Dell H310 IT mode 9211-8i Cooling

[pulpfxn]

Hi all.

 

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but I can't seem to find an answer to this specific query. I've recently upgraded my server to the following:

 

Processor: i3-7100

MB: Asus Q170M-C with 6 SATA ports

RAM: 2x8GB HyperX Fury 3200MHz DDR4

Case: NZXT H440 (2015)

Drives: 5 data drives (15TB with one parity), 1 SSD cache

Power supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 400W CM

OS: unRAID 6.9.0-beta25

Primary use as a media server, no transcoding. Spends most of the day in S3 sleep. Potentialy use it to try some home automation software.

 

I'm thinking about adding some more drives and I am trying to decide between the Ziyituod SATA 3.0 Card (https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07T8XNQT6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) (which I already own) and a Dell H310 LSI card from EBay. I understand that LSI cards can get quite hot. I'd be interested to hear your experience with temps on this card and your opinions on if I should plan for active cooling.

 

Thanks.

 

pulpfxn

[Hoopster]

41 minutes ago, pulpfxn said:

I'd be interested to hear your experience with temps on this card and your opinions on if I should plan for active cooling.

I have a Dell H310 HBA in my server and I ran it for a long time (over a year) with no active cooling.  I never experienced any problems.  I do have a case fan on the bottom of the case that blows air up towards the motherboard slots and the H310 is in the bottom slot.

 

I recently upgraded to a new motherboard, CPU and RAM combo and decided to add a 40mm Noctua fan to the H310 heatsink, just because I had one laying around and as a precaution.  I did this because my new system runs hotter overall than the previous one and case airflow had changed a little.

 

I do not think active cooling is a an absolute must with the H310, but, that does depend a lot on your case airflow.  These cards are designed for server use where airflow through the case is often substantial (and noisy).

[Decto]

I currently have 2 of the LSI cards with no active cooling. One for internal drives and one for and external SAS enclosure.
I think they are Dell and HP reflashed to LSI.

Neither have active cooling, they do get hot to the touch but not skin melting hot.

There is little airflow due to case design, however they have behaved ok so far.

 

My rebuild will require just one and I will be adding a fan in the area as it will be between a couple of GPU', one of which is passively cooled.

You can attach a fan to the card, however my preference is to cut a hole in the side of the case and install a slow spinning 120mm fan with dust filter right over the PCI-E slots. Does't take much air movement to make a big difference in passive temps.

 

I've no experience with the card you link, however it's a PCI-E 2.0 X1 card which means that if you plug in 4 drives you won't get the full bandwidth. Some of my 8TB drives push over 200MB/s. You're not likely to use all the drives at the same time in normal use, however in a parity check or rebuild you will we limited as PCI-E 2 is theoretical 500MB/s assuming the inexpensive chips can keep up.

Also be aware it's using a dual SATA interface with a pair of port multipliers rather than native 4 channel SATA.

 

 

[pulpfxn]

Quote

I have a Dell H310 HBA in my server and I ran it for a long time (over a year) with no active cooling.  I never experienced any problems.  I do have a case fan on the bottom of the case that blows air up towards the motherboard slots and the H310 is in the bottom slot.

 

I recently upgraded to a new motherboard, CPU and RAM combo and decided to add a 40mm Noctua fan to the H310 heatsink, just because I had one laying around and as a precaution.  I did this because my new system runs hotter overall than the previous one and case airflow had changed a little.

 

I do not think active cooling is a an absolute must with the H310, but, t

Thanks Hoopster. Helps a lot.

Edited September 7, 2020 by pulpfxn

[pulpfxn]

2 minutes ago, Decto said:

I currently have 2 of the LSI cards with no active cooling. One for internal drives and one for and external SAS enclosure.
I think they are Dell and HP reflashed to LSI.

Neither have active cooling, they do get hot to the touch but not skin melting hot.

There is little airflow due to case design, however they have behaved ok so far.

 

My rebuild will require just one and I will be adding a fan in the area as it will be between a couple of GPU', one of which is passively cooled.

You can attach a fan to the card, however my preference is to cut a hole in the side of the case and install a slow spinning 120mm fan with dust filter right over the PCI-E slots. Does't take much air movement to make a big difference in passive temps.

 

I've no experience with the card you link, however it's a PCI-E 2.0 X1 card which means that if you plug in 4 drives you won't get the full bandwidth. Some of my 8TB drives push over 200MB/s. You're not likely to use all the drives at the same time in normal use, however in a parity check or rebuild you will we limited as PCI-E 2 is theoretical 500MB/s assuming the inexpensive chips can keep up.

Also be aware it's using a dual SATA interface with a pair of port multipliers rather than native 4 channel SATA.

 

 

Thanks Decto. Sounds like the LSI card is the way to go if I want the most speed.

[pulpfxn]

One more question. I have 2 x PCI-E 16x ports, one of which runs at 4x, while the Dell H310 is 8x. Would I be OK using either port, or should I put it into the 16x one?

[Hoopster]

7 minutes ago, pulpfxn said:

One more question. I have 2 x PCI-E 16x ports, one of which runs at 4x, while the Dell H310 is 8x. Would I be OK using either port, or should I put it into the 16x one?

That depends on how many and what type drives you have connected to it.

 

The Dell H310 is a PCIe 2.0 card.  PCIe 2.0 provides 500 MB/s bandwidth per lane for a theoretical limit of 4000 MB/s with an x8 card.  Of course, in actual practice, due to overhead, the real bandwidth will be more like 400 MB/s or less per lane.  This is way more than you need for any spinning HDD but likely less than you need for full performance with SATA SSDs.  SSDs should be connected to motherboard SATA ports anyway as they support TRIM; the H310 does not.

 

Even with 8 HDDs connected to the H310 in the x4 slot that will give you 1600 MB/s or 200 MB/s for each drive.  This is enough for most HDDs even in the rare case when all may be actively reading/writing at the same time (parity check for example).

[pulpfxn]

13 hours ago, Hoopster said:

That depends on how many and what type drives you have connected to it.

 

The Dell H310 is a PCIe 2.0 card.  PCIe 2.0 provides 500 MB/s bandwidth per lane for a theoretical limit of 4000 MB/s with an x8 card.  Of course, in actual practice, due to overhead, the real bandwidth will be more like 400 MB/s or less per lane.  This is way more than you need for any spinning HDD but likely less than you need for full performance with SATA SSDs.  SSDs should be connected to motherboard SATA ports anyway as they support TRIM; the H310 does not.

 

Even with 8 HDDs connected to the H310 in the x4 slot that will give you 1600 MB/s or 200 MB/s for each drive.  This is enough for most HDDs even in the rare case when all may be actively reading/writing at the same time (parity check for example).

Many thanks. I will only be using HDDs on it, so I think I would put it into the 4x slot in case I decide to add a graphics card later.