January 5, 20242 yr If my spinning hdd read and write speed max out at about 275MB/s when you transfer from PC to Unraid server would 5gb ethernet ports end to end be overkill?
January 5, 20242 yr 5Gb is not a standard thing it specific to certain manufacturers and often 10Gb cards can't do 5Gb. Go with what is built into your system so use the 1Gb or 2.5Gb for the main network then if you need fast transfer you can add a 10Gb card to both pcs directly connected to each other and only use when needed as this saves the need for a 10Gb switch (unless you already have one). You could use SFPs with a DAC cable. This is a cheap setup. The main issue though is HD speed and most will never max out a 2.5Gb connection. SSD's can max out a 10Gb connection but remember if you copying to a normal unraid array it will be as fast as your slowest drive. You can get round this by building a ZFS pool of spinning disks Edited January 5, 20242 yr by dopeytree
January 5, 20242 yr 2 hours ago, JorgeB said: I get that. Have you seen any tests showing that the ASM1164 is indeed faster than 1064? Why would they allow the 1164 to be also x1, if there is 1064 for that? Makes no sense.
January 6, 20242 yr Author 10 hours ago, OrdinaryButt said: I get that. Have you seen any tests showing that the ASM1164 is indeed faster than 1064? I have tested the 1166 with 4 ports in use, which is the same as the 1164. As long as the 1164 comes with an x4 physical slot (x2 electric) it will be faster than the 1064.
January 7, 20242 yr On 1/6/2024 at 1:52 PM, JorgeB said: I have tested the 1166 with 4 ports in use, which is the same as the 1164. As long as the 1164 comes with an x4 physical slot (x2 electric) it will be faster than the 1064. Can you please tell me what is the downside of having ASM1166 pcie x1 rather than a full blown pcie x16 LSI card? I fail to understand this
January 8, 20242 yr A LSI card can have 1000 drives attached via a single sas port with the use of SAS expanders (these are built into HBA drive chassis in servers) so the extra bandwidth is useful whereas generally Sata cards seem to top out at 6x ports. Edited January 8, 20242 yr by dopeytree
January 8, 20242 yr 4 hours ago, dopeytree said: A LSI card can have 1000 drives attached via a single sas port with the use of SAS expanders (these are built into HBA drive chassis in servers) so the extra bandwidth is useful whereas generally Sata cards seem to top out at 6x ports. When you say "bandwidth", do you mean the drive speed connected to the card or do you mean the number of drives connected to the card? If you mean the number of drives, then is that the only drawback with the ASM1166 because I just need 6 ports and not more. I'm wondering if an LSI card has other benefits
January 9, 20242 yr On 1/7/2024 at 4:24 PM, mans_ said: Can you please tell me what is the downside of having ASM1166 pcie x1 rather than a full blown pcie x16 LSI card? I fail to understand this I felt like you might be lacking some understanding, so I will explain like I would my kids. Ignore if I felt you wrong. ASM1166 with PCIe x1 will have a max theoretical bandwidth (limited by PCIe) of 8gigaBIT/s or 1gigaBYTE/s (1000megaBYTE/s). 1000/6 and considering overhead, you will get a maximum speed of 150megaBYTE (this is the measurement unit you typically see when you do file transfers in Windows environment). Modern HDDs can go upwards of 250MB/s, so the x1 PCIe slot will be a bottleneck if you have all 6 drives read/write at max capacity at the same time (parity check for example). With SATA SSD, you will reach that limit with 2 units. If you would be getting the ASM1166, it better have x4 PCIe (that would be 1000MB/s x4). This will allow you to have up to 6 SATA SSD on that card with no bandwidth limitation at all (provided your motherboard x4 or larger PCIe is electrical x4 or larger; physical dimension of the slot doesn't always guarantee the speed)
