Legit or fake Broadcom 9500-16i ?

[Lycius]

Legit or fake Broadcom 9500-16i ?

Hello guys,

I received this card today :




The box of the card was a neutral box, nothing writed on it.

Can someone with some experience with this card confirm me that it’s a fake or a legit ?

Is it possible to contact Broadcom to ask an « authentification » ?

The box of the card was a neutral box, nothing writed on it.

On this reddit topic they are talking about this model of card, and it look like completly different



https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1ai68ew

 

[BLinux]

the fact that "BROADCOM" is printed on the PCB on the backside is a good sign. Most of the counterfeiters avoid doing that. I can't read any of the details on the board because your photo is not very good. If you could take a higher res and sharper photo, that would help.

 

[Lycius]

will try to do it tomorrow, but the main problem is the whole design of the card, completly different of what i see on internet.

and the box wasnt a broadcom box, just a generic box

 

[mtg]

It looks the same as the first picture, same PCB markings and same missing components. The only difference is a larger heatsink on yours, which looks to be from the second picture from the reddit post. That PCB is 100% for a RAID card and not a 9500-8i, with the missing DDR cache chips on the PCB. So you probably have a legit card, and the reddit poster got some weird cross-PCB'd 9500.

 

[Lycius]

It looks the same as the first picture, same PCB markings and same missing components. The only difference is a larger heatsink on yours, which looks to be from the second picture from the reddit post. That PCB is 100% for a RAID card and not a 9500-8i, with the missing DDR cache chips on the PCB. So you probably have a legit card, and the reddit poster got some weird cross-PCB'd 9500.

not sure, look at some comment on reddit :

" I buy broadcom daily for server builds from authorised tier 1 distributors. The photo you listed as from ebay is genuine looking. However, the one you say is from a broadcom manual does not look genuine. I've built hundreds of systems since those cards came out and never seen one like that before. Should be noted chinese fake broadcom cards are identical to genuine ones with only subtle differences - fake ones don't come in the proper boxes and they also tend to miss some stickers on the back side. Very hard to tell unless you've not seen hundreds of genuine ones. "

i think that i will send back the card to the seller, i'm a bit afraid of having some problems on my data/harddrives/mobo

 

[mtg]

So the Broadcom manual I just checked is fake? Okay…
Amusingly, Broadcom also has the ebay version on their overview page:

If you are that worried buy it new from broadcom.

 

[Lycius]

So the Broadcom manual I just checked is fake? Okay…View attachment 41727
Amusingly, Broadcom also has the ebay version on their overview page:
View attachment 41728
If you are that worried buy it new from broadcom.

i know, it's strange but if you look at all seller on the net, everyone sell this card with the other PCB, that's why i'm really suspicious.

look at this, the 9500-8i, from " the art of server "

Broadcom 9500-8i Tri-Mode 12Gb SAS-3 PCIe 4.0 HBA P32 IT Mode ZFS TrueNAS UNRAID | eBay

I have fully tested them using all 8 SAS lanes. I've used ZFS for many years. I'm familiar with ZFS on Linux, FreeNAS, and many of the technologies commonly used by other enthusiasts. You will need a compatible cable to connect these to your hard drives or backplane.

www.ebay.com

 

[CyklonDX]

This looks like one of the chinese oem 9500's ?shinreal maybe?;

so yes, a Chinese knock-off. (but its potentially with broadcom's 9500's chip anyway)

 

[mtg]

This looks like one of the chinese oem 9500's ?shinreal maybe?;

so yes, a Chinese knock-off. (but its potentially with broadcom's 9500's chip anyway)

A knock off so good they used it for the Broadcom manual, nice!

 

[BLinux]

The smaller heatsink from the photo in the Broadcom user guide does look unusual and I have never seen one like that "in the wild." I do know that for this 9500 series cards, Broadcom did change the heatsink design later on as I had ask them about it when they sent me their 9560 card, which had a massive heatsink contacting the cache DRAM as well, which is different than in many of their product photos. It is possible the photo in the user guide was initial production or even pre-production, and they later updated the heatsink to something larger. And then maybe they consolidated the PCB layout by reusing their RAID card layout just without the cache and a few other components for their HBAs?

If you can PM me a clear photo of the S/N I can decode it and see if it looks legit.

 

[i386]

Broadcom (like many others) probably has multiple pcb suppliers and multiple revisions of the pcb design, including the heatsink.

 

[mtg]

Broadcom (like many others) probably has multiple pcb suppliers and multiple revisions of the pcb design, including the heatsink.

Exactly. And they probably don’t use fake devices for their manuals either. Kinda wild that people are just assuming that broadcom got fooled, and put a fake 9500 into their own manual; and the one rando on reddit is the one true source of what is an authentic 9500.

 

[Lycius]

This looks like one of the chinese oem 9500's ?shinreal maybe?;

so yes, a Chinese knock-off. (but its potentially with broadcom's 9500's chip anyway)

yup

 

[Lycius]

The smaller heatsink from the photo in the Broadcom user guide does look unusual and I have never seen one like that "in the wild." I do know that for this 9500 series cards, Broadcom did change the heatsink design later on as I had ask them about it when they sent me their 9560 card, which had a massive heatsink contacting the cache DRAM as well, which is different than in many of their product photos. It is possible the photo in the user guide was initial production or even pre-production, and they later updated the heatsink to something larger. And then maybe they consolidated the PCB layout by reusing their RAID card layout just without the cache and a few other components for their HBAs?

If you can PM me a clear photo of the S/N I can decode it and see if it looks legit.

Thank you, i will do it tomorrow or this week end, i was really busy today!

i was thinking the same about the preproduction model