D-Link DNS-320 Rev A vs Rev B

[Andy Higginson]

Hi,

I've got a couple of these NAS boxes and I've been moving them over to Alt-F.  A big thank you to the developers.  I have however come across an interesting speed difference between the rev A and rev B versions of the 320.  The rev B seems to be about twice as fast as the rev A on writing data on a share.  Both of the boxes have the same kind of drives running as RAID1 and the drives were reinstalled from blank after the Alt-F firmware had been flashed.  They therefore have no legacy data or partitioning from the Dlink firmware.  They are both formatted as EXT4.  They are both configured in the same way using SMB2 for the shares.  Does anyone have any thoughts about this other than the rev B being a faster CPU than the rev A?  Is there anything that might be able to speed up the rev A box or should I just keep an eye out on Ebay for another rev B or 320L box?

Thanks

Andy

[Nicolas Desveaux]

Would love to know as well but can you give us some read/write numbers of big files (20GB+)as well as the network device you're using, MTU, etc

Thanks!

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[João Cardoso]

On Thursday, 2 August 2018 13:28:49 UTC+1, Andy Higginson wrote:

Hi,

I've got a couple of these NAS boxes and I've been moving them over to Alt-F.  A big thank you to the developers.  I have however come across an interesting speed difference between the rev A and rev B versions of the 320.  The rev B seems to be about twice as fast as the rev A on writing data on a share.

From a previous post we concluded that the DNS-320-rev-B1 is identical (same circuit board) to the DNS-320L-rev-A1, except that it has only half of the memory. Probably it also runs at a lower clock frequency, and that would explain the lower performance. Marketing decisions...

You can verify that by examining the beginning of the kernel log (dmesg command output), as some performance/timing is displayed.

[Andy Higginson]

Hi,

Not quite the size you asked for but I've just run a 3.99GB file over from my PC to both boxes.  The copy times were as follows - rev A 8m5s    rev B 2m31s.  Both boxes report a network speed of 1000Mbps and a MTU of 1500.  They are both directly connected to an HP ProCurve 1800G 24 port gigabit switch by 1m cat6 cables and the switch is reporting that the ports are running at 1000Mbps Full Duplex.  Jumbo frames is not switched on on the switch.  The PC is running Windows 10 and is also connected to the switch.

I hope this helps.

Andy

[Andy Higginson]

Hi,

I'm comparing the rev A and rev B versions of the 320, not the 320L.  Looking at the Kernel log, both are running the same CPU and memory (128M) but the CPU on the rev A is running at 800MHz and the one on the rev B is at 1000MHz.  I would have thought however that the lower speed of the rev A should not have had that much impact.  The boards of the rev A and rev B models are different and they are in different housings as well.

Andy

[Nicolas Desveaux]

Thanks Andy

So 

RevA = 8.4MB/s

RevB = 27MB/s

I have a RevA myself and it does exactly that as well aka ~8-9MB/s

When I put it on a 100Mbps switch it hits 10-11MB/s

Makes little sense but ok. 

Looks like I'm going to be jonesing for a 2nd hand rev B soon myself!!!

[Nicolas Desveaux]

Did you notice cooling differences? What temp is the RevA and RevB after a long file transfer ( > 10mins) Does the rev B cpu have a heatsink of some sort?

I'm tempted to stick a small chipset type heatsink on the RevA cpu and beg Joao to show me how to OC it :p

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[Nicolas Desveaux]

I'd love to see a sort of chart that shows you a ranking of sharecenters compatible with ALT-F

Speed wise we can see that 320 revB > 320 rev A

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[João Cardoso]

On Thursday, 2 August 2018 23:09:37 UTC+1, Nicolas Desveaux wrote:

Did you notice cooling differences? What temp is the RevA and RevB after a long file transfer ( > 10mins) Does the rev B cpu have a heatsink of some sort?

I'm tempted to stick a small chipset type heatsink on the RevA cpu and beg Joao to show me how to OC it :p

:))

I doubt that the heatsink will solve that. The temp increase is certainly due to the disk drives being actively working for a long time, and in such case they consume up to three time more power, and the generated heat ends up dissipating in to the box and increasing the temp.

ARM CPU, most likely like your phone processor and other embedded devices, are power efficient and don't consume and heat that much.

And remember, the DNS-320-revB has an identical circuit board as the DNS-320L-revA has -- pictures of both boards shows that, and even the board painted label is the same.

 

On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 7:40 PM Andy Higginson  wrote:

Hi,

I'm comparing the rev A and rev B versions of the 320, not the 320L.  Looking at the Kernel log, both are running the same CPU and memory (128M) but the CPU on the rev A is running at 800MHz and the one on the rev B is at 1000MHz.  I would have thought however that the lower speed of the rev A should not have had that much impact.  The boards of the rev A and rev B models are different and they are in different housings as well.

Andy

On Thursday, 2 August 2018 16:20:02 UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

On Thursday, 2 August 2018 13:28:49 UTC+1, Andy Higginson wrote:

Hi,

I've got a couple of these NAS boxes and I've been moving them over to Alt-F.  A big thank you to the developers.  I have however come across an interesting speed difference between the rev A and rev B versions of the 320.  The rev B seems to be about twice as fast as the rev A on writing data on a share.

From a previous post we concluded that the DNS-320-rev-B1 is identical (same circuit board) to the DNS-320L-rev-A1, except that it has only half of the memory. Probably it also runs at a lower clock frequency, and that would explain the lower performance. Marketing decisions...

You can verify that by examining the beginning of the kernel log (dmesg command output), as some performance/timing is displayed.

 

  Both of the boxes have the same kind of drives running as RAID1 and the drives were reinstalled from blank after the Alt-F firmware had been flashed.  They therefore have no legacy data or partitioning from the Dlink firmware.  They are both formatted as EXT4.  They are both configured in the same way using SMB2 for the shares.  Does anyone have any thoughts about this other than the rev B being a faster CPU than the rev A?  Is there anything that might be able to speed up the rev A box or should I just keep an eye out on Ebay for another rev B or 320L box?

Thanks

Andy

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[Nicolas Desveaux]

@Joao Would you say that with better ventilation (such as keeping the top off with a 120mm fan blowing down for instance it could sustain running at 1.0GHz with the potential benefit of disk transfer speeds being 3 times as good?

I'm REALLY curious as to how the rev B achieves such huge differences.. 

In your experience is the 320L even faster?

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