January 10, 20242 yr And a x8 slot PCIe 3.0 x8 slot gives 7880MB/s which divided by 150MB = 52 drives so you'd be able to write to 52 drives at 150MB/s at the exact same time. In theory anyway. In practice you never write to the same drives at once BUT you may need to read from them all at once during parity checks. Anyway I would always split up arrays into other pools. Hopefully in the future unraid will allow multiple unraid arrays for if you want say a maximum of 20x drives in any pool. With this level of bandwidth you can do ZFS stuff as all disks are accessed at the same time. I use some 2.5" SSDs this way. Comparatively the unraid array accesses single disks at a time. Edited January 10, 20242 yr by dopeytree
January 13, 20242 yr Anyone used one of these 16port cards? seem to use multiple 4x ASM1064 chips. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003245467069.html?src=google&src=google&albch=shopping&acnt=272-267-0231&slnk=&plac=&mtctp=&albbt=Google_7_shopping&gclsrc=aw.ds&albagn=888888&ds_e_adid=&ds_e_matchtype=&ds_e_device=c&ds_e_network=x&ds_e_product_group_id=&ds_e_product_id=en1005003245467069&ds_e_product_merchant_id=109201355&ds_e_product_country=GB&ds_e_product_language=en&ds_e_product_channel=online&ds_e_product_store_id=&ds_url_v=2&albcp=20695911516&albag=&isSmbAutoCall=false&needSmbHouyi=false&gad_source=1&aff_fcid=993b0d89fef740b4ade2b1c9a0283751-1705105835592-09975-UneMJZVf&aff_fsk=UneMJZVf&aff_platform=aaf&sk=UneMJZVf&aff_trace_key=993b0d89fef740b4ade2b1c9a0283751-1705105835592-09975-UneMJZVf&terminal_id=d3967fd9788548dcbe243aa961131528&afSmartRedirect=y
January 13, 20242 yr 6 hours ago, dopeytree said: seem to use multiple 4x ASM1064 chips Can't say for sure, but they are sold as Chia mining card. So simultaneous drive access and speed is not the top priority from what I remember of the Chia hype. The PCB seems to be architectured around 1 Controller and 3 or 4 port multipliers. (I am being optimistic and using the picture of a board that seems to be using a x4 PCIe gen3, not the ones using only x1). I could be wrong, of course.
January 13, 20242 yr Yeah they sound a bit shit. How come there is no alternative chips sort of between a these 6port asmedia chips that run on pcie2 & a full blown power-hungry HBA. Don't intel have some sata controllers chips? Is it not possible to use the chips motherboards use? I guess maybe the best thing would be one of those pcie3 x8 or x16 cards that have 4x nvme carrier cards with each using a m.2 - sata adapter. that would give 4x6 = 24 sata ports. No idea on how reliable that would be tho & more expensive cost but would likely use less power than HBA. HBA power cost is more in not allowing the cpu any lower than c2 states rather than how much power the HBA uses. This is because no ASPM on HBA cards. Edited January 13, 20242 yr by dopeytree
January 17, 20242 yr Someone here who owned the ASM1166 with 2x SFF8087? Is it possible to attach 8 HDDs/SSDs? How about C-states and ASPM?? Edited January 17, 20242 yr by flobert
January 19, 20242 yr This may interest you qnaps new sata card uses 2x A1164 & a switcher chip. Uses SFF-8088 ports, each carrying four SATA lanes.https://www.servethehome.com/qnap-tl-d800s-review-an-8-bay-sata-jbod-das/
January 23, 20242 yr Hi I bought the Broadcom 9400-8i and I keep hearing about needing an expander but cant find any concrete information on what expanders I should be looking at to work and is it possible to use hdds and nvmes at the same time if someone could help me?
January 23, 20242 yr Author 7 hours ago, Myriad Studios LDN said: about needing an expander Only if you want to use more than 8 devices. 7 hours ago, Myriad Studios LDN said: is it possible to use hdds and nvmes at the same time Yes, note that you need specific NVMe enabler Broadcom cables to use them.
January 23, 20242 yr 15 hours ago, JorgeB said: Only if you want to use more than 8 devices. Yes, note that you need specific NVMe enabler Broadcom cables to use them. yes I would like to use more than 8 devices and could I also connect nvme to the expander?
January 24, 20242 yr Author 8 hours ago, Myriad Studios LDN said: yes I would like to use more than 8 devices Then you need a expander or expander backplane. 8 hours ago, Myriad Studios LDN said: could I also connect nvme to the expander? Note AFAIK.
