I am using some old hardware for my Unraid server.

 

I use an old Asus P5B-E motherboard, with maximum supported ram and fastest supported CPU. This motherboard has the following expansion slots:

1x PCI-E x16

3x PCI-E x1

3 x PCI 2.2

 

I am trying to get the most out of this old hardware. Now I am looking into getting a new (or old/second hand) HDD controller for my setup. I run 11 drives (maximum I can fit into the case). There will be 2 x parity drives and 9 x data drives.

 

The motherboard does not have integrated graphics, so today I have an old GPU running. I do not have a monitor connected, so I do not actually use a screen on the Unraid server. I plan on switching this to a passive cooled card (performance is not important, noise is). The graphics card will probably use the PCI-E x16 slot. I do not know of any PCI-E x1 passive cooled graphic cards…

 

So question is:

 

-Do you have any advice to give on a new controller for my setup? It can be old/second hand modell. What is the best controller card I can get for this old setup for all 11 HDDs? (If the controller card uses PCI-E x1 slot, it can be 2 similar cards instead of one.)

 

-Is it possible to run a graphic card on the PCI-E x1 slot, so that I can have a better and faster controller for the HDDs in the PCI-E x16 slot? Faster read/write speed would be preferred over GPU performance, if this setup is possible.

Best would be to use an old PCI VGA, if you can find one, then you'd have the x16 slot free for an HBA, like an LSI.

 

 

3 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

Best would be to use an old PCI VGA, if you can find one, then you'd have the x16 slot free for an HBA, like an LSI.

 

 

+1, that's what I do with my P5B.  Something like this, though preferably local:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIACUE5MM1048&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&ignorebbr=1&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

 

Get an LSI based card, not Marvell.

Should I look for something like this:

 

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9217-8i

 

I find this SAS/miniSAS connection a bit confusing. How many normal SATA drives can I attach to each port? It uses some kind of break-out cable, right?

 

 

look at this for example..

 

6 hours ago, kno said:

I find this SAS/miniSAS connection a bit confusing. How many normal SATA drives can I attach to each port? It uses some kind of break-out cable, right?

4 per miniSAS port, for a total of 8 drives.  Yes, you will need SFF-8087 Forward Breakout cables.

So, if I need to connect 11 SATA drives, 2 miniSAS ports is not enough. I understand you can use SAS Expanders, however when I look for products the price seems quite steep for the expanders as well. It would probably be cheaper to get a card with 4 miniSAS ports instead. That would also be a simpler setup.

 

So, are there any budget friendly controller cards with 4 internal miniSAS ports? The cheapest 4 ports LSI card looks like it is around $500.

 

I probably do not need anything more than 6GB/s and I do not need raid (only JBOD). An older card might also be of interest, but they are hard to find second hand in my region.

 

Any recommended cards I can look for? New or old.

Read the post uldise linked above.  These cards are typically purchased used on eBay, pulled from working servers.  That makes them much less expensive, typically well under $100.  Let us know what you're seeing where you are.  It's also Ok to continue to use your motherboard SATA ports.

I think I will need to buy from eBay and have it shipped. There are limited options on the second hand market here. New cards are quite expensive and also not in stock at the reputable computer webshops.

At the moment I am looking at the LSI SAS 9201-16i:
https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12352036

This board has four internal miniSAS ports, so it can accommodate my 11 drives with three breakout cables. Also, this gives me the option to expand, should I get a bigger case in the future.

The 9201-16i is PCIe 2.0 x8 (my motherboard is only PCIe 1.0 x16). This card should be backwards compatible, right? I understand this will limit the performance due to lower bandwidth on PCIe 1.0 compared to 2.0.

The 9201-16i supports 6GB/s. My fastest SATA drives are WD 6TB Red HDD’s that are 6GB/s. Some of the older drives, like the WD 2TB Green drives have lower bandwidth.

Is the LSI 9201-16i a good option?

The 9201-16i is a good option if you can find it for the right price, use the search function on the forums here to find out about other's experiences with it.

 

Those of us with older systems need to be realistic about bandwidth, though.  PCIe 1.0 only has 250MB/s per lane.  That's fine for 8 hard drives since only the fastest hard drives are approaching 250MB/s these days.  You could max it out by adding SSDs, though, and you could max it out if you try to go a lot beyond 8 hard drives.  The impact of maxing it out would only be felt when all drives were active, such as parity syncs, checks, and if turbo write is enabled.  The tradeoff would be that those operations would be slightly slower than if you had a PCIe 2.0 motherboard.  In theory you might be better off with two 8 port cards... but a) you don't have two x8 slots and b) realistically that adds unnecessary complexity.  Since your plans are for 11 drives I'd go with the 16i if you can find it.

 

Editorial comment - consider consolidating onto a smaller number of larger drives.  It makes life simpler.  

I used a cheap 8MB ATI RageXL PCI on my old unRAID box that had no iGPU.  Worked fine, and leaves the useful PCI-E slots available.