Such a shame we are missing the rk3566 as a simple low cost 1gbe 3 sata board would be a great addition for Radxa.
QNAP TS-133 1-bay NAS leverages Rockchip RK3566 AI
Well there are many missing things on that qnap.
No vpu support which is sad. Rk should contribute to the vpu drivers upstream.
Why would you need a vpu on a NAS?
The RK3566/68 are not really general purpose SBC boards its pretty obvious to what functions they lean heavily too.
Rockchip prob hasn’t released the vpu drivers upstream because they don’t think the effort is worthwhile as like the QNAP its intended as a network headless node device.
Whats it going to do play videos for the hard drives?
I guess eventually they will get round to it but still the GPU on that SoC is poor with the cut down version of a G52 that is more of an ancillary NPU than 3d accelerator that has a subset of opengl.
The really strong unique features of the sata/network have failed to get full billing as well as a really low cost 3 drive NAS the rk3566 is also a great 2x 2.5gbe router but we only got a CM carrier for the rk3568 which prob isn’t the router chip but a 5gbe NaS device but still very much a network device than a ‘desktop’ client.
I think those SoCs are great for certain function and obviously qnap does also and its a shame we don’t really have the formats to exploit what is special about them.
Why would i need a nas if I cannot stream my media from it?
If i setup a media server like jellyfin then i need video transcoding isn’t it?
Without that it’s just a dead nas Drive for that they don’t have to waste 4xA55.
Because the best media front end by a long choke doesn’t do something as stupid as trying to transcode multiple streams of video to users (Kodi).
It acts purely to use a shared NAS Network Attached Storage to easily share out to multiple clients that each have a VPU to transcode video.
Home NAS is a big area of sale whilst media transcribing server based systems is relatively tiny in comparison.
The rk3566 has the potential to be a killer board for 3x sata home NAS whilst the rk3568 with 5gbe & 6x sata branches further into the workgroup market both at amazing costs if we had the options and not the bloat.
The rk3566 other main option is as a router with 2x 2.5gbe for pihole/firewall security routing types devices.
Name a single SBC that can do multiple high rate large format streams at the same time? You don’t need to with NAS as NAS have nothing to do with video transcoding as once more its Network Attached Storage which both the RK3566 & RK3568 are very good at and hence why QNAP has chosen to use one for a low cost budget Network Attached Storage that strangely works as a Network Attached Storage device.
The 4xA55 are used for the OS and RAID and likely offer various container offerings of network attached services such as home cloud that are far more applicable to the type of SOC it is such as Home Cloud or Even Home Automation such as NodeRed.
Unfortunately we don’t have the ultra cheap RK3566 that could make an amazingly low cost and capable NAS as an A55 4 core is only a more efficient Pi3 not a threadripper. But should be an absolutely perfect fit for a NAS.
RK3566/68 are amazing SoCs at amazing prices its just a shame we don’t have options available for what they are amazing at without the hardware cost bloat that negates their amazing prices.
But they are an incremental update on the A53 (pi 3 cpu) where much is about efficiency than performance gain.
They can be extremely efficient devices for NAS & routers.
Consumer NAS Market Size Worth $8.20 Billion By 2025
In our test pcie2 max out at 3gb/s so only 1 x 2.5 can be utilized at a time.
I hope you’re aware of qnap os which is quite heavy.
For very limited low end usage, that’s right. I just returned an terramaster nas which was based on arm from rtl and they advertised dockers and portainer but both were useless, it can only be used for basic samba sharing and if possible something on cloud but sadly uPnP is not usefull anymore as their devices are getting hacked, same goes for QNAP and any other nas hardware provider.
I understand what you’re trying to explain me but all I am saying is if QNAP plans to sell it in large quantity then why not sell it with complete feature? Is that too much to ask for ?
Not on about using the pcie-2 and my memory as usual.
Both support three multi-PHY switch but only the RK3568 has the QSGMII controller.
Its the RK3568 that can be the router but really where that board shines is hat with the correct Phy it could have a single 5gbe + 1x Sata with a 5x PCIe 3.0 Sata controller as otherwise things are a bit pointless as your getting no where near the bandwidth that NAS could provide.
Have one sata onboard with the full quad Phy gives an all mighty NAS solution still utilising the fairly modest quad A55.
The RK3566 after referencing the data-sheet has x3 Sata and 1gbe which is perfect for a low cost home NAS.
It still has the x3 multi-phy but lacks the quad SGMII controller…
We don’t have options for either of those 2 and its likely they by far return the most value for money as equivalent units do command very high prices for what they are.
I don’t have to use qnap os to provide smb or NFS shares and neither does anyone else but I am pretty sure the x4 A55 going to waste are able to run it as qnap is.
We just have this weird situation where they have been positioned as general purpose desktop boards which they are really not strong at with people wasting a lot of time making desktop distro’s for which isn’t really there strong point.
Its NAS that I do think they are great for the RK3568 x2 2.5gb router doesn’t really give much value and neither does the VPU on either for streaming in a server/client orientation or that infrastructure in general as adoption and use plainly shows with KODI style local transcodes of network shares winning a huge majority of the market share whilst server transcoding such as plex
/emby has become a tiny niche market.
It doesn’t matter about qnas or terramaster as this is what I am saying if we had the right boards it very easy and avaiable to do those things yourself!
But sadly we don’t and its even more frustrating as it is so close but what we do have is either a ROCK 3 Model A for some reason in Pi format and needing an M.2 extention board and missing Nic bandwidth that the RAID can produce or these CM modules that by the time you build up what is needed its no longer cost effective or obvious how you could create a solution.
For me the Rock3 range has been a total brain fart but sometimes those things do happen, the Radxa Zero2 is absolutely awesome and I am sure the Rock5B will be also as they do have focus on end use and don’t bloat with unnecessary or pointless function.
The whole problem with the cost with those boards is because they have certain features, all has been attempted and its landed them in no-mans land and not cost effective and ask for it if you want and enjoy.
Thankfully since the RockPi4 its the 1st Radxa product I have dodged.