[Feedback wanted] Avoton A1SAM: 10GB NIC or SAS Controller in x4 Slot?

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

Kristian

Active Member
Jun 1, 2013
347
84
28
Hello,

I am getting in the parts for a home-server for a friend of mine.

We have a
SM 846 chassis with the SAS2 backplane
Supermicro A1SAM-2750F (1x PCI-E 2.0 x8, 1x PCI-E 2.0 x4) (still in transit)
IBM ServeRAID M1015, PCIe 2.0 x8
Intel X520 10GB NIC, PCIe 2.0 x8
20 spinners (12x 4TB WD Red, 8x 3TB WD Red)

My question is:
Those addon cards are both PCIe 2.0 8x

I know that both are working with just 4 PCIe lanes, so I took a PCIe x4 extender and dremeld the back out of it (like I did several times)

Is there (from a practical and theoretical point of view) one of that cards that should be equipped into the PCIe 2.0 x4 slot when it comes to performance?

Not that the 10GB pipe will be saturated very often...

Its just out of pure interest.

I would equip the Intel x520 into the port with 4 lanes.
Any thoughts on this?
 
Chuckleb

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
1,017
331
83
Minnesota
I think I would do the SAS card in the x8 since there is a higher chance that you would hit the full bandwidth, especially pulling from cache or some odd chance. Though it should really matter for this application, it appears it is a NAS so you're not doing anything local and would be bound by slowest path. Your network would pull ~1GBps at max and your disks could hit 2GBps (20x 100MB/s). These are all very rough numbers and not factoring in bus speed, just the connectivity.

In either case, shouldn't matter, as long as they work! :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Patriot and Kristian
Patriot

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
1,451
792
113
Pcie 2.0 can do 250MB/s bi-direction per lane... nic should be fine on an x4 with its best case being ~900MB/s.

I would stick the HBA on the x8 and nic on the x4.
 
  • Like
Reactions: T_Minus and Kristian
Chuckleb

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
1,017
331
83
Minnesota
Yes, I was just sorting out my motherboard and looked through the wikipedia page on bus speeds. PCIe 1.0 x4 will get you 10Gbps (1GBps) so the x4 electrical should be fine. As long as it is not a x1 in a x4 slot...
 
K

Kristian

Active Member
Jun 1, 2013
347
84
28
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: pgh5278
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom