QNAP TS-563 Turbo NAS Reviewed

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At a glance
Product	QNAP Turbo NAS (TS-563-8G) [Website]
Summary	Five-bay quad-core AMD SoC SATA NAS with dual Gigabit LAN, USB 3.0 and optional 10GbE
Pros	• High 10GbE performance for reasonable $ • 5 USB 3.0 ports • Cloud backup to Amazon S3, Elephant Drive, Symform
Cons	• No HDMI Port • No eSATA port • No LCD screen • Relatively slow Rsync backup performance

Typical Price: $987 Buy From Amazon

Introduction

Scrolling through QNAP's extensive listing of NASes, you can find a product to meet just about any need. Our more recent QNAP reviews have included "SMB" class products, including the high-end TVS-471Turbo NAS and mid-class TVS-463 Golden Cloud Turbo NAS.

This review will focus on the TS-563-8G Turbo NAS. As QNAP's only 5-bay NAS and AMD-powered, it's a unique box. The TS-563-8G is the 8 GB SKU; it's also available with just 2 GB of RAM (TS-563-2G). Both models have a single PCI-E expansion port and five USB 3.0 ports, but lack a front panel LCD screen, HDMI port and locking disk trays.

QNAP TS-563-8G

The chart below compares the TS-563 with two other NASes I'll be comparing it to.

QNAP TS-563-8G comparison

All three of these NASes have at least one PCI-E slot and support optional 10 GbE NICs. So we've tested all three using both our standard Gigabit and optional 10GbE connections. Since the cost of the 10 GbE adapter adds significantly to the total cost of the NAS, we will be doing separate Gigabit and 10GbE competitive comparisons. I've chosen a slightly different mix of products to compare using our standard single client Gigabit tests: the ASUSTOR AS7004T and QNAP TVS-463 Golden Cloud Turbo NAS.

The callouts below show the front and rear panels of the TS-563-8G. There's a single USB 3.0 port on the front panel located just below the One Touch Copy button. The rear panel has two Gigabit Ethernet ports and four USB 3.0 ports.

QNAP TS-563-8G front and rear panel callouts

Inside

Like some other QNAP NASes, the TS-563 proved to be difficult to disassemble, so I don't have a PCB photo. The photo below shows an inside shot showing the optional 10 GbE NIC installed.

QNAP TS-563-8G interior showing installed 10 GbE NIC

The table below summarizes the key components for the four NASes we'll be using for our comparisons in the performance section of this review.

	QNAP TS-563-8G	QNAP TVS-471-i3-4G	QNAP TVS-463	ASUSTOR 7004T
CPU	AMD x86 G-Series Quad-core 2.0 GHz processor (GX-420CA	Dual-core Intel Core™ i3-4150 3.5 GHz	AMD 2.4 GHz quad-core GX-424CC processor with Radeon Graphics	Intel Core i3-4150 @ 3.5 GHz dual core
RAM	8 GB DDR3 SoDIMM (upgradeable to 16 GB total)	4GB DDR3 (expandable to 16GB)	8 GB DDR3 SoDIMM	2GB DDR3 SoDIMM expandable to 16 GB)
Flash	512 MB USB DoM	512 MB DOM	512 MB USB DoM	512 MB DOM
Ethernet	Intel WG1210AT (x2)	Intel WGI210TA (x2) ??	Intel WG1210AT (x2)	Broadcom BCM57781 (X2)
USB 3.0	Asmedia 1074 4 port USB 3.0 controller	??	Asmedia 1074 4 port USB 3.0 controller	NEC D720200F USB 3.0 controller
SATA	Marvell 88SE9215 SATA 6Gb/s Host Controller (x3 on drive backplane)	??	Marvell 88SE9215 (x2 on backplane)	Under Heatsink - ASM1466 one lane (Dual-channel) 6 Gbps Serial ATA Repeater (x6) These buffer four internal SATA connectors and 2 eSATA

Table 1: Key component summary and comparison Feature

Power consumption with four SmallNetBuilder-provided WD Red 3TB (WD30EFRX) drives was 51 W (active) and 40 W power save. RAID 5 and RAID 10 rebuild times were each 2 hours and 55 minutes. Fan and drive noise was rated as Medium Low (mostly drive noise). There was a fan spin up to high during the RAID 10 format due to high temperature on drive 3.

Features

Like all QNAP NASes, the TS-563-8G runs QNAP's QTS NAS OS. Recently, QNAP released an updated version, QTS 4.2. New features include a revamped user interface, updated multimedia features, optimized storage management and backup and data protection with 2-step verification. You can download a brochure detailing the features of QTS 4.2 here.

If you'd like to experience many of the new features of QTS 4.2, you can try out their live demo. A quick start tutorial shows you how to create and manage data snapshots, back up documents and files using Time Machine and third party backup software, use Qsync to synchronize files on multiple devices and add apps through the App Center. The screen hot below shows the landing page of QTS 4.2 with the Quick Start tutorial.

QNAP QTS 4.2 Quick Start tutorial