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Recommend me a Sata/SAS Expansion PCIe Card


syrys

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Hey Guys,

 

Im about to join the unRaid train, and i need a way to plug in all my hdds. Amongst them, i have 1x SAS 6tb drive, so i need some sort of a pci extension that can plugin some SAS and SATA drives.

 

Hopefully looking for some cheap/inexpensive option. Can you guys suggest me some?

 

The motherboard im using is: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20H87%20Performance/

 

Motherboard supports about 6 sata ports, although i will have about 8-10 drives plugged in including ssds (potentially more later). Do you guys have any experiance with something that is good value for money and works easily with unRaid? Preferably < $100? Or, is that too low?

 

At current, the largest drive i will be using will be 8tb Seagate archives, i have 1 6tb dell SAS drive, and several 4tb WD RED's and generic Seagates.

 

Any links to amazon/ebay would be greatly appreciated, hopefully one that can ship to newzealand without a huge cost.

 

Cheers.

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Look on ebay for Dell H310 or IBM M1015, they have to be flashed to IT mode, there's a sticky on the storage forum.

 

Found someone selling a Dell H310 locally. Do i need to worry or check compatibility or anything? Is there any possible issues?

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There are no guarantees, unless someone is using it with the same board, but it's one of the most used adapters and usually there are no issues.

 

Awesome, i will see if i can purchase it.

 

Also curious, since there will be 8 ports coming out of the raid card, should i be connecting my drives primarily to the raid card or primarily to the motherboard? (ie, should i fill up the raid card before using the sata ports on the mobo, or should i fill up the mobo sata ports before the raid card?).

 

Just not really sure which would be a better for performance. Also, which whould i be plugging in the parity drives, if that matters at all?

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If you use the top x16 slot performance should be similar either way, on the bottom slot (x4) it can be a little slower if/when it's fully loaded.

So that means, either way, the motherboard sata ports are as good if not better than this one. Meaning i should saturate the motherboard ports before the controller ports unless i have a sas HDD or something.

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With both fully loaded, the onboard ports will max out at ~250MB/s, the H310 can do 300MB/s+ on a x8/x16 slot, but for normal HDDs performance both will be similar, as there's no HDD currently on the market capable of sustained 250MB/s, only on a SSD only array there would be differences.

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The Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is a cheap, no-nonsense HBA.  Marvell chip on it, and uses about 5W less than the LSI-powered IBM M1015 cards, with associated reduction in heat.

Is it better? After a quick glance at Ebay, the lowest-ish current pricing i found was (prices include shipping to NZ):

 

AOC-SAS2LP-MV8: 200 NZD => ~140 usd

IBM M1015: 125 NZD => ~85 USD

Dell H310: 110 NZD => ~75 USD

AOC-SASLP-MV8: 80 NZD => ~55 USD

 

Obviously, cheaper the better, but if any of these are significantly better, i can actually afford the highest one on the list. Thoughts?

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Avoid the SASLP, it's too slow.

 

SAS2LP and H310/M1015 performance is very similar, there are a few users with v6 that have issues with the SAS2LP, mostly dropped disks during parity checks and virtualization issues, this is why I usually recommend the LSI based controllers for V6.

 

HellDiverUK is right about the power consumption, for me that's the only advantage of the SAS2LP, not the 5w less, but the heat generated, the LSIs need some airflow around them or they will become extremely hot when in use.

 

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LSIs need some airflow around them or they will become extremely hot when in use.

Any recommendation on how to keep them cool? I have seen some pci slot fans being recommended, do you guys have any specific ones you would recommend me?

 

Also, if there any easy way to monitor the temperature so i can tell what ever im doing is cooling it well or not?

 

ps. my pc has decent air flow, but its decent for a PC not like a server, and air usually doesnt go through the pci slots, so i would need a decent cooling solution.

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