Are there any HBAs that don't require a fan?

[CrayonEater]

Hi all,

I'm looking to find some sort of drive expansion that doesn't require any airflow, or virtually none. My NAS requirements are absolute silence, and the lowest power consumption I can get away with. I've seen some posts around the internet suggesting that the Dell H310 and the IBM M1015 *might* run cool enough to get by, though everyone still recommends a fan.

If it's a "no", that there are no HBAs that can stay sufficiently cool under light load without a fan, I'd grudgingly consider a small fan if it contributes absolutely no noise whatsoever and it pretty close to an out-of-the-box solution that's cheap, quick and easy. I'm not very handy, and using an HBA is not important enough that I'd instead get a cheap SATA card and call it a day.

Alternatively, are SATA/SAS or port multipliers an option for my existing SATA ports? Ideally, I'd like to use an HBA since I'm sitting on a small batch of decommissioned drives, mostly SAS, but some SATA, as well, not to mention I have decommissioned enough servers at work from which I can pick HBAs and other bits if I want. Any thoughts, comments and opinions are appreciated.

 

[Stephan]

I know the M1015 well and without fan it will run too hot. Symptoms will be nasty from disappearing disks to PCI errors to data corruption. On the other hand you can really use any fan like a 80x80mm running at inaudible 800rpm about 5 cm away and it will never overheat. No matter what you do with the controller in terms of taxing it.

If you just need SATA for spinning rust, look into JMB585 controllers and here those with the 30x30 heatsink. Work great on any OS (fully AHCI compatible) and these can live without a fan. 5 ports per card. For SATA SSDs not more than 2-3 ports per card in use make sense because speeds will exceed the chip's PCIe bandwidth of 3.0x2 and maybe 1500 MBytes/s.

If you go the SAS route, look into controllers like the LSI 9207 + OEM variants that have the Broadcom SAS2308 chip. Those have PCIe 3.0x8 which can do 8 GByte/s so the better option than the older 2008 parts which at 8 times 600 MByte/s (all devices at full blast) could run into a PCIe 2.0x8 bottleneck. No issue with HDDs again for the 2008 parts, those HDDs will max out at 250 MByte/s, but a good SSD will max out the 6 Gbps link.

 

[CrayonEater]

Does the 9207 run cooler than the H310? Performance isn't a big concern for me. Other than the boot drive, I don't have any plans to run SSDs. Well, at least not until I can get a 16Tb one for less than $250, or maybe if I win the lottery, lol.

 

[pricklypunter]

Does the 9207 run cooler than the H310? Performance isn't a big concern for me. Other than the boot drive, I don't have any plans to run SSDs. Well, at least not until I can get a 16Tb one for less than $250, or maybe if I win the lottery, lol.

About the same, give or take. A small noctua fan running at low speed is for all intents practically inaudible. You will have way more noise generated from your disks anyway, than any small laptop style fan screwed or clipped onto the heatsink will contribute. Also, your disks will likely require some airflow to keep them within spec too

 

[CrayonEater]

Is there a fan that can be kept at an inaudible speed running off of +5V or +12V? The Noctuas and other constant-speed fans I've looke dat run anywhere from 1200RPM to 3700RPM and even more. I'm handy enough that I can probably solder a resistor in between leads if I have to, but I don't have any PWM or other fan ports on my mobo.

 

[itronin]

Is there a fan that can be kept at an inaudible speed running off of +5V or +12V? The Noctuas and other constant-speed fans I've looke dat run anywhere from 1200RPM to 3700RPM and even more. I'm handy enough that I can probably solder a resistor in between leads if I have to, but I don't have any PWM or other fan ports on my mobo.

maybe?

I bought one of these based on a report in another thread. I have not tested it - yet. the mounting pins appear to line up with the pins on my HP H220's heatsink (9205/9207/LSI 2308 HBA). YMMV.

 

[msg7086]

My LSI never complained about being too hot. I put 2 fans at front towards HDD bays and they casually bring a breeze to the PCIe area and that's usually enough to cool it down. My solarflare SFP+ card is hotter and gave me issues until I put a noctua fan underneath blowing air to the heatsink.

 

[CrayonEater]

All these responses help, so thanks to all. I just did a bit of poking around my new-ish build and noticed two things I hadn't before.

First, the Fractal Define R5 case I have apparently has a manual fan control, and a 2-pin fan header. Guess I glossed over it when I was putting the thing together. If there's a fan that will work with it, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

Second, and this might throw a wrench into everything, but it turns out the only other PCI slot on my motherboard is a PCIex4 version 2.0. I had always though it was x8. I read a post from someone who tried to run the H310 in an x4 2.0 slot and it ran terribly, despite the H310 being a 2.0 card. Anybody have an experience with this, or with the 9207?

 

[itronin]

YMMV - based on motherboard and where that x4 2.0 is coming from (maybe chipset) - don't see you mentioning what motherboard you have so dunno.

A pcie 2.0 lane is roughly .5GB/s per lane. so that's 2GB/s in that slot.

You wire 8 spinners and say each one can can do a sustained 250MB/s - oh look 2GB /s.

Just cause - I'd say go for the 9207's... even if you run it in a 2.0 slot there's a better proc in the 9207 than in an H310.

you might just upgrade your motherboard in the future so unless the HBA is throw-away money - think about that.
But if you are buying for the future you might think about a 3008. Just saying.

 

[Sean Ho]

Arctic P-series PWM PST fans are very quiet. Noctuas are nice, too, but like 4x the price. Do not shy away from fans; you need cooling, even just for the drives. What you don't want are tiny fans -- in order to move enough CFM, they need high rpm, which generally means more (and more annoying) noise. Any of the zillions of SAS2008 or 2308 HBAs (or 3008) will be fine as long as they get airflow across the passive heatsink. Use your big case fans (the bigger the better) to move air; you can even fashion ducts to redirect airflow to the HBA if you like. This is how the prebuilt workstation towers (Z440, T7810, etc.) do it and stay pretty quiet. The loudest thing will be the drives.

 

[Whaaat]

you can even fashion ducts to redirect airflow to the HBA if you like. This is how the prebuilt workstation towers (Z440, T7810, etc.) do it and stay pretty quiet. The loudest thing will be the drives.

I have a H330 installed in T7810. PCI fan of T7810 making 1600rpm is unable to cope with H330, typically 70C is what H330 reports with no active cooling. What is even worse is that HDDs in T7810 are cooled by the air pulled between drives by the power supply - drives can easily reach 50C in summer days and this forced me to install an additional 60x10mm fan in front of the HDD cage. Yes, T7810 is quiet, but not cool enough.