NAS upgrade

[Enquiries]

I currently have a TS-133 and am looking to upgrade. I’m torn between the TS-432x and the TS-464. I have no interest in containers or VMs as my server handles this. Only really looking for file storage and streaming media/games from it (steam games loaded via NAS). Sometimes I feel the TS-133 can chug a bit, I find the CPU to struggle when inside QTS and not even transferring. I do like the idea of low power ARM though. Any advice would be appreciated.

[ed]

Between the TS-432X and the TS-464, I’d lean toward the TS-464, especially given your use case. Even though you’re not interested in VMs or containers, that Celeron processor gives you a big performance bump — not just for file handling and media streaming, but also for day-to-day responsiveness inside QTS. It makes a noticeable difference when browsing files, updating apps, or handling multiple users or tasks at once.

That said, I understand the appeal of the TS-432X — it’s ARM-based, more power efficient, and includes 10GbE, which is rare at that price point. But that Annapurna CPU is still going to be a bottleneck in scenarios like media indexing, thumbnails, or just general multitasking. It’s a bit more “set and forget” — fine for backups and low-touch access, but not great if you’re interacting with the NAS regularly.

You also mentioned streaming Steam games via NAS — in that case, CPU and throughput matter, and the TS-464 has the edge both in CPU performance and I/O flexibility. It supports SSD caching (via M.2 NVMe), more RAM, and overall faster file access, which can make a real-world difference with larger games or library transfers.

In your budget (~$1000 AUD), the TS-464 fits well and gives you more breathing room long term — and if energy usage is a concern, you can still tweak power schedules or enable disk hibernation to keep things efficient.