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QNAP's TS-1677X family sit under the company's enterprise banner, with the systems sporting 16-bay NAS designs powered by AMD Ryzen processors with up to 64GB of DDR4 memory support. The units feature a pair of integrated 10GbE networking ports and three PCI-e slots.
The TS-1677X comes in four basic models using three different AMD Ryzen processors. The TS-1677X-1700-64G and TS-1677X-1700-16G (our review sample) are powered by the AMD Ryzen 1700 processor with 64GB and 16GB of DDR4 memory respectively. The TS-1677X-1600-8G uses a Ryzen 5 1600 backed by 8GB of DDR4 memory, while the TS-1677X-1200-4G has a Ryzen 3 1200 at its heart, backed by 4GB of DDR4. The maximum amount of memory supported by the chassis is 64GB via four DIMM slots.
When it comes to networking capability, the TS-1677X is very well equipped with a pair of integrated 10GbE NICs and four 1GbE ones. There's also a choice of three PCIe slots, two Gen.3.0, x8 and x4 and a single Gen.2.0 x4.
The TS-1677X can also be fitted with a dedicated graphics card for AI-computing, video processing or GPU-pass through to VMs, although only Nvidia cards are supported by the QTS OS and dimensions are limited to 266 x 112 x 45 mm. There's a list of cards supported on QNAP's online Compatibility List. To provide enough power for the graphics card, the TS-1677X uses a 550W PSU as standard.
Physical Specifications
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 3.0 GHz Turbo Core 3.7 GHz
- Memory: 16GB DDR4
- Gigabit Ethernet Ports: 4
- Rear panel connectors: 4 x 1GbE, 2 x 10GbE, 6 x USB 3.0 Type A, 1 x USB 3.0 Type C, 2 x 3.5 mm microphone jacks, 1 x 3.5 mm audio jack
- Front panel connectors: 1 x USB 3.0 (One-Touch Copy button)
- PCIe slots: 3 – 1 x Gen.3.0 x8, 1 x Gen.3.0 x4, 1 x Gen.2.0 x4
- RAID support: 0,1,5.6,10,50,60
- Cooling: Active – 2 x 90mm CPU, 3 x 92mm system
- Drive Bays Supported: 16 (12 x 3.5in, 4 x 2.5in)
- Maximum hard drive size supported: 14TB
- Maximum Capacity: 168TB
- Internal File System support: EXT4
- Dimensions (D x W x H): 319.8 x 369.89 x 303.84mm.
- Weight: 13.29kg.
The box our review sample arrived in looked like it has had an interesting life, but the most important bit – the label that contains details of the NAS – was intact. The label has a good clear image of the TS-1677X. Above this image are stickers stating memory size and the fact it is AMD Ryzen 7 powered.
Under the image are a couple of lines of text and a row of icons displaying some of the hardware and software highlights of the unit. Under these icons are notes about the TS-1677X's dimensions, weight and what's in the box bundle.
The box bundle is basic but contains all you need to get started using the NAS in the shape of a pair of Gigabit Ethernet cables and enough screws to fix drives into place. The tool free drive bays work really well and hold the drives firmly in place but it's good to get enough screws to give you peace of mind just in case. There's also a QIG (Quick Installation Guide).
As you might have guessed with it sporting 16 drive bays, the TS-1677X is a hefty tower design NAS measuring 319.8 x 369.89 x 303.84mm and weighing in at 13.29kg. The 16 drive bays are split in two levels. The bottom level holds eight 3.5in bays with the remaining four 3.5in housed above them along with the four 2.5in bays. Sitting above the four 2.5in bays is the LCD display.
The LCD panel itself displays the NAS IP address as well as other system information on startup, as well as any system errors. Using the two buttons next to the display you can also configure the drives and the IP address, subnet mask and gateway.
All the ports in the rear panel sit to the left of the three system cooling fan grills and are vertically stacked. First up are three 3.5mm ports, two are for microphones and one is a line-out port. Then there are the first of the USB ports, single USB 3.0 Type-A and Type-C. Next up are the networking ports, 4 Gigabit Ethernet grouped together, under which sit a pair of 10GbE ones. Under the networking ports sits a cluster of five USB 3.0 Type-A ports.
The 3.5in and 2.5in drive trays are made from a decent quality plastic and the built in bay doors have simple but effective sliding latches to lock them in place.
To hold the drives in place, the 3.5in trays use a pair of simple plastic strips that fit into grooves in the drive tray’s sides, and each plastic strip has a pair of pins that fit through the tray and into the drive’s side mounting holes. These mounting holes in the tray sides have anti-vibration grommets fitted. If you want to make sure the drives are installed firmly, you can use the screws provided to fix the drive via holes in the tray base.
