LSI RAID Controller and HBA Complete Listing Plus OEM Models

[Octopuss]

Does anyone know whether the power consumption of a HBA is proportional to the number of connected disks?
I am debating whether to get LSI 9300 or 9305 card, the latter of which is easily twice or thrice as expensive, and power consumption would be the only selling point. I have a home server in a desktop case, so there is not really sufficient airflow to cool one of these cards (and I presume there are no aftermarket fan brackets).

 

[lightingman117]

Does anyone know whether the power consumption of a HBA is proportional to the number of connected disks?
I am debating whether to get LSI 9300 or 9305 card, the latter of which is easily twice or thrice as expensive, and power consumption would be the only selling point. I have a home server in a desktop case, so there is not really sufficient airflow to cool one of these cards (and I presume there are no aftermarket fan brackets).

I wouldn't worry too much about cooling it when there are pci slot (not a product endorsement, just an example) fans available.

I'd get whatever is most compatible with your host OS & future growth (SSD or NVMe need for speed?)

 

[Octopuss]

Well, the board I have (Supermicro X11-SCH-F) only has two PCIe slots, and both are used, so there's no way I could get one of those fans in there. Those also tend to be pretty noisy, whereas the micro Noctua fan I mounted on my current card I could get down to like 1000rpm.

 

[Octopuss]

Is the 9440 crossflashable to 9400? If I understand it correctly, the cards should be physically identical, but 9440 is the RAID version and only has different firmware?

 

[Sleyk]

Is the 9440 crossflashable to 9400? If I understand it correctly, the cards should be physically identical, but 9440 is the RAID version and only has different firmware?

Yeah, I can confirm that the 9440-8i can flash to IT mode no problem. You just need the 9400-8i firmware. The 9440-8i is equivalent to the 3rd gen 9340/9341-8i and the second-gen 9240-8i in that, they essentially use an IT Mode chipset with a combination of megaraid software RAID firmware. So it's easy to flash over to IT Mode firmware, which is what these chips are really made for.

The thing is, you have to use Storcli in EFI shell, no DOS. So you cant use Freedos. Dos tools like Megarec3 and sas3flash won't work for these newer cards.

So then:

First things first, take a peek at the front of the card on the SFF8643 ports, and write down your card's SAS address.

Next, download the latest 9400-8i firmware here: Broadcom 9400-8i (The latest firmware version is P24 as of writing this.)

Then once downloaded, unzip the firmware, and rename it to something simple like 9400it.bin.

Then you have to get one of those tiny little jumper header thingy's that comes on some cards. They're usually black or blue. I've also seen a white one a few times.

Jumper the J4 two-pin header. Make sure the header you jumpered is J4, and J4 ONLY.

Then turn on your PC/Server with the card installed. Now when booted to EFI shell, type:

Storcli /c0 download firmware file=9400it.bin

Once done, turn off your system, and remove the 2-pin jumper off the J4 header. Then boot back into the EFI shell.

Now you have to flash the mpt3.5 bios legacy and uefi roms. So type:

Storcli /c0 download bios file=mpt35sas_legacy.rom

press enter, then type:

Storcli /c0 download efibios file=mpt35sas_x64.rom

Once done, now, you have to set the SAS address. So type:

Storcli /c0 set sasadd=xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx (type your 16-digit SAS address you saved from the card before without any dashes)

And you are all set!