August 23, 20178 yr Is there a plugin or similar that would allow me to monitor the temperature of an LSI SAS9201-8i while it was idle or under load (parity check for example)? I am about to receive a server pull 9201-8i and intend to change the stock thermal paste under the heat sink but would love to get a before and after measurement. I do have an IR Thermometer but wondered if there was a plugin to monitor the stats from the HBA. Any ideas?
August 23, 20178 yr AFAIK it doesn't have a temp. sensor, only way with be with an IR temperature gun.
August 23, 20178 yr 1 hour ago, DanielCoffey said: I am not surprised - IR thermometer it is then. Thanks. Try to get measurements on the circuit board directly opposite the chip, and also the heatsink itself after pushing a bunch of data to work it. The temperature delta between the board and heatsink should be lower if the hs compound is working well. The absolute temperature of the heatsink may well be higher, depending on ambient airflow. Since you can't measure inside the chip, your best reading is probably going to be on the board directly opposite the chip.
August 29, 20178 yr Author My LSI SAS9201-8i from eBay has arrived, well before my SAS cables. It had a half-height bracket so I temporarily removed that and carefully plugged it in to check the board as best I could. It was in perfect condition - not a fingerprint or dust mark on it anywhere. Even the PCIe connector pads were pristine. It would be easy to believe it was an unused NOS item. When it had idled for ten minutes, I checked the board with the IR thermometer. I could only reach the heat sink side of the board so will not be able to get a back surface temperature. I did notice that even at idle in open air the centre of the heat sink showed 56C. Given that the SAS chip is producing so much heat and that the board has been sitting in a box since the date on its label of 2011, I will certainly replace the thermal paste. I want to give it every help I can to get rid of the heat. Once my thermal paste and a full height bracket have arrived, I will take some pictures of the before, heat sink removal, cleaned and after condition along with a new idle temperature. It is a real shame there is no onboard sensor we can query.
August 29, 20178 yr 53 minutes ago, DanielCoffey said: I did notice that even at idle in open air the centre of the heat sink showed 56C. They run pretty hot, even when idling, these controllers require some airflow on them to keep temps below 60C when in use.
August 29, 20178 yr Author Out of interest, just how much airflow do these cards need? Are we talking about forced airflow over the card and out the back or is just being in a large space with mild flow in the vicinity enough? I had a look at the spec of the heat sink that is fitted to the 9201-8i and it is a fairly small one designed for single-PCIe slots with no space for a fan. It is 35mm x 40mm x 9.7mm with the two push pins on opposite corners of a 33x33 square. You can easily get replacements for $5 plus shipping. I will end up using this card in my large ATX cube case from CaseLabs and the 9201-8i will have two empty PCIe slots in either side and the nearby GPU is water cooled. It is about 20cm underneath the 120.3 radiators which I do admit push their warm air down into the case. I have an opportunity to put a single 120mm fan right above the 9201-8i (and the adjacent NVMe SSD) if that downdraught from the radiators is not going to be enough. Thoughts? EDIT : Colour me surprised... there is a suitable water block!!! Looks like it would *just* fit too but costs almost half as much as the board... Koolance CHC-122 Water Block Edited August 29, 20178 yr by DanielCoffey Found a water block
August 29, 20178 yr A case with a good general airflow is enough, but I like to have a lateral case fan blowing directly on them to keep them cooler, I find that a low speed large fan, 120mm or larger is enough.
August 29, 20178 yr Author Cheers - good to know. I will monitor the temps and can always consider adding it into the water loop with that Koolance block I just spotted.
August 31, 20178 yr Author Quick update - I have successfully got the heatsink off and changed the TIM and will do a write up with pics tomorrow. The old stuff was a weird yellow waxy plastic that was more like glue than TIM. It was a real pain to get off. A quick'n'dirty IR gun test at idle showed a reasonable drop in temperature. Down from 56C (stock TIM) to 50C (CoolerMaster ICE1 TIM). Card still works - phew!
September 1, 20178 yr It probably WAS glue. I have some epoxy thermal glue for attaching heat sinks to North/South bridge and other ICs on a MB that may not have them.
September 2, 20178 yr Author Apologies for being late uploading pictures and a writeup of the TIM change but I have been busy today. I will resize the pics and do a writeup as quickly as I can.
