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HP Z800 On-board vs PCIe Controllers (can i use PCIe only?)


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Hi community - long time unraid user, had a z800 fall into my lap and jumped on it given the 24-cores, 48GB of ram and VM support!  Long story short, now that i'm migrated, now learned the on-board Intel and LSI SATA controllers don't support AHCI.... which Unraid seems to dislike.  Using the on-board 6 SATA Intel ports with another SYBA/IOCrest for the SATA3, often gives drive freeze errors or even worst, drops the drive making me rebuild a perfectly good config.

 

So, i know i can flash the LSI (https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg358131;topicseen#msg358131); but not sure if that'll fix my problem.

 

Question to the community, can i go the a 8-port SAS controller and totally skip out on the two on-boards that i have on the z800 motherboard and get the performance unraid is meant for?

Looking at a Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 or flashing a Dell H310.  Would that provide me SATA2 speeds for the spinners and SATA3 for the SSD's?

Or... since i have 5 x PCIe2 slots (8/16/8/16/16) can i add a pair of 4 port PCIe2 controllers and have better performance than a single H310?

Would be choosing from this list: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=43026.0

 

Appreciate the thoughts.  Thank you in advance!

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I'm surprised your board doesn't support AHCI, but you're indeed correct -- the Intel specifications for that chipset clearly show that's the case.

 

So yes, I'd simply not use the onboard ports and just add a PCIe controller board (or boards).

 

Whether you use one board or two really doesn't matter, as long as the board has enough PCIe lanes to provide the bandwidth you need for the attached drives.  With PCIe v2 slots, you have 500MB/s/lane ... so an 8-lane card can easily handle 8 drives at full bandwidth.  An H310 would be an excellent choice.

 

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