterprise, Thecus, serve, 520

Thecus N5200BR NAS Server

Power Consumption and Transfer Rates

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