Fixing a drive in the 2.5in bay is a simple matter of just sliding the drive into the tray until it touches the rear of the tray, and then pressing the drive down until you hear a click as it engages four plastic clips moulded into the drive tray side rails.
The three PCIe slots are housed on both sides of the motherboard. On the outward face of the motherboard sit the Gen.3.0 x4 and Gen.2.0 x4 slots while other side of the board is home to the Gen.3.0 x8 slot. One thing to take into consideration when choosing cards for the pair of x4 slots is that there is only 156mm of space before the CPU cooling shroud gets in the way.
To access the four memory DIMM slots, you have to remove the CPU cooling shroud for the YS Tech Xtreme BD129733LB 97mm fan. It’s an easy job, just undo the screw in the top of the shroud and press a plastic tab to release the shroud, remembering to pull the fan power plugs from the motherboard headers. The BD129733LB uses 2 ball-bearings and is rated at 2,600rpm with a maximum airflow of 25.6CFM at 40dB (A).
There are two ways of setting up the TS-1677X, either online by entering the Cloud key which is written on a sticker on the top of the unit or by using QNAP’s Qfinder Pro utility which can be downloaded from the QNAP website. Qfinder Pro searches for QNAP devices on the network.
Whichever way you choose to start, it’s just a simple matter of following the installation wizard.
During the setup you can enable which OS cross-platform file management service you require; Windows (SMB/CIFS, File Station, FTP), Mac (SMB/CIFS, File Station, FTP) and Linux (NFS, SMB/CIFS, File Station, FTP). At this stage you can also load a few basic apps; Photo Station, Music Station, iTunes Server, DLNA Media Server and Download Station.
The login page can be customised to add your own photographs or corporate logo to the photo wall and messages can be added to the page as well.
To test the TS-1677X we used QNAP's QTS OS, version 4.3.5.0728. QNAP’s QTS is a graphically-rich powerful OS with links to the major functions appearing as icons on the main page.
When you access the NAS for the first time you are met by the HelpCenter app. This comprehensive help utility provides access to the QTS manual, Online Resources including tutorials, video tutorials, FAQs and forums – or if all else fails you can connect to the QNAP Helpdesk for technical support.
If you don’t want to see this page every time you access the NAS, don’t forget to uncheck the ‘show on startup’ option.
Clicking the icon on the top right of the screen activates the Dashboard page which gives a snapshot of what’s happening with the NAS.
Clicking on the ‘hamburger‘ menu icon at the top left-hand side of the screen drops down a very useful side menu of the most commonly used control panel items. Any of these items can be dragged and dropped onto the main menu page. Clicking on the control panel icon on the main menu screen brings the complete control panel window.
As with any NAS, disk management, RAID and volume creation are at the heart of things and with the TS-1677X this can be a bit complicated as there more than a few RAID options available with 12 3.5in and 4 2.5in disks.
But to QNAP’s credit, setting the storage space(s) up is pretty straightforward thanks to the clear and precise step by step setup pages in QTS.
Storage & Snapshots Manager allows the status of all volumes and storage pools to be shown at a glance in a very clear, well laid out manner. Global settings for disks, storage and snapshots can all be adjust from within the management window.
Using snapshot protection, should files be accidentally deleted or modified you can quickly restore them from a previous point in time. The same applies to data lost through hard disk failures or malware infected networks.
Using QNAP’s powerful Qtier technology you can set up SSD caching and auto-tiering so storage can be optimised according to how it’s being stored and used.
Qtier 2.0 analyses I/O read and writes of any storage pools to determine the best course of action; the most active “hot” data is moved to faster performing drives, while the less active “cold” data is migrated to slower but higher capacity drives.
File Station is a complete file management system. It supports browsing and transfer of files from the NAS to public cloud services including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, Yandex Disk, Amazon Drive and HiDrive. It also allows the mounting of shared folders from a remote NAS to a local one via FTP and CIFS/SMB.
Qfiling makes the job of archiving and organising large numbers of files much easier by allowing the setting of various filing conditions and schedules to enable automatic filing jobs.
Backup Station allows backing up of data with a wide range of options, including backup servers, cloud storage, and external devices.
The One Touch button on the front bezel can be set up to either upload or download files/folders or backup the NAS to an external USB drive. In the Backup Station pages in the QTS you can set up exactly what you want the One Touch system to do.
myQNAPclould allows for easy and safe access to a remote device. It allows multiple devices to connect to one central location to share and manage files. For even more secure connections, SSL certification is available.
The Resource Monitor is a very useful tool, monitoring elements and offering detailed information on how the storage of the NAS is being used. It is divided into four sections; Overview, System (with separate tabs for the CPU, Memory and Network), Storage (with separate pages for pool, RAID and disk activities and how the storage space is being used) and Processes.
App Center has over 160 apps and counting to choose from covering everything from backups to home automation and pretty much everything in between.
