The QNAP TBS-464 NVMe 4-Bay NAS Released

New QNAP TBS-464 NVMe SSD NAS Revealed

Why are there no NVMe SSD NAS systems out there for home and prosumer users? That is a question that many have asked in the comments over on YouTube, here on the blog and over on the ‘socials’ for the last few years. With NVMe SSDs becoming increasingly affordable, arriving in capacities of up to 8TB and providing impressive speeds that dwarf those of traditional hard drives, it seems genuinely puzzling that an NVMe specific desktop NAS has never been developed – till now! Yes, QNAP has finally revealed a new entry into their NASBook series, with the TBS-464 petite desktop NAS Drive. This 4-Bay NAS (first revealed over on our YouTube channel here) is designed specifically for NVMe SSDs as the primary media (not added as extras for caching a larger HDD array), featuring twin 2.5x traditional ethernet ports, new generation Intel Celeron CPU and DDR4 memory. This along with a remarkably small physical design (as you would expect from M.2 SSD population) and a low-noise design means this is going to be an intriguing if somewhat niche NAS system for 2021/2022. Let’s take a look at the hardware, software and see if this NAS is worthy of your data.

UPDATE – FULL REVIEW of the QNAP TBS-464 NAS now Live, Video and Article Below:

WRITTEN TBS-464 REVIEW BELOW (click)

VIDEO TBS-464 NAS REVIEW BELOW (click)

Why is the QNAP TBS-464 NAS Such a Big Deal?

Before we go any further, it is worth quickly discussing why the QNAP TBS-464 NAS is a big deal. Integration of traditional SATA SSDs and M.2 NVMe SSD have existed in NAS for around 5 years or so, but in practically all cases it has manifested itself as a couple of slots for adding caching to your larger HDD array (with some brands restricting it this way, preventing storage pool use) or as a much larger enterprise-grade flash server array – almost zero middle ground! The TBS-464 capitalizes on the current affordability of NVMe SSDs, which although still more expensive than HDDs by around 3-4x per Terabyte, are very similar to SATA SSD prices. This combined with modern NVMe SSDs becoming increasingly more durable, able to maintain performance in sustained usage longer and being more power-efficient means that a good proportion of users are keen to move away from the noiser and slower HDDs and onto a similarly powered NAS system with PCIe SSDs. The QNAP TBS-464 arrives on the market as this demand is reaching a notable degree and although it is not going to challenge the enterprise NAS server devices, it manages to compare well with most Prosumer grade devices that only focus HDD use.

What are the QNAP TBS-464 NAS Hardware Specifications?

The hardware specifications of the TBS-464 NAS are a surprising mix of SMB level choices, mixed with a few home-user favourites. The TBS-464 is the 3rd generation of this series of NASBook series of devices from QNAP and although pretty much everything here is better in this latest iteration, there are a couple of areas where the absence of some features is a little surprising. The Intel Celeron N5105 4-ore CPU featured on this device (though the N5095 has been listed on their official site – likely down to the frequent Intel CPU refreshes of late over the pandemic period) is an upgrade over the Intel J4125 featured in its predecessor, with a higher overall clock speed and improvements in graphical handling (most notable in encoding and decoding of streams).

The TBS-464 also arrives with 8GB of DDR4 memory by default (the maximum) which is both good because that is a good level of base memory to play with, but the CPU can support up to a Maximum 16GB Likely this is a physical space and/or CPU PCIe Lane limitation. The rest of those hardware specifications are as follows:

QNAP TBS-464 NVMe NAS Drive 4x NVMe SSD NAS
CPU	Intel® Celeron® N5105 4-core/4-thread processor, burst up to 2.9GHz
Embedded Graphics	Intel® UHD Graphics
Memory	8 GB DDR4, not expandable
Max Memory/Slots	8GB
HDD Bays	N/A
M.2 SSD Bays	4 x M.2 2280 NVMe Gen3 x2 slots
1GbE Ports	N/A
2.5GbE Ports	2x 2.5GbE
10GbE Ports	N/A
HDMI Ports	2x HDMI 2.0
USB 2.0	3x
USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gb/s)	2x
USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gb/s)	N/A
Thunderbolt	N/A
Size	30 x 230 x 165mm
Fans	1x
PSU Power	65W
Power Consumption: HDD Sleep Mode	18 W
Power Consumption: Operating Mode, Typical	28 W Tested with drives fully populated.
Sound Level	25 db(A)

So, first, what I liked was the twin 2.5GbE ethernet ports (something that QNAP have been championing for a while now, providing 2.5GbE at 1GbE prices), which open up external connectivity of this NAS to a potential 500MB/s (5Gb/s) external connectivity with a LAG supported ethernet switch with 2.5Gb. Additionally, the inclusion of 2x HDMI 2.0 4K 60FPS Ports is always useful for those KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) applications. I love the scale of this device, making it both incredibly portable for university/shared shortage deployment at the desktop level, but also that low physical and audible noise impact that it will have. The storage for four NVMe SSDs is also very welcome, given that it will allow users to have quite an impressive degree of storage potential – as well as the ability to add additional storage via QNAP USB expansions too. Though it is also worth noting that it’s a real shame that this model lacks the 10GbE of its predecessor (the TBS-453DX), likely down to limitations of how thinly spread the PCIe Lanes/chipset are from this Intel Celeron processor. That also would explain why the NVMe SSD slots on the TBS-464 are PCIe Gen 3×2 (which would potentially bottleneck the SSDs notably). This would still provide an impressive degree of performance from that media inside and outside of the RAID configuration for processes and services inside the TBS-464, but the lack of 10GbE is a bit of a bummer. Overall, I like what I am seeing and as long as the pricetag is suitably lower than the 10GbE TBS-453DX that came before it, I think this could be a solid NAS.

What Are the Software Specifications of the New QNAP TBS-464 NAS?

Software support on the TBS-464 is going to be pretty high in the QNAP QTS 5.0 services, with this system featuring a 2021 generation Intel Celeron and default 8GB of memory. Although the fact that the memory cannot be expanded/upgraded means that extensive VM utilization might be a pinch limited. Surveillance in QVR Pro/Elite, Multimedia handling and multi-site backups are all going to run great and although ZFS support is almost certainly not going to be available on this NAS, it is going to be a great base for the standard EXT4 version, QTS. Specifics on this are going to be tough and when a more formal release is made on this, we’ll let you know, but for now, you can check out my full review of the QNAP QTS 5.0 NAS Software and Services below:

When Will the QNAP TBS-464 NAS Be Released?

The QNAP TBS-464 NAS is now officially listed on the QNAP global site pages and full specifications on hardware, software and compatibility have all been updated. Therefore we can assume this release for the TBS-464 is either imminent or..well..now! Generally, at announcement, these devices can take an additional week or two to land in different regions in terms of stock, but we may well be looking at the first significant release of the QNAP x64 NAS series, with many other devices in the portfolio likely to follow in the coming months. Pricing is still largely unknown at the moment but likely to be updated shortly. As this is a more niche release in terms of its target audience and overall hardware deployment in most homes and offices, this will likely see limited availability at the start. If you want to check Amazon, please use the button below to take you there, as we receive a small commission from any purchases you make at amazon that go directly back into NASCompares at no additional cost to you.

Below is my review of the TBS-453DX from way back in 2018. It will give you some idea about the sie of this newer NASBook, as well as an idea of the utility of the system

 

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