I need to speed up my transfers speeds between my NVMe thunderbolt 3 pc set up and my future NAS [plex server] I thought about 2 scénarios : 1 – 10gb networking for my pc and NAS without Thunderbolt support [ds3617xs cooked up with ISCSI files system using Seagate NAS pro 12tb drives] 2- using a NAS thunderbolt 3 Unit ? Question: are large files sharing with Thunderbolt 3 and 10gb network faster than 10gb networking only NAS [ds1817] Do you Still think that ds3617 is the best solution for hardware plex transcoding scénarios in 2018? Despite ds918+ and his native NVMe SSD cache support?

Not much has changed in 2018 apart from 1 new NAS from Qnap. TS-877 comes with a really powerful processor which performs quite similar if not better than DS3617xs. It was tested with 4K H265 10bit multimedia files transcoding on Plex. And is performed insanely good. If you need Plex transcoding NAS these two are the best ones. I have listed alternative which will also do the most of the things regards to transcoding, but also will offer you the fastest data transfer speed what desktop NAS can offer today.

The fastest NAS available in the market is still DS3617xs with a second place taking Qnap TVS-882ST3 . The decision is made by looking at both – write and read speed at what selected NAS models could perform.

DiskStation DS3617xs

10GBe 2,352 MB/s read and 2.255 MB/s write (RAID5 Intel 535 series 240GB SSDSC2BW240H6 SSD) 2 x 10GbE ports (1 x Intel X520-DA2 NIC)

 

TS-877-1700-16G 

10GBe 2,344 MB/s read and 1761 MB/s write (RAID 6, 6 x Seagate ST4000VN000-2AH166 (SATA) HDD)

 

TS-1685-D1531 Xeon

10GBe D 2358.6 MB/s read and 1923.5 MB/s write (RAID 5; 12x Intel SSD DC S3500)

 

TVS-863+  AMD G-series GX-424CC quad-core 2.4 GHz processor with Radeon™ graphics

10Gbe 1,432MB/s (RAID 5; 4 x Plextor PX-256M5Pro SSD)

 

TVS-882ST3  

10GBe 2,352 MB/s read and 2.255 MB/s write (RAID 5; 8 x Intel S3500 240GB SSDs (SSDSC2BB240G4) )

 

TVS-882BRT3 or TVS-1282T3 i7-7700 3.60GHz CPU, 32GB RAM

Thunderbolt 1973 MB/s read and 1291 MB/s write (Intel SSDSC2BB240G4 (SATA) x 12, RAID5)

 

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What can I connect to a NAS?

Wireless Speaker Sonos

The great thing about Sonos is that you don't need to pay for music subscription service. With the cheapest NAS at home like DS115j or any other, you can have your backups done for all of your devices and still use your network drive as a Sonos music library. Sonos will connect to your NAS via your network and let access your provided music library. If you have little more of IT knowledge, you can even set up your Alexa or Sonos with Alexa built in to play music on your voice commands ("Alexa! Ask DS Audio to Play Music!").

Casting devices

Nowadays it is so cheap to upgrade your old TV and make it smart. All you need is Google Chrome or EZcast alternative plugged into your HDMI port at the back of your TV. Now you have great functionality added to your TV to send a video file directly from your NAS to a TV. No need for wires and chargers and other mess. You can use your phone as a remote to go to your movies or family videos and cast that content on your TV during family or friend gatherings.

 

Apple TV

Amazon Fire TV

You may not have a smartphone, or you just simply prefer to control your content with a remote in that case Amazon Fire TV will be a great addon to get to your TV. It also plugs into your HDMI port and will play content from your NAS to a TV. No wires no mess.

nVidia Shield TV

It gets even better! If you want some more entertainment and all previously mentioned functions - nVidia TV is a great thing to get. You can use it for playing games and watching movies from your NAS. The greatest thing is - shield TV does video transcoding. So even if you have a cheap NAS with a weak CPU, in a combination of shield TV you can now automatically on the fly change video file size and format for a destination device. It is a great way to reduce network load and let older devices to play video content which normally was not supported on the device.