January 24, 20242 yr Hi, I have just bought an ASM1166 card. I plugged it into a windows PC to do the firmware upgrade, however the firmware on the card is 221118-003E-00 which is a higher number than the 211108-0000-00 recommended in this thread. Do I need to change the firmware or not do we think? Thanks. Edited January 24, 20242 yr by xreyuk
January 24, 20242 yr 15 minutes ago, xreyuk said: Hi, I have just bought an ASM1166 card. I plugged it into a windows PC to do the firmware upgrade, however the firmware on the card is 221118-003E-00 which is a higher number than the 211108-0000-00 recommended in this thread. Do I need to change the firmware or not do we think? Thanks. I would keep the newer firmware, no reported issues with it. There was another poster called Shonk who also received a card with this newer firmware version. I think his goal was to take a backup of it to provide to the rest of us. Maybe something you want to attempt? Or can you say where you bought your card?
January 24, 20242 yr 34 minutes ago, minority said: I would keep the newer firmware, no reported issues with it. There was another poster called Shonk who also received a card with this newer firmware version. I think his goal was to take a backup of it to provide to the rest of us. Maybe something you want to attempt? Or can you say where you bought your card? I'd have no idea how to pull it if someone could tell me I wouldn't mind. I bought the card off Amazon UK, it was the MZHOU one everyone else appears to be buying.
January 30, 20242 yr On 1/24/2024 at 7:11 PM, xreyuk said: I'd have no idea how to pull it if someone could tell me I wouldn't mind. I bought the card off Amazon UK, it was the MZHOU one everyone else appears to be buying. I don't think it is as easy as we think - running some software to dump the ROM. Logic dictates it is possible to read the ROM if we can write to it, but this software doesn't exist today. There is something about an SPI ROM programmer being an option. You connect a device to the rom on the board and dump the firmware directly from it. I have one laying around, maybe I give that a go to establish if it is possible.
January 31, 20242 yr On 1/24/2024 at 7:11 PM, xreyuk said: I'd have no idea how to pull it if someone could tell me I wouldn't mind. I bought the card off Amazon UK, it was the MZHOU one everyone else appears to be buying. On extracting a copy of the latest rom... I couldn't get it to work. It seems you have to desolder the chip first and then read the rom. My soldering skills are quite poor... so even if I manage to remove the rom chip, it isn't going back on again 😁 Spoiler I used a CH341A programmer, process similar to what is described here. For those who want to try: first of all, I believe the CH341A programmer you have needs to be able to supply the rom with the correct voltage. My CH341A programmer does 5v, but the rom chip on the ASM11xx is either EN25F40 or P25Q40H, and these need between 1.8V-3.3v according to their respective datasheets. You can see the rom type from the RomUpdWin tool, or remove the heatsink from your ASM11xx card, locate the chip and read the text on it. You have to remove the heatsink to find the rom chip that you are going to be reading anyway. I modified my programmer do to 3.3v. On some chips you can read the rom as they are in place on a card, but on the ASM cards it is as if it tries to power up (LED's turn on then off, but should remain off as we are just reading the contents of the rom), and when I read the rom it is empty. Issue is probably as described here.
February 3, 20242 yr hi all my goal is to replace a H310 flashed to IT mode to see if i can get the power consumption down on my server ive read and done the power top steps, does the tips and tricks tweaks yet my server will not go above C2. would a 10x port ASM1166 card like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/MZHOU-PCIE-SATA-Card-Ports/dp/B08L7W8QFT/ref=sr_1_3?crid=260P7Q805IW7N&keywords=ASM1166&qid=1706948796&s=electronics&sprefix=asm1166%2Celectronics%2C153&sr=1-3&th=1 use similair powerto the 6x port variant like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MZHOU-PCIE-SATA-Card-Ports/dp/B08F56WKW7/ref=sr_1_3?crid=260P7Q805IW7N&keywords=ASM1166&qid=1706948796&s=electronics&sprefix=asm1166%2Celectronics%2C153&sr=1-3&th=1 or would 2x 6 port cards be better option?
February 3, 20242 yr 46 minutes ago, bigup said: would a 10x port ASM1166 card like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/MZHOU-PCIE-SATA-Card-Ports/dp/B08L7W8QFT/ref=sr_1_3?crid=260P7Q805IW7N&keywords=ASM1166&qid=1706948796&s=electronics&sprefix=asm1166%2Celectronics%2C153&sr=1-3&th=1 This one must use a port multiplier and that's not recommended. The 3rd image shows 1166 and 575, I would guess that it means ASM1166 controller + JMB575 port multiplier. If you need more than 6 ports, two controllers should provide more performance.
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