Hey guys, Jarrod here and today we’re going to upgrade the CPU and RAM in my QNAP TS-870
NAS, because well why not!
Almost two years ago I bought this QNAP TS-870 NAS to store most of my files on, it’s been
great as I can centrally access files anywhere on my network at home.
By default the NAS came installed with an Intel Celeron G1620 CPU at 2.7GHz with 2 CPU
cores and no hyperthreading.
There’s also a single stick of 2GB DDR3 RAM at 1333MHz.
While these basic specs have been alright and I honestly haven’t noticed any performance
issues, I wanted to try out some simple upgrades that would help in speeding things up for
years to come.
First we’ll look at the CPU.
This particular NAS uses Intel socket 1155, so I could essentially get any CPU that would
fit this to replace the low tier Celeron.
As this socket is end of life I had a look on Ebay through different 3000 series i3,
i5 and i7 CPUs, particularly T and S series chips.
CPUs ending in ‘S’ have a peak TDP of 65W, while CPUs ending in ‘T’ have a peak
TDP of 35 or 45w.
This is mainly for power efficiency, a NAS is typically a low power device and as I leave
it running 24/7 and the CPU cooler is a passive system, a chip with a low TDP is definitely
preferable.
In the end I found a i5-3470S for $110 in my area so I could cut down on shipping, most
of the CPUs would have come from overseas which increased the cost.
This is a 4 core CPU at 2.9GHz and can turbo to 3.6GHz at 65w TDP.
There’s no hyperthreading available here, however I decided that it should be fine as
we’re still doubling the total core count from the stock CPU and increasing the speed.
While the maximum power draw is a little higher than I’d have liked, it’s only 10W higher
than the original chip so it should be fine with the stock cooling system.
In regards to the memory, there are two RAM slots available with only one of them in use
with a 2gb stick.
This model of NAS supports up to 16gb of RAM so I bought 2x 8gb sticks of SODIMM memory
at 1600MHz for around $100 AUD, so 8x the amount of RAM and slightly faster.
Now I’ll walk you through what’s involved in the upgrade process, keep in mind that
this will void your warranty.
The only tools I used were a few different sizes of phillips head screwdriver, as well
as a permanent marker so that I could mark cables.
Before starting make sure that you have unplugged the NAS from the power.
I’ll also note that there is a lot of sharp metal inside the NAS, so be careful when you’re
poking around.
So to begin with we basically want to take off the case of the NAS, and to do this you
just need to unscrew the 6 screws all around the outsides of the casing.
After this I did actually have a bit of trouble popping the case off, so I used a flat head
screwdriver to pry around the edges until it basically clicked up and I was able to
slide the whole thing off.
After this I start using a permanent marker to start marking some of the cables so that
I can plug them back in when reassembling.
Next I start taking some of the screws out of the back, namely those around the power
supply and network adapter card.
After this I start taking out the rest of the screws from the back with the exception
of the screws that are holding the fans in.
There’s also 3 screws under the NAS so don’t forget about those, and there’s also one
on the bottom on each side.
Next I take out the network adapter card and unplug the fans while I’m at it.
At this point I remove the tiny screw which is between the two audio jacks, and there’s
also a hidden screw behind one of the stickers.
Once all those screws are out you should be able to just pop out the back.
Next I start taking the screws out from the power supply as that’s in the centre and
I want to move it out of the way.
At this point I realise I’m going to need to move the hard drive backplane out because
it’s plugging directly into the mainboard, and to do this I need to take out the disks.
I probably should have done this at the start, and I’d recommend taking them out at the
start if you’re going through with this upgrade, you don’t really want to have those
disks in the NAS while you’re moving it around and working on it.
Once the hard drives are out I take the cables out from the power supply which are plugging
into the hard drive backplane and the mainboard.
Next I start unscrewing some of the screws holding the CPU cooler on the mainboard for
the CPU to the actual case of the NAS itself.
A bunch of these screws also hold the hard drive backplane in place which I need to try
and get out of the way so I can detach it from the mainboard.
This is one of the parts that will void your warranty, there’s warranty sticker covering
one of the screws on the back of the mainboard.
So I basically just move that out of the way then unscrew the four screws holding that
board in place.
There’s also a sheet of plastic on the back that looks like it’s doing a good job at
covering it from dust, so I clean that off to use again when I reassemble to keep dust
off the mainboard.
Once the mainboard is unscrewed I’m not really able to move it out of the way as the
hard drive backplane is still inserted into the mainboard, so in order to get this out
I need to unscrew it further so that I can slide it outwards.
I had to use a longer than average screwdriver in order to actually reach the screws as they
were in a bit of a weird position, but after that it slide out easily.
Once disconnected I just had to move the back of the NAS case with the fans out of the way
and then I was able to move the mainboard out.
