QNAP has unveiled a 12-bay tower all-flash NAS designed to meet the rigorous demands of multimedia production and virtualisation. Combining performance and capacity, it offers a centralised storage hub for collaborative work environments and backups.
TS-h1277AFX is built to handle data-intensive workflows such as visual effects (VFX), virtual desktops, and collaborative work environments, which require sustained throughput across multiple users. This NAS aims to streamline workflows, improve data security, and facilitate cross-platform collaboration all in a simple, easy-to-use design.
Measuring 157.2mm × 368mm × 362mm, TS-h1277AFX offers 12 2.5in drive bays supporting 6Gb/s SATA SSDs. Though, note that the system is shipped without SSDs. You can fill it with up to 184TB of capacity using 15.36TB SSDs, each sold separately. And if you need more, you can always increase capacity in M.2 form via the triple PCIe Gen 4 slots, compatible with Gen 3 NVMe SSDs and above. Not enough? Then link a JBOD unit to scale things with up to 128 drives.
An AMD Ryzen 7 9000 Series processor powers TS-h1277AFX, fed by a 500W PSU. You can upgrade the included 32GB of UDIMM ECC DDR5 memory to 192GB (4x48GB), but the base amount is plenty to get started. Not to forget the built-in Radeon iGPU handling multimedia tasks, real-time video editing, and VFX processing. All of this is cooled by two 92mm 12VDC fans, which is fine for a machine rated for 69W in disk standby mode and 102W in typical operating mode using fully populated drive bays.
As usual, we find the brand’s QuTS hero operating system complete with power failure protection, automatic repair of corrupted data, and simultaneous SSD failure prevention. It also integrates ZFS self-healing, data deduplication, RAID redundancy, and SSD optimisation, to maximise storage efficiency and lifespan.
You can route this data in multiple ways, though most users will likely opt for the faster 10G BASE-T ports. TS-h1277AFX carries two 10GbE LAN ports plus another two 2.5GbE, with the latter supporting Wake on LAN, which allows you to turn the NAS on remotely over the local network or internet.
Like storage, you can upgrade your networking speed using 25GbE addon cards that fit in one of the PCIe ports. TS-h1277AFX houses three PCIe Gen 4 expansion slots, allowing you to add all types of expansions, from the aforementioned JBOD and 25GbE LAN to M.2 SSD slots and dedicated GPUs. The latter is handy to accelerate video editing and transcoding.
The first two PCIe slots share eight Gen 4 lanes (running in x4/x4 or x0/x8 modes) and support 185mm x 111.15mm x 18.76mm cards, whereas the third one runs at Gen 4 x8 speed while supporting 280mm x 111.15mm x 18.76mm cards. Lastly, you will find two USB 3.2 Gen 2, one USB 3.2 Gen 1, and one HDMI 1.4b capable of outputting 3840×2160 resolution at 30Hz.
“TS-h1277AFX delivers low-latency, multi-user access that optimizes collaboration workflows. It provides an excellent price-to-performance ratio for creative teams, enabling seamless 4K/8K media transfers, real-time editing, and secure file management,” says Alex Shih, Product Manager at QNAP.
As you can guess, such specs won’t come cheap, though still affordable for a professional solution. QNAP TS-h1277AFX will set you back $3,399 for a unit powered by an octa-core Ryzen 7 9700X CPU and 32GB of UDIMM DDR5 ECC memory. That said, you get a long five-year warranty to keep your mind in peace. If you want a cheaper or smaller solution you can always go with the rack-mounted four-bay TS-h765eU NAS.
