diff --git a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/cache.go b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/cache.go
index c49406eca4..ef5e20368a 100644
--- a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/cache.go
+++ b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/cache.go
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ import (
 // testing, a value above the number of cores on the machine does not provide
 // any additional benefit. For now we'll set it to the number of cores on the
 // largest box we could imagine running influx.
-const ringShards = 4096
+const ringShards = 16
 
 var (
 	// ErrSnapshotInProgress is returned if a snapshot is attempted while one is already running.
diff --git a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring.go b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring.go
index f78b5d760c..a80763a377 100644
--- a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring.go
+++ b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring.go
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ import (
 // basically defines the maximum number of partitions you can have in the ring.
 // If a smaller number of partitions are chosen when creating a ring, then
 // they're evenly spread across this many partitions in the ring.
-const partitions = 4096
+const partitions = 16
 
 // ring is a structure that maps series keys to entries.
 //
diff --git a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring_test.go b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring_test.go
index 868f79beeb..394de7246e 100644
--- a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring_test.go
+++ b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/ring_test.go
@@ -12,8 +12,8 @@ func TestRing_newRing(t *testing.T) {
 		n         int
 		returnErr bool
 	}{
-		{n: 1}, {n: 2}, {n: 4}, {n: 8}, {n: 16}, {n: 32}, {n: 64}, {n: 128}, {n: 256},
-		{n: 0, returnErr: true}, {n: 3, returnErr: true}, {n: 512, returnErr: true},
+		{n: 1}, {n: 2}, {n: 4}, {n: 8}, {n: 16}, {n: 32, returnErr: true},
+		{n: 0, returnErr: true}, {n: 3, returnErr: true},
 	}
 
 	for i, example := range examples {
diff --git a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/wal.go b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/wal.go
index b0670e44ce..7b50e0207e 100644
--- a/tsdb/engine/tsm1/wal.go
+++ b/tsdb/engine/tsm1/wal.go
@@ -1025,7 +1025,7 @@ type WALSegmentWriter struct {
 // NewWALSegmentWriter returns a new WALSegmentWriter writing to w.
 func NewWALSegmentWriter(w io.WriteCloser) *WALSegmentWriter {
 	return &WALSegmentWriter{
-		bw: bufio.NewWriter(w),
+		bw: bufio.NewWriterSize(w, 16*1024),
 		w:  w,
 	}
 }