QNAP HS210

[DavidHB]

I note the preference often expressed here and on other forums for fanless, 'silent' NAS models for audio applications. Nothing ever comes for free and reviews of the 'silent' models indicate that they can get quite hot, so good ventilation is presumably a necessity.

In my experience, the greatest amount of mechanical noise from a NAS comes from the hard drive(s), so the only truly silent NASs are fitted with SSDs, which in turn means that true silence will require a trade-off in terms of cost and system capacity. The need for a fanless NAS will therefore often depend on siting considerations. Mounting the NAS on some kind of damping material (for example, felt ot silicone rubber pads) can help to reduce the transmission of mechanical noise.

I now have both my NASs in my listening room, but thy are at the opposite end of the (fairly long and narrow) room from the Hi-Fi and listening position. When the room is otherwise silent, I can hear the hard drives, but no other noise, from the NASs. When the Hi-Fi is playing, I cannot hear the NASs at all.

Incidentally, I have had a single drive QNAP TS-131 NAS for nearly two years, and it runs MinimServer pretty well, but, with an ARM processor and 512MB of RAM, struggles to run MinimServer and Linn's (resource hog) Kazoo Server simultaneously. My more recently purchased 2 bay TS-251+, with a Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM, is much more comfortable with, for example, MinimServer rescans, which it seems to do as quickly as my Windows 10 desktop with an SSD and 16GB of RAM.

David