CPU and RAM on a NAS

[cupofschmoe]

I am shopping around for a NAS to use for streaming movies and music.

I am having a hard time grasping the benefits of CPU cores and speeds and RAM for NASes. Can someone give me a breakdown and scenarios of when having more is good so that I'm not wasting resources if they are not being used most of the time.

 

[thiggins]

CPU power is more important than RAM size unless the NAS is being used to read a lot of small files AND the NAS OS takes advantage of the RAM for caching.

Multi-cores can also help with real-time transcoding. But, again, that is up to the OS. You need to read the product spec.

Keep in mind most all today's NASes, even the entry-level two-bay models can saturate a Gigabit Ethernet link when doing large file transfers (hi-res images, video). Aggregating multiple Ethernet ports doesn't help increase transfer speed for single machines.

So unless you have multiple systems and a switch that supports link aggregation, spending more for more powerful CPUs and RAM capacity is a waste of money.