Once I had the board out there was this single ribbon cable that was plugged into the NAS,
it had a couple of melted plastic pieces holding it in place, so I simply scratched these off
with my fingers and then I’m able to remove the ribbon cable and completely detach the
the mainboard from the body of the NAS so that I can start working on it.
Once I’ve got the mainboard completely removed, the first thing I do is take out that 2GB
stick of RAM.
Once this is done I open up the 2 8GB sticks I bought and put them into the slots, and
that’s basically all there is for the RAM upgrade.
Now for the CPU upgrade.
I start by unscrewing the screws of the heatsink from the mainboard so I can completely remove
that heat sink and get to the CPU.
Once I’ve removed the heatsink I clear the thermal paste off and then open the CPU socket
and take out the old CPU.
After that I get the new CPU, put it in the socket, and start to apply my thermal paste.
I probably should have closed the socket before applying the thermal paste, but I don’t
think it really matters too much.
After the thermal paste has been applied, I close the socket and get the CPU heatsink
and begin screwing it back evenly into the board.
That’s basically all there is to it, the RAM and CPU upgrade are now complete.
So all that’s left is to reassemble the NAS which is basically the reverse process
of what I just said, so this will begin with attaching the ribbon cable back to the mainboard,
and then gently sliding the mainboard back into its original position.
After this I slide the hard drive backplane back in, attach the cables, and then screw
the mainboard back into the body of the NAS.
After this it’s just a case of putting all the screws back in, reattaching the network
expansion card, and screwing the power supply back into place.
Then you just want to screw the back of the case back into the body of the NAS.
Once it’s all screwed back together you should be able to put the case of the NAS
back on and screw that into place.
At this point I put my hard drives back in, in the same order that I took them out, and
then I put the three screws back into the bottom of the NAS.
So that’s all there is to it, the whole thing took me a little over an hour.
After reassembling the NAS of course I had one screw left, oops.
So now let’s compare some of the before and after benchmarks to see what the changes
actually did.
Upon logging into the web interface of the NAS we can see that our new hardware has correctly
been detected.
The first test I ran was to transcode a 105mb video file from 1080p to 240p, 360p, 480p
and 720p.
Before the upgrade on the stock CPU this took 2 minutes and 23 seconds to complete.
After the upgrade transcoding the same file took just 45 seconds thanks to the better
performing CPU.
I used hdparm with the -T flag which works with cache to get an idea of the read speeds
of the memory, before the upgrade I got around 6.5GB/s and after I got about 25GB/s, confirming
that the new memory is helping out here.
Next I mounted 1gb of RAM and wrote data to it to get an idea of the write speeds.
We can see here that after the upgrade the amount of time taken to write a 1gb file was
almost twice as fast going from around 600ms to 300ms.
I also performed some basic hashing tests, by hashing the same data as md5, sha1, sha256
and sha512.
The results are a little faster here, showing the increased single threaded performance.
The upgraded CPU has AES-NI instructions which essentially speed up AES operations at the
hardware level rather than depending on software to take care of it.
I’m looking to encrypt the whole NAS in the future, so this functionality will definitely
be put to good use and I have therefore run some basic encryption benchmarks.
As we can see here, the after results in all of these AES tests is higher with the new
CPU as expected.
In some tests the difference was not too much, while in others it was more than 5 times faster.
I also found that the temperatures were a little better with the new CPU, under full
load the Celeron CPU was sitting around 51c while the upgraded CPU was sitting at 48c,
the temperature of the room I was testing in was 22c during both tests.
The idle temperature both before and after the upgrade was around 46c.
So that’s basically it, we can see that the upgrades have improved things though admittedly
this probably won't have too many noticeable real world improvements, however I have considered
running some virtual machines on the NAS which is more possible now.
I’ve been considering upgrading to 10 gigabit, however after running a local storage benchmark
on the NAS directly and not over the network I’m only getting around 120MB/s write speed
anyway which is not much more than gigabit, so this wouldn’t really be worth it unless
I’m using SSD storage or caching.
It’s not currently practical to replace the disks with SSD’s and I don’t really
want to have to use a whole bay for a cache drive either as I’d prefer to have mass
storage instead.
Also the costs associated with installing a 10gbe NIC in the NAS and my PC are pretty
high.
Due to these reasons, 10 gigabit is on hold for now.
In future I might also look at replacing the fans with something a bit better and quieter,
the stock fans both run at 600rpm while idling and are a little too audible for my liking.
As shown it’s not too difficult to get into the NAS and perform the upgrades, it’s essentially
a small low end server or PC when it comes down to the components and replacing them.
I liked that it wasn’t locked down and I can actually get in and perform these upgrades
if I want to, sure it will void the warranty but it’s a good optional way to increase
the power of your NAS if you need it.
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