Dell 6TDVN SAS Expander

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itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
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Wow! that's great news! I just ordered two to see about mounting one (or two) as a direct psu powered jbod expander and am now waiting for it to show up (I'm impatient). Anyone have a moment to take measurements of the board, length, and width and maybe outside the distance between outer edges of the SFF-8088 connectors 1 -3 so I can ponder how I'm going to mount this to maximize use of the SFF-8087's and nicely get it outside the ATX case I have?

TIA

itr
 

mattp

New Member
Jan 22, 2016
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@itronin I have the PCB at right around 9 cm X 19 cm give or take a few millimeters. I didn't need it any more precise than that. The SFF-8088 connectors extend another CM or so.
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
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Denver, Colorado
in which computer case is this card fitting? what is your case?
Probably corsair carbide 300r. Ideally I do not want to bring SFF-8088 cables from inside the chassis out to the HBA, but would prefer to make the expander's SFF-8088 interfaces external.

How it fits I don't know yet but I see three options at the moment:

1) fit into the motherboard tray at the ATX IO Shield and ultimately cut holes in a blank shield to bring the SFF-8088 out.
2) fit above the card brackets, probably inverted for cable clearance and bring the SFF-8088 out there.
3) install in motherboard tray, this will require either SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 to a SFF-8088 card bracket or using SFF-8087 cables to a card bracket (giving up 4-8 drives per expander) and I worry about the link speeds with multiple gender/connector changes (effective cable length).

All of these options will require drill/tap standoff mounting of some kind. I was looking at using pcie x16 mining adapter(s) (again drill/tap required) for power and installing HPE expander (s).
 

ari2asem

Active Member
Dec 26, 2018
745
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The Netherlands, Groningen
Probably corsair carbide 300r. Ideally I do not want to bring SFF-8088 cables from inside the chassis out to the HBA, but would prefer to make the expander's SFF-8088 interfaces external.

How it fits I don't know yet but I see three options at the moment:

1) fit into the motherboard tray at the ATX IO Shield and ultimately cut holes in a blank shield to bring the SFF-8088 out.
2) fit above the card brackets, probably inverted for cable clearance and bring the SFF-8088 out there.
3) install in motherboard tray, this will require either SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 to a SFF-8088 card bracket or using SFF-8087 cables to a card bracket (giving up 4-8 drives per expander) and I worry about the link speeds with multiple gender/connector changes (effective cable length).

All of these options will require drill/tap standoff mounting of some kind. I was looking at using pcie x16 mining adapter(s) (again drill/tap required) for power and installing HPE expander (s).
yes, tapping and drilling is then kin d of requirement for carbide-case. offtopic: are you building full server (mainboard,cpu,ram,psu) or just jbod case?
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,233
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Denver, Colorado
yes, tapping and drilling is then kin d of requirement for carbide-case. offtopic: are you building full server (mainboard,cpu,ram,psu) or just jbod case?
I built this system and with the last of my old ATX V1 cases and a few more bays I have I built another one. The second one is currently a full system but I'm going to experiment with the 6TDVN and take it down to a JBOD case to connect to the first and see how it goes.

Experimentation.

itr
 

ari2asem

Active Member
Dec 26, 2018
745
128
43
The Netherlands, Groningen
I built this system and with the last of my old ATX V1 cases and a few more bays I have I built another one. The second one is currently a full system but I'm going to experiment with the 6TDVN and take it down to a JBOD case to connect to the first and see how it goes.

Experimentation.

itr
plz, keep us updated with your progress about jbod case
 

BeTeP

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
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Maybe someone would recognize the system these expanders came out of:



All I can see is the Liteon PS-2112-2L 1100W PSU Dell used in many PowerEdgeC/CloudEdge servers.


On second thought that does not really look like anything Dell would put together. So scratch that.
 
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ari2asem

Active Member
Dec 26, 2018
745
128
43
The Netherlands, Groningen
Maybe someone would recognize the system these expanders came out of:



All I can see is the Liteon PS-2112-2L 1100W PSU Dell used in many PowerEdgeC/CloudEdge servers.


On second thought that does not really look like anything Dell would put together. So scratch that.
i see the text chenbro on backplane, probably with 6 sff-8087. or with 4 ports.
 

gigogig

New Member
Oct 29, 2018
26
10
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Caution, The controller chip on this card appears to get really hot, i had to give it its own fan to bring it to my acceptable range, with a pentium 2 fan on it it seems happy.

6TDVN

1 - GND
2 - GND
3 - 12V
4 - 5V
seems to be working for me, also i used an internal port to connect it to an it mode controller and that seems to have also worked without problems ( two disks (crucial m4) won't seem to ever go through this adapter on any ports but work fine on sata connections.)
 
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Dave Corder

Active Member
Dec 21, 2015
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Caution, The controller chip on this card appears to get really hot, i had to give it its own fan to bring it to my acceptable range, with a pentium 2 fan on it it seems happy.
How are you measuring temps on the chip? IR thermometer? I may see if I can scrounge up an old P2 or GPU heat sink and fan for each of mine.

Incidentally, this GPU heat sink/fan fits the fan holes perfectly on an LSI 9201-16e (which is what I'm using), while still occupying only one PCI-e slot.
 

ari2asem

Active Member
Dec 26, 2018
745
128
43
The Netherlands, Groningen
all of expanders are getting hot (the chipset).

my experience with famous hp sas exander and intel (6 port aff-8087).
this is why i am using chenbro expanders, they have stock cooler without occupying extra pci-e slot. they fit in 1 slot.
when you put extra fan (40x40x10mm) they occupy extra slot.

EDIT.....one good sink/fan manufacturer of low-profile and small fans is enzo technology, heat sink with fans.

AIR COOLING - EnzoTech
 
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gigogig

New Member
Oct 29, 2018
26
10
3
How are you measuring temps on the chip? IR thermometer? I may see if I can scrounge up an old P2 or GPU heat sink and fan for each of mine.

Incidentally, this GPU heat sink/fan fits the fan holes perfectly on an LSI 9201-16e (which is what I'm using), while still occupying only one PCI-e slot.
I didn't use a probe, not scientific test at all
o_O , but as a rule of thumb for me, if a can't put my finger on it for 5 seconds im likely to put a fan to it. id get us exact temperature between fan on and off but I fried my system
:mad: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/sandisk-8tb-sas-ssd-499-obo.24105/#post-224360 what I can say is there is lots of room with no hot components or air movement where I mounted this and even putting a 60mm fan blowing across this chip, it was 1 second burning hot to the touch, I removed that put a 20mm fan blowing right at it, and it’s very cool, I’d say the heatsink is not tall enough to catch air by itself but with air directed at it, its fine.
 

Dave Corder

Active Member
Dec 21, 2015
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Finally got a chance to bench-test all my expanders with a freshly-flashed 9201-16e. Only one dead one (probably fried from my initial 12v experimentation), but the others all seem to be OK. I'm ordering some 20mm fans right now and I should get a chance to install these expanders in place of my old HP expanders in my DAS boxes sometime over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread of mine. Especially to Tiberizzle, who noticed that one of the pins is 5V. I'm glad we figured how to use these cheap expanders. Hopefully others in the future will find this thread useful.

If anyone is interested, I have enough parts left over to make two more power cables for these. Let me know if you're interested and they can be yours for the cost of shipping.
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
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Denver, Colorado
Just got my power cables today and am hoping to adapt them and then convert one of my FreeNAS boxes to a FreeDAS (hehe) in the next week or so. Has anyone hooked up the blinkenlichtmachinen panel to see what it does?

@Dave Corder what 20mm fans are you trying?

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