To test the TS-1677X we filled ten of the twelve 3.5in drive bays with 6TB WD Red drives (WD60EFRX, 5,400rpm class, 64MB cache), built into RAID 0,5,6,10,50 and 60 arrays and then tested with a 1GbE connection. We then re-tested the same arrays with a 10GbE connection.
We then tested the NAS with four 960GB Samsung SSD 845DC EVO drives in the four 2.5in bays using a 10GbE connection in RAID's 0, 5,6 and 10.
To connect to the unit's built-in 10GbE port we used an ASUS XG-C100C 10GbE card and a Cat7 cable.
Thanks to Asus for their support with this. You can see more information on this card on the ASUS site, over HERE.
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 3.0.3.
IOMeter.
Intel NASPT.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.
Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
With a single 1GbE connection the TS-1677X shows excellent consistency across all the arrays tested when using the WD Red drives, with read/write scores at pretty much the limit of the connection speed. With a 10GbE connection there is a huge jump in the read/write performance as you might expect. However, read performance does drop off noticeably in RAID 6.
SSD RAID
The SSD RAID setups show very consistent read performance but taking the RAID 0 write result out of the equation, the write performance does drop off in RAID 6 and 10.
IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.
We set IOmeter up (as shown above) to test both backup and restore performance on a 100GB partition.
Our backup and restore test were dealt with quickly and efficiently in all the tested HDD arrays and at both connection speeds.
As with the HDD arrays, our backup and restore tests were handled by the SSD arrays without any apparent problems.
Intel’s NASPT (NAS Performance Toolkit ) is a benchmark tool designed to enable direct measurement of home network attached storage (NAS) performance. NASPT uses a set of real-world workload traces (high definition video playback and recording, video rendering/content creation and office productivity) gathered from typical digital home applications to emulate the behaviour of an actual application.
We’ve used some of the video and office apps results to highlight a NAS device’s performance.
HD Video Playback
This trace represents the playback of a 1.3GB HD video file at 720p using Windows Media Player. The files are accessed sequentially with 256kB user level reads.
4x HD Playback
This trace is built from four copies of the Video Playback test with around 11% sequential accesses.
HD Video Record
Trace writes an 720p MPEG-2 video file to the NAS. The single 1.6GB file is written sequentially using 256kB accesses.
HD Playback and Record
Tests the NAS with simultaneous reads and writes of a 1GB HD Video file in the 720p format.
Content Creation
This trace simulates the creation of a video file using both video and photo editing software using a mix of file types and sizes. 90% of the operations are writes to the NAS with around 40% of these being sequential.
Office Productivity
A trace of typical workday operations. 2.8GB of data made up of 600 files of varying lengths is divided equally between read and writes. 80% of the accesses are sequential.
Photo Album
This simulates the opening and viewing of 169 photos (approx 1.2GB). It tests how the NAS deals with a multitude of small files.
Video Tests
In the four Video tests of Intel’s NASPT we used, the performance using a 10GbE connection was very, very impressive. The fastest figure for the tests came in the HD Video Playback test with 743.6MB/s in RAID 5. With a 1GbE connection the performance across the arrays is very consistent throughout.
Office Tests
In the NASPT Office tests, the fastest speeds came when the drives were in a RAID 50 array with a 10GbE connection.
SSD RAID
Video Tests
Using the SSD arrays combined with a 10GbE connection the fastest speed we achieved in testing was a very impressive 990.7MB/s in the 4xHD Playback test with the drives built into a RAID 5 array.
Office Tests
With the SSD arrays and a 10GbE connection there was real drop off in performance from the RAID 5 array during the Office Productivity test and again from the RAID 6 array in the Photo Album test.
The TS-1677X seems to be much more efficient when writing encrypted data than reading it, particularly with the two SSD arrays. It also appears to handle both encryption read and write duties in a more balanced way with a 1GbE connection than when using a 10GbE one.
We tested the QNAP TS-1677X with a number of scenarios that it may face in the real world. The settings for these scenarios are as follows.
File Server
512MB file size, 16KB Block size, 80% Read 20% Write 100% Random, I/O queue depth 128
Web Server
1GB file size, 16KB Block size, 100% Read 0% Write 100% Random, I/O queue depth 64
Database
2GB file size, 4KB Block size, 90% Read 10% Write, 90% Random, 10% Sequential, I/O queue depth 128
Media Streaming
160GB file size, 64K Block size, 98% Read 2% Write, 100% Sequential, Boundary: 4K, I/O depth 64, Threads/Workers: 8
Video On Demand
160GB file size, 128K Block size, 100% Read, 100% Random, Boundary: 4K, I/O depth 512, Threads/Workers: 8
Digital Video Surveillance
160GB file size, 128K Block size, 90% Read 10% Write, 100% Sequential, Boundary: 512K, I/O depth 64 Threads/Workers: 8
While the File and Web server tests produced much faster average speeds when using a 10GbE connection, the Database test produced results that were a lot closer between the two connection speeds.
