I'm deciding between buying an ASM1166 card and a Dell Perc H310 SAS HBA

 

I'm planning on using this motherboard CPU combo and 6 individual 1TB drive of which 2 connected to mobo.
 

 

My main points of concern are these 4:

1. Easy of instalment
2. Power consumption
3. Capable of spin down
4. Compatibility with PCIe 2x1 in PCIe 2x4 pinned slot (sized PCIe x16).

If one of the cards is not capable of spin down it's already a no no

I've looked up some stats but don't know how accurate they're
Power consumption:

• ASM1160: 2W
• H310: 6W

Max drives:

• ASM11620: 6
• H310: 8

Cost:

• ASM11620: 28.81€
• H310: 32€ + 10€ per 4 drive cable so 42€

Easy of install:

• ASM11620: should be plug and play
• H310: I need to flash some bios

 

Can someone confirm what I found and/or add missing data.

Especially spin down for ASM1166 and point PCIe compatibility for both, couldn't find a good source on the last one.

And if someone has personal experience with either ASM1166 or H310 could they give me a short review.

In general I've heard that using a SAS HBA is better than using a PCIe SATA controller but is it worth the extra 14€ plus for me 7€ extra annual power cost? If those numbers are even accurate for power.

Edited May 1, 20224 yr by Dr_Otter

7 minutes ago, Dr_Otter said:

If one of the cards is not capable of point 3 it's already a no no

I assume you mean PCIe 3.0? 

 

The Dell H310 is a PCIe 2.0 card.  I have one of these and it works great in IT mode with unRAID.  PCIe 2.0 bandwidth at x8 is 4000 GB/s (really figure on ~3-3.2 after overhead or about 400 MB/s per PCIe lane).

 

PCIe 2.0 bandwidth is more than enough for up to 8 HDDs which rarely get up to 200 MB/s.  Some even use this card in a x4 slot. 

 

For SSDs, you could run into bandwidth issues; however, it is not recommended to attach SSDs to most HBAs anyway as they do not support TRIM.  I have SSDs attached to motherboard SATA ports and HDDs to the Dell H310.

2 hours ago, Hoopster said:

I assume you mean PCIe 3.0? 

 

No I meant point 3 on my list.

"Capable of spin down"

 

I'll edit my question to make it more clear for future readers

 

 

 

I don't really care about PCIe 3 because my CPU and motherboard can't handle that anyways.

 

But talking about PCIe on the H310 would the card still work the same in a PCIe 2 x4 slot on PCIe 2 x1 mode?
I know it would reduce the bandwidth to 500MB/s  but that's not really a big issue for me.
Just wondering if these server parts require their actual spec of PCIe lanes (aka PCIe 2 x8) or can just run on less of them like most cards.

20 hours ago, Dr_Otter said:

No I meant point 3 on my list.

"Capable of spin down"

Sorry, I misunderstood.  Yes, the drives attached to my H310 spin down according to the unRAID spin down settings.  I cannot comment on the ASM1166 card.

 

20 hours ago, Dr_Otter said:

Just wondering if these server parts require their actual spec of PCIe lanes (aka PCIe 2 x8) or can just run on less of them like most cards

That probably depends more on the motherboard slot.  Of course, the Dell H310 will not fit in a PCIe x1 slot.  In a physical x8 or x16 slot it will use the full 8 lanes unless the slot can have fewer lanes assigned.  In a physical x4 slot, it will use 4 PCIe lanes unless fewer lanes can be assigned to the slot.

 

The board you linked only has one PCIe slot in which the Dell H310 would fit.  According to the board specs, even though it is a physical x16 slot, it appears it only supports 1 PCIe lane so that is all the Dell H310 could use.  Personally, I have never heard of a Dell H310 that supports up to 8 drives being used with just one PCIe lane; however, it may be possible if not practical.  At x1, I doubt you could use more than 2 drives with it without noticing throttled bandwidth.

Edited April 29, 20224 yr by Hoopster

IIRC LSI doesn't work with just a x1 link, spin down works normally with the Asmedia.