albatr0ss Posted January 25, 2023 Share Posted January 25, 2023 Hi all, I am going to set up a new UNRAID server in the near future to migrate al my dockers and plex server from my NUC device handling all the stuff. Expected use of UNRAID server: - Plex server (local 4K direct stream, 1-2 1080p remote direct stream) - *arr dockers - plexmetamanager - Overseer - Tautulli - Photprism - NextCloud - pihole - vaultwarden Hardare: - Motherboard MSI PRO B760M-A WIFI DDR4 - CPU Intel Core i3-12100F - RAM Corsair 2x8GB - GPU Nvidia P400 (mainly for h265 transcodes) - Power supply Corsair 850W - 3x4TB WD RED HDD - SAMSUNG MZ-7TD250BW, SSD 250 GB (for cache, to be changed with 2TB WD RED NVMe) - Fractal Design Node 804 The motherboard has 4 SATA ports so I will be using those to start off. I think that for a start a 8TB storage (2x data drives + 1 parity drive) will be fine. But I want to future prove my build as I have plenty of HDD slots free in the Fractal Design Case. Therefore I was planning in installing a SAS HBA controller to add additional SATA ports to the main board as need arises like the LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9211-8i. The motherboard has two PCIex16 slots: - 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (offering x16 lanes) I will use for the Quadro P400 GPU - 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (offering x4 lanes) I would like to use for the SAS HBA controller Question: Will the PCIe 4.0 x4 slot be able to handle all the four SATA drives I would like to connect to it? I made to following reasoning using information found at the following post SAS HBA controller has PCIe 2.0 x8 connection Motherboard has PCIe 4.0 x4 connection installing the controller into the slot (possible because it is a x16 but with x4 lane) will fallback negotiating a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection this, if my math is correct, should guarantee a max transfer rate of 2000MB/sec which should give 250MB/sec each drive. Given that WD RED drives max out at 180MB/sec this should be more than enough to connect additional 8 drives to the SAS HBA controller connected to a downgraded PCIe 2.0 x4 port on the motherboard. Anybody with more experience can confirm this? Thank you! Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 26, 2023 Share Posted January 26, 2023 8 hours ago, albatr0ss said: this, if my math is correct, should guarantee a max transfer rate of 2000MB/sec which should give 250MB/sec each drive. There's always some overhead, you should get around 1600/MB/s usable. Quote Link to comment
albatr0ss Posted January 26, 2023 Author Share Posted January 26, 2023 Thank you Jorge, this would still suffice as it would be 200MB/sec if all 8 disks would be accessed concurrently (which I think will never happen given to how UNRAID works). My main concern is the PCIe x8 card working in the PCIe x4 slot, will this work? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 26, 2023 Share Posted January 26, 2023 21 minutes ago, albatr0ss said: which I think will never happen given to how UNRAID works During parity check/sync, disk rebuilds and all writes if turbo write is enabled. 22 minutes ago, albatr0ss said: My main concern is the PCIe x8 card working in the PCIe x4 slot, will this work? It should work fine, unless there's some incompatibility with that board. Quote Link to comment
albatr0ss Posted January 26, 2023 Author Share Posted January 26, 2023 Thank you Jorge! 1 Quote Link to comment
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