Benchmarks: Power Consumption
Qnap's single-core Marvell processor might not be the quickest around the block, however it does have the advantage of being particularly frugal where power consumption is concerned. Our box, armed with four Samsung hard disks, drew a class-leading 37 watts from the wall during use, and 32 watts when idle. As with all recent Qnap solutions, a built-in drive standby function allows each equipped disk to spin-down after a user-defined period of inactivity; in this state the TS-421 proved very efficient, drawing just 12 watts of power.
Low power consumption is one of the TS-421's strengths, and the unit also stays suitably cool and quiet. System temperature remained low throughout testing, and the single 90mm fan can't be heard over our SpinPoint hard disks.