The fastest performance in the second group of workload scenarios came in the Video On Demand test with the SSDs in a RAID 6 array with a stunning 1,194.11MB/s. Not far behind was the RAID 6 performance in the media streaming test at 1,097.36MB/s.
To test real life file/folder performance we use a number of different file/folder combinations to test the read and write performance of the NAS device. Using the FastCopy utility to get a MB/s and time taken for each transfer, the data is written from and read back to a 240GB SSD.
We use the following file/folder types:
100GB data file.
60GB ISO image.
60GB Steam folder: 29,521 files.
50GB Files folder: 28,523 files.
12GB Movie folder: 24 files – mix of Blu-ray and 4K files.
10GB Photo folder: 621 files – mix of .png, .raw and .jpeg images.
10GB Audio folder: 1,483 files – mix of .mp3 and .flac files.
5GB (1.5m pixel) image.
BluRay Movie.
Click to enlarge
SSD RAID Transfers
Click to enlarge
Our real life transfer tests proved no obstacle for any of the HDD/SSD arrays regardless of connection speed.
We tested the peak power consumption of a NAS at the wall during a run of CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 as this version of the benchmark runs the read and write benchmark suites separately, so it's easier to monitor what power the device is using during each function.
Powered by a CPU with a TDP of 65W, the TS-1677X is never going to be exactly frugal with its power requirements when actively reading or writing, even with hard drives as power efficient as WD’s Red drive.
SSD RAID
The Samsung SSD 845DC EVO SSD drives we used have power ratings of 2.7W for active reads, 3.8W for active writes and 1.2W when idle.
QNAP is producing some seriously well featured NAS units of late and the TS-1677X continues this trend. Not only do you get sixteen external drive bays, there’s also an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, 16GB of DDR4 memory (expandable to 64GB), dual 10GbE NICs, two PCIe Gen.3 slots (one x8 the other x4), one PCIe Gen.2 x4 slot and last but by no means least, four Gigabit Ethernet ports.
The three PCIe ports give the TS-1677X a good deal of expandability and a good degree of future proofing. They support 10/40 GbE networking adapters, PCIe NVMe SSD and USB 3.1 expansion cards. The x8 PCIe slot even supports dedicated graphics cards, with a full compatibility list on QNAP’s website. To this end the TS-1677X is powered by a 550W PSU. One word of caution though, you will need to take care choosing cards for the pair of x4 slots as there is only around 156mm of clearance because of the proximity of the CPU cooling shroud.
Any NAS is only as good as its operating software and the TS-1677X uses one of the best ones around, QNAP’s QTS. It’s a quick and easy to install OS with a graphically rich interface which is useful for first time users to navigate around the software – but for the more advanced users, delving beneath the surface reveals a whole host of features including a couple of important ones for data heavy environments; network traffic distribution and tiered storage.
As the TS-1677X has two 10GbE and four 1GbE NICs (plus any additional add-in cards) it can be set up so applications can use dedicated NICs to help alleviate any network traffic distribution problems. Setting up and managing these network connections can be done via the Network & Virtual Switch app which can be downloaded from the QTS App Center.
Using QNAP’s powerful Qtier technology you can set up SSD caching and auto-tiering, so storage can be optimised according to how it’s being stored and used. Qtier 2.0 analyses I/O read and writes of any storage pools to determine the best course of action; the most active “hot” data is moved to faster performing drives, while the less active “cold” data is migrated to slower but higher capacity drives.
Should you start to run out of storage space with the base unit, worry not as the TS-1677X supports a range of QNAP's expansion enclosures. The UX-500P (5-bay) and the UX-800P (8-bay) units feature hot-swappable bays and connect to the TS-1677X via one of the rear USB 3.0 ports. The TR-004 is a 4-bay unit which connects via a USB 3.0 Type-C port. Finally there is the REXP-1000 PRO. Things get a little more complicated with the 10-bay REXP-1000 Pro as it uses a SAS interface so you will need a 12 Gb/s SAS expansion card in the TS-1677X to be able to connect to it.
We found QNAP's TS-1677X-16G on Span.com for £2,791.20 HERE
Pros
- AMD Ryzen CPU.
- Huge storage capacity.
- Impressive list of hardware features.
- Integrated dual 10GbE
- QTS software.
- Expandability.
Cons
- Need to take note of the space restriction for the two x4 PCIe slots.
- No M.2 SSD slots on motherboard.
KitGuru says: QNAP keeps producing stunning NAS units for business and the TS-1677X is no exception. It offers huge capacity support, plenty of future proofing and integrated dual 10GbE for faster networking.
