(Ebay) Adaptec 71605 $28 & SFF-8643 to 4x SATA $6.10 ea. Shipped

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
Will appeal to a small crowd, but if you're in need of a single RAID card for 15 or 16 bays with a non-expander backplane, the card and four cables come out to around $50. Listings indicate sale price it good for another 2 days (same seller for both).

ADAPTEC ASR-71605 PCIe SAS RAID CONTROLLER | eBay

Mini SAS SFF-8643 to 4 SATA 7-pin hard 3/6/12Gbps data Server RAID 1M LSI00411 830343003174 | eBay


Note: This is the RAID version, which reportedly doesn't play well with FreeNas, etc. Listing indicates shipping to US only.
 
Last edited:

frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
1,482
272
83
35
I have a couple of these, they're great if you need an inexpensive high density HBA. I use 1 for 12 EMAZ drives in unraid in HBA mode without issues. The chipset gets very hot so make sure you have airflow on it or it will do a VERY obnoxious beeping until the temperature goes down.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir and Markess

Sacrilego

Retro Gamer
Jun 23, 2016
135
159
43
48
Turns out these cards can be set to HBA mode and seem to play fine with Freenas. At those prices, I figured I would buy one and a set of cables to play around with.
Tried best offer of one dollar less and it got auto rejected. I guess that's due to the 60% discount and the item set to reject offers less than $5X.00?
Makes me wonder how these deals work for the vendors.

***Edit***
Finding a lot of disagreement in the Freenas forums about it. But should still be good for other platforms.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
The chipset gets very hot so make sure you have airflow on it or it will do a VERY obnoxious beeping until the temperature goes down.
Yeah, these draw about 1.5 times the power of a typical (4/8 port) SAS controller (about the same as a 9260-16i). Microsemi & LSI both say you need about 200 linear feet per minute cooling on these. I plan to put an 80mm Noctua in the next slot over for cooling. From a LFM to CFM calculator I found online a while back, 14CFM from the Noctua should be enough to keep it cool.

Makes me wonder how these deals work for the vendors.
I'm guessing that for some sellers, these timed sale prices represent close to the lowest they'd be willing to take for these items. Just my guess.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
4,220
1,540
113
34
Germany
but these adaptec cards use their own chipset?
Yes, adaptec/microsemi/microchip develop and use their own chips.
(Btw: HPE and Intel use/sell adaptec/microsemi/microchip expanders in their systems with broadcom/lsi hbas/raid controllers :D)
but decided not to since adaptec uses a proprietary raid solution.
Broadcom/LSI is doing the same :D
You can find some information about the algorithms (eg: Reed-Solomon encoding for raid 6) used for the raid implementation in the adaptec documents and faqs but no actual code for the implementation.
 

Jaspah

New Member
Nov 30, 2019
2
1
3
I picked up a 71605 about a month ago and it has been pretty solid for me on Proxmox. I have it in HBA mode and the drives show up natively, SMART works, etc. I have a 120mm fan on it and a Nytro Warpdrive using one of those expansion port fan brackets -- no issues with temps.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

nthu9280

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2016
1,628
498
83
San Antonio, TX
That is a steal if your chassis can accommodate FH cards. Adaptec 7 series can be configured as HBAs. Not sure of the driver support in FreeNAS. Other OS should be fine.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
Picked up a LSI 9200-16e and 4 x SFF-8088 to SATA for ~ $52
I wonder why LSI "16e" cards are so affordable on Ebay, while "16i' ones cost so much? Before I went with this deal, I'd also thought about getting a 9200-16e and bringing the connections back inside the case. However, I was thinking in terms of having to get 8087 to 8088 bulkheads and having to get both 8088 to 8088 AND 8087 to SATA breakout cables, which was going to cost a lot more. If I'd known there were 8088 to SATA cables (silly me!), I might have gone with that and 3D printed something to clean the back up where they went back into the case.
 
  • Like
Reactions: e97 and Samir

e97

Active Member
Jun 3, 2015
323
193
43
If I'd known there were 8088 to SATA cables (silly me!), I might have gone with that and 3D printed something to clean the back up where they went back into the case.
Knowing is half the battle!

Many items are hard to find without the name of it. A description won't get you close. Only after a random wikipedia binge or talking about unrelated things will I stumble upon the thing I was looking for.

ex:

Couldn't find a PoE + Gigabit ethernet to USB cable for powering SBCs so I spliced two adapters together:

PoE -> ethernet + power
+
Gigabit ethernet to USB

Its bulky and janky, the next step was a custom PCB, but then I found FireTV stick ethernet + power adapters with a small mod to make it PoE.
 
Last edited: