QNAP launched the cost-effective high-performance 4-bay (TS-473), 6-bay (TS-673), and 8-bay (TS-873) TS-x73 series NAS featuring an AMD RX-421ND quad-core CPU with Turbo Core up to 3.4GHz and two PCIe slots for installing a QNAP QM2 card, wireless network card or a graphics card to extend NAS functionalities. 

The TS-x73 series provides small and medium businesses with an ideal NAS solution to build a private cloud for applications including high-speed data transfer, backup/recovery, virtualization, media playback and graphics display.

The TS-x73 series is powered by a high-performance and energy-efficient AMD RX-421ND quad-core 2.1 GHz CPU (Turbo Core up to 3.4 GHz) and 4GB/8GB DDR4 RAM (up to 64GB). With an optional 10GbE network card installed, it delivers up to 1661 MB/s throughput and up to 1575 MB/s with AES-NI hardware-accelerated encryption. With two built-in M.2 SATA SSD slots and SSD caching (M.2 SSD sold separately), coupled with Qtier auto-tiering technology, the TS-x73 provides optimal storage efficiency across M.2 SSDs, 2.5-inch SSDs and high-capacity HDDs for balanced cost, performance, and capacity. The TS-x73 series supports block-based snapshots to record the state of the system at any time to help users mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks and to ensure the stability of service operations.

The TS-x73 series features two PCIe (Gen3 x4) slots that allow greater system flexibility. In addition to installing a 10GbE network card for boosting virtualization performance, users can also install a QNAP QM2 card that allows for adding two M.2 SSDs for SSD caching or to create a RAID 5 tiered storage along with the two M.2 SSDs in the NAS to increase data protection. There are also QM2 cards that include 10GbE 10GBASE-T connectivity to provide SSD caching with high-speed network connectivity on a single card.

Alternatively, users could install a low-power graphics card (powered solely by the PCIe slot) to boost system performance and enable smooth 4K video transcoding and HDMI output; install a wireless network card (for example: QNAP QWA-AC2600) to use the TS-x73 as a wireless base station, allowing users to directly access the NAS, including NAS services and Internet connection.

The business-ready TS-x73 series is a NAS and iSCSI-SAN unified storage solution that not only supports VMware®, Citrix®, Microsoft® Hyper-V® and Windows Server® 2016 environments, but can also natively host multiple virtual machines (with Windows®, Linux®, UNIX® and Android™) and containers (LXC and Docker®). Storage space can be flexibly expanded using two 8-bay UX-800P or 5-bay UX-500P or four 10-bay REXP-1000 Pro expansion enclosures. Users can also use QNAP VJBOD technology to leverage the unused space of another QNAP NAS for storage expansion.

Key specifications

• TS-473-4G: supports 4 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 4GB DDR4 RAM
• TS-473-8G: supports 4 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 8GB DDR4 RAM
• TS-673-4G: supports 6 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 4GB DDR4 RAM
• TS-673-8G: supports 6 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 8GB DDR4 RAM
• TS-873-4G: supports 8 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 4GB DDR4 RAM
• TS-873-8G: supports 8 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 8GB DDR4 RAM

Tower model; AMD RX-421ND quad-core 2.1 GHz CPU (burst up to 3.4 GHz), dual channel DDR4 RAM (4 x SODIMM memory slots, upgradable to 64GB); hot-swappable 2.5-inch/3.5-inch SATA 6Gbps HDD/SSD; 2x M.2 SATA 6Gb/s 2280/2260 SSD slots; 2x PCle Gen.3 x4 slots; 4 x USB 3.0 ports; 4x Gigabit LAN ports; 2x 3.5 mm microphone jacks (dynamic microphones only); 1x 3.5 mm Line-out audio jack; 1x built-in speaker

Availability

The new TS-x73 series is now available. The cheapest model starts at 500 Euros, the most expensive one a five fold of that.