QNAP TVS-H1288X vs TVS-H874

[Enquiries]

For a QuTS Hero ZFS which would be a better fit for home use. I plan to populate whichever with eight 20 TB WD Red Pro drives, 4 TB NVMe and max Ram. Are the extra 2.5 inch drives necessary for QuTS Hero?

[QNAPDaniel]

For a QuTS Hero ZFS which would be a better fit for home use. I plan to populate whichever with eight 20 TB WD Red Pro drives, 4 TB NVMe and max Ram. Are the extra 2.5 inch drives necessary for QuTS Hero?

Both have 8 HDD bays. Only 2 SSDs are needed for the system pool, and apps, VMs, and containers can also go there. And SSD cache is less important on Hero since RAM ARC cache makes the larger difference. So a lower-cost unit with just the m.2 but not the 2.5" bays can make a lot of sense for a home user who doe not need more than a few TB of SSD space.

I think there are many good reasons to get the h874. The i5 CPU is more powerful than the Xeon in the 88 series. The i5 is an Alderlake CPU and Alderlake was a big improvement for Intel. Both are great units, but for most home users I suspect the 874 will make more sense.

[Robbie]

Good morning George

Hope you are well and thank you for your donation. I'll get straight to the point, the TVS-h1288X is a hell of a machine and, unless the TVS-h874 arrives before Nov, the 88X is going to be in alot of my 'best of' choices for NAS (at the top end, obviously) of the year. That said, it is quite a beefy machine, has one of the best CPUs in the desktop NAS market right now, unparalleled scalability in storage, memory and network connectivity - it even has two 10GbE ports available on day one!

If your question had been 'which is best', unless you are looking at the highest tier of the 74 series (with 10GbE etc), the h1288X wins comfortably. But as you asked which is best suited to use in the home, the TVS-874 is going to be the marginally quieter system, is a fraction more compact and (often overlooked by some) is a PCIe 4 system - that means much faster SSDs internally AND support of faster/higher-bandwidth upgrade cards at PCIe 4x16. That means that if you WERE to need that additional SSD, I would be much more inclined to recommend 2x PCIe4 SSDs (7000MB/s Seq Read) over 4x SATA SSDs (450-500MB/s). Plus, QNAP does provide a range of PCIe4 Cards now, so you can add 2-4 SSD Cards and/or 10GbE combo cards. Then (really laying it on thick here, but sue me), there is the pricing. Traditionally, the 8/12 Bay storage combo system powerhouse use (TVS-1282, TVS-1288X, etc) has always been a significant chunk of £ more than the powerhouse single media system (TVS-871, TVS-872, TVS-h874), because it provides a large range of features and services on day 1 - whereas the latter system gives you ALOT on day 1, but the option to scale/add those features later as your use/setup/business(?) requires.

I guess what I am saying is that the TVS-h874 a better all round choice for those who want to find a sweet spot between hardware and scalability later. The TVS-h1288X IS an excellent device (again, one of the best out there), but I am not sure you are going to use ALL of it's features (just going by your message) and the TVS-h874 gives you a huge amount of H/W, but also broader/better bandwidth later on to scale up with.

Also, side note, the 4x SSD on the 1288X is not necessary for Hero. Though, I would install the ZFS/QuTS OS on an area of SSD for it to run at it's very, very best (especially if you plan on using the full complement of software and services it includes. Have a great week and let me/us know what you end up going with in the end!

P.S. Regarding release dates regionally and pricing, nothing concrete from me on that... but *cough* Daniel @ QNAP above *cough* I am sure can answer that. In the meantime, here is my review of the TVS-h1288X in case you are still on the fence - https://nascompares.com/2020/11/18/qnap-...re-review/

*tsk* how fantastically arrogant of *me*

[georged1979]

Good morning George

Hope you are well and thank you for your donation. I'll get straight to the point, the TVS-h1288X is a hell of a machine and, unless the TVS-h874 arrives before Nov, the 88X is going to be in alot of my 'best of' choices for NAS (at the top end, obviously) of the year. That said, it is quite a beefy machine, has one of the best CPUs in the desktop NAS market right now, unparalleled scalability in storage, memory and network connectivity - it even has two 10GbE ports available on day one!

If your question had been 'which is best', unless you are looking at the highest tier of the 74 series (with 10GbE etc), the h1288X wins comfortably. But as you asked which is best suited to use in the home, the TVS-874 is going to be the marginally quieter system, is a fraction more compact and (often overlooked by some) is a PCIe 4 system - that means much faster SSDs internally AND support of faster/higher-bandwidth upgrade cards at PCIe 4x16. That means that if you WERE to need that additional SSD, I would be much more inclined to recommend 2x PCIe4 SSDs (7000MB/s Seq Read) over 4x SATA SSDs (450-500MB/s). Plus, QNAP does provide a range of PCIe4 Cards now, so you can add 2-4 SSD Cards and/or 10GbE combo cards. Then (really laying it on thick here, but sue me), there is the pricing. Traditionally, the 8/12 Bay storage combo system powerhouse use (TVS-1282, TVS-1288X, etc) has always been a significant chunk of £ more than the powerhouse single media system (TVS-871, TVS-872, TVS-h874), because it provides a large range of features and services on day 1 - whereas the latter system gives you ALOT on day 1, but the option to scale/add those features later as your use/setup/business(?) requires.

I guess what I am saying is that the TVS-h874 a better all round choice for those who want to find a sweet spot between hardware and scalability later. The TVS-h1288X IS an excellent device (again, one of the best out there), but I am not sure you are going to use ALL of it's features (just going by your message) and the TVS-h874 gives you a huge amount of H/W, but also broader/better bandwidth later on to scale up with.

Also, side note, the 4x SSD on the 1288X is not necessary for Hero. Though, I would install the ZFS/QuTS OS on an area of SSD for it to run at it's very, very best (especially if you plan on using the full complement of software and services it includes. Have a great week and let me/us know what you end up going with in the end!

P.S. Regarding release dates regionally and pricing, nothing concrete from me on that... but *cough* Daniel @ QNAP above *cough* I am sure can answer that. In the meantime, here is my review of the TVS-h1288X in case you are still on the fence - https://nascompares.com/2020/11/18/qnap-...re-review/

*tsk* how fantastically arrogant of *me*

Thanks Robbie, I think you cleared up my question and I plan to get the QNAP TVS-H874 when it's released and tested out by some pros like NASCOMPARES. Knowing the SATA SSDs arent as important in ZFS in home setup was helpful. I'll be sure to use your links too.

George