September 15, 20178 yr On 8/31/2017 at 10:26 PM, DanielCoffey said: Down from 56C (stock TIM) to 50C (CoolerMaster ICE1 TIM). Card still works - phew! Since you are measuring on the heat sink side, I would expect an increase in temperature, if the thermal coupling has been improved (see also remark by jonathanm): Better coupling transfers heat quicker to the heatsink, so the heatsink gets hotter and therefore transfers heat more efficiently to the air flowing across it, which ultimately keeps the IC cooler. On the IC itself and on the opposite side of the board the temperature therefore should decrease. Edited September 15, 20178 yr by tstor
September 15, 20178 yr Author It was really hard to measure the temperature in the X2M case as the card was just above the PSU and facing downwards. I have moved the card over to the main machine now and can get a better look at it through the side panel.
September 15, 20178 yr It looks like Avago is now Broadcom. They took the opportunity to get rid of some old tech data on their site. A similar controller (not to say the same) is the 9210-8i https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9210-8i#specifications They specify a air flow of 200 LFM http://www.comairrotron.com/airflow-unit-conversion
October 21, 20178 yr Hi. I've used MegaRAID cards for years. I currently Have a 9261-8i at home which has the hardware XOR engine on it (Power PC). These cards are built primarily for rack servers with high airflow, so they suffer a bit in consumer desktop cases. under heavy RAID-6 rebuild with 100% duty cycle allocated to the rebuild process through the MegaRAID Storage Manager. The surface temp of the Heatsink reaches 90-96 dec C, which is a little toasty. I got a 40mm fan and some 30mm screws to fix directly into the heatsink and it drops it to 70 deg c under heavy XOR load.
December 14, 20196 yr On 9/15/2017 at 10:04 AM, tstor said: Since you are measuring on the heat sink side, I would expect an increase in temperature, if the thermal coupling has been improved (see also remark by jonathanm): Better coupling transfers heat quicker to the heatsink, so the heatsink gets hotter and therefore transfers heat more efficiently to the air flowing across it, which ultimately keeps the IC cooler. On the IC itself and on the opposite side of the board the temperature therefore should decrease. thanks for this comment, i replaced the thermal conpound of 3 SAS9340-8i and the heatsinks got a lot hotter.... first i though i had failed with the application but all 3 were equally hotter, then i came to think of this exact thing. I guess hotter heatsink is better in this case.
January 20, 20206 yr I have a lsi-9211-8i and one day I was monkeying around with the server and went to pull out the card right after I shutdown the server. It was so hot I could barely touch it. I know these cards get warm, but this was hot enough to be concerning. I had a Sunon 40x25mm mag lev fan handy and was able to jury rig it onto the heatsink using a couple of long thin screws, and that seemed to have solved the problem. Anytime I touch it now it's barely warm. The fan fits 'almost' perfectly.
January 25, 20206 yr On 12/14/2019 at 7:10 PM, je82 said: thanks for this comment, i replaced the thermal conpound of 3 SAS9340-8i and the heatsinks got a lot hotter.... first i though i had failed with the application but all 3 were equally hotter, then i came to think of this exact thing. I guess hotter heatsink is better in this case. See my post (No. 4) 😉 Edited January 25, 20206 yr by Zonediver
January 26, 20206 yr 19 hours ago, Zonediver said: See my post (No. 4) 😉 beautiful bracket! my solution not as pretty as yours but works, screws right into the heatsink, gets the job done but clearly not as pretty
January 26, 20206 yr 33 minutes ago, je82 said: beautiful bracket! my solution not as pretty as yours but works, screws right into the heatsink, gets the job done but clearly not as pretty Interesting - what screw did you use and how many? One or two? Well, the bracket looks fine but is terrible expensive... Edited January 26, 20206 yr by Zonediver
January 26, 20206 yr 1 hour ago, Zonediver said: Interesting - what screw did you use and how many? One or two? Well, the bracket looks fine but is terrible expensive... just 2 regular screws in each corner, i had to put the fan "on tilt" so both corners would fit inside the heatsink area, then just screw em down and they will attach to the heatsink metal bars, they are stuck very firmly, not sure how hot these hba's are now but i can touch the heatsink without burning, they feel about the same as a hdd which are around 30c so its good now. i use ipmi to monitor the fans because if one of those suckers would shut down i don't think these cards would live long, they get so incredible hot.
January 20, 20215 yr Wonder how well this would work - https://www.amazon.com/Maxmoral-Bracket-Support-Computer-Radiator/dp/B07XPVH78J It mounts across several pcie slots using a 120/140mm fan.
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