LSI SAS3008 HBA high temperature ?

[Ustrel]

Hi all,

I recently bought a SuperMicro AOC-S3008L-L8e HBA (LSI SAS3008 based with IT firmware) and plugged it in a home made NAS build with limited air cooling to keep everything quiet.

Monitoring the SAS3008 ROC (Raid On Chip) device using storcli utility shows a rather high 65 °C / 149 °F temperature under no I/O workload, i.e. when:
* no drive plugged into card;
* with 31 °C / 88 °F measured at case inlet air location ;
* with 35 °C / 95 °F measured at case outlet air location.

Using a straightforward I/O "intensive" workload:
* with 5 SSDs plugged into card
* with a formatting process running simultaneously onto each SSD (with read/write bad block scan and no discard operation)
* with 31 °C / 88 °F measured at case inlet air location ;
* with 35 °C / 95 °F measured at case outlet air location.
To my surprise, after more than 1 hour of continuous operation, measured temperature is still 65 °C / 149°F.

I'm considering giving the card more air flow through temperature driven fan control. However, I'm unable to find consistent documentation with respect to the ROC chip recommended temperature range itself... which makes it very difficult to enslave fan speed without knowing min / max temperature points at the very least.

Everything I could find so far was related to the recommended air flow ranging from 100 to 300 LFM (Linear Feet per Minute) which won't help me either given that my fan specifications are expressed as CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute) and I have no idea of the volume of air flowing around the chip.
This would not allow me to derive a process to drive fan speed as a function of chip temperature anyway.

• Does anybody has experience / documentation / reference inputs related to this SAS3008 (or similar) chip ?
• More specifically, what ROC max temperature shoud I never run over to preserve long term chip healthiness ?
• I would also be interested in temperature measurements and / or experiments if anyone of you own such a HBA.

Many thanks in advance. Regards,
Greg.

 

[Ustrel]

If anyone's interested, here's Supermicro support answer:

What is the recommended mean ROC temperature under no I/O load ?
--> minimum of 200 linear feet per minute (LFM) airflow.

What ROC max temperature should I never run over to preserve long term chip healthiness ?
--> 55°C Max.

Regards,
Greg.

 

[ari2asem]

put a small fan (40mm * 10mm) on the cooling block. will decrease the temp to 55-58°C

 

[i386]

What ROC max temperature should I never run over to preserve long term chip healthiness ?
--> 55°C Max.

This is the max. ambient temperature. The asic/cpu can get up to 80-90°C before sensors and alarms goes off.

RAID Controller Cards

Our RAID controllers address virtually all direct-attached storage (DAS) environments – SATA or SAS, hard drives or solid state drives (SSDs)

www.broadcom.com

 

[Ustrel]

Thanks for the input.

However, the SAS9361 is based upon the SAS3108 ROC (dual PPC 476 core + additional cache mem).
The SM AOC-S3008L-L8e is based upon the SAS3008 one (single PPC 476 core, no additional cache mem).

Note that LSI / Broadcom cards comparable to the SM (such as SAS9300-8i) are also given for 55°C max ambient temperature as stated into SAS 9300 12Gb/s SAS Host Bus Adapter Family Product Brief.

Quite oddly enough, SM website stated AOC-S3008L-L8e max ambient temperature at 35°C 2 days ago.
Checked back a few minutes ago: it has changed to 55 °C...
See here: Add-on Card AOC-S3008L-L8e / AOC-S3008L-L8e+.

So you're very likely right. It seems these kind of chip internal temperature sensor can go really hot (up to 115°C max operating at junction level as stated in this old application note).

Which leaves me rather confused and still unable to figure out an acceptable max operating temperature to prevent my card from frying after 3 years of uninterrupted operation...

 

[Whaaat]

65°C is cool, my perc h330 has been running at 75-80°C for years. That temp is perfectly normal for sas cards for constant operation. If you turn off your pc daily than it's a different story and it would be better to cut 10 or more degrees off the max