Need a bit of help with SAS HBA.

[Dogstar359]

Hi new to the forum.

I Have a Gigabyte Aorus Pro AC motherboard, in the first PCI-E 4.0 x16 slot with a RTX2070 GPU.
The second slot is a full length PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot running at x4.
The third slot is a full length PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot running at x2.

I wanted to get a SAS3 HBA ITMode to use some SAS HDDs and possibily some SAS SSDs.
I am using windows 10 x64.
I only want to connect 1-4 drives.

i was looking at an LSI9300 card, but as you can see from my config, i only have a x4 and x2 slot.
the LSI9300 card is an PCI-E x8 card, so i dont know if it will work.

Does anyone know if there is a card that is SAS 12gb that i could possibily use that would work. I cant seem to find anything,
and when i ask sellers of cards they either dont reply, or dont know.

Thanks

 

[i386]

the LSI9300 card is an PCI-E x8 card, so i dont know if it will work.

Theoretically it should work, the hba would use only 4 lanes (Should be enough even for 4x sas3 ssds).
"Theoretically" because on consumer boards the bios/default settings can cause problems if there are boot roms present etc.

 

[Dogstar359]

Yeah that's the problem. I dont know if it will cause problems. one seller that did reply told me flat out that it would not work, that's why i was asking if there were alternatives. It sucks that consumer boards have so little PCI-E lanes. As for the boot problems, i have no idea, it's all new to me. I was hoping somebody in the same situation as me had a solution. Also as gpus are getting bigger there is the problem of the slot being blocked.

 

[nexox]

I'm running an LSI 9300 8i in an x4 slot just fine, the basic setup works, but I don't know about your board.

 

[Dogstar359]

do you have problems, with it booting?
does it show up in bios?
are you running it in a raid setup or do you have the card flashed to ITMode?

Sorry for all the questions it's just that SAS HBA in windows 10 x64. The information i can find is sketchy at best.
Is it a pain or do you just put the card in, install drivers, plug HDDs in and away you go, or is it more involved?
I'm new at this.

 

[Dogstar359]

Forgot to mention i'm not trying to raid drives, just maybe 1-4 as seperate devices.
Sorry to be a pain, it's just that you have to start somewhere.

 

[nexox]

Booting from the HBA is likely the only tricky part, because consumer motherboard BIOS sometimes just leaves stuff like that out, but everything else is pretty easy, even (so I've heard) in Windows you just plug everything in and go.

I'm running IT mode but booting off an NVMe drive, using software RAID in Linux.

 

[Dogstar359]

Booting from the HBA is likely the only tricky part, because consumer motherboard BIOS sometimes just leaves stuff like that out, but everything else is pretty easy, even (so I've heard) in Windows you just plug everything in and go.

I'm running IT mode but booting off an NVMe drive, using software RAID in Linux.

No booting i have an nvme installed in the primary slot, i just want to use the SAS controller as storage.
Also with it being x4 instead of x8 what kind of performance hit should i expect. I will be using 7200rpm hdds, but would like to try SSDs.
Also the 9300-8i that was mentioned will the x4 slot have enough power, to power it?
