Is MEMTEST Accurate For This Situation ...

[copperhead101]

I'm trying to conclusively prove the QNAP TS-453D NAS is capable of more than 8GB ram. The NAS utilizes the Intel Celeron J4125 SoC. Both Intel and QNAP state the maximum ram to be 8GB, however, many have tried 16GB + 32GB claiming it to run fine. MEMTEST was recently performed on the NAS using 32GB and it PASSED.

My question is, could MEMTEST be wrong? Is there any chance MEMTEST gave it a pass when in fact the underlying hardware was silently remapping > 8GB requests back to the start of the 8GB memory address? An infinite loop within the confines of 8GB ram. Is there a setting or another tool which can fill the nearly 32GB of ram to conclusively prove things?

[David (PassMark)]

It isn't something we have ever looked at.
But from the linked screen shots, it does in fact seem to be testing the full 32GB of RAM.

the underlying hardware was silently remapping > 8GB requests back to the start of the 8GB memory address? An infinite loop within the confines of 8GB ram.

I think this would be extremely unlikely. No computer could run in a stable state like this.
Occam's razor would rather suggest that the Intel specs are wrong on their web site. Maybe deliberately so, for marketing reasons, to create artificial product categories. Or maybe out of some level of engineering caution where they were worried that the memory controller in the CPU couldn't drive this amount of memory within thermal and power constraints. You would need to ask Intel to be sure.

Does a NAS really need 32GB of RAM?

[copperhead101]

Thanks, David, for the response. It's reassuring. For the NAS setup 32+ GB ram would be beneficial as i'm intending on running a few Virtual Machines, among other apps, on the NAS. For what it's worth i will message Intel. What, like a 1% chance of any reply regardless of the COVID situation but why not.

[krawl]

It isn't something we have ever looked at.
Does a NAS really need 32GB of RAM?

Yes, when said NAS supports features like Virtual Machines, Containers (via Docker), etc. The more RAM the better.

[David (PassMark)]

NAS = Hard drive on the network.
Isn't really a NAS anymore if you are running VMs on it.
It is just a under powered Linux server (in my opinion).

[krawl]

Isn't really a NAS anymore if you are running VMs on it. Is just a Linux server (in my opinion).

Yup, sans the network-admin-like graduate degree that will inevitably come into play to diagnose, script, fix, patch, update, upgrade, secure, and maintain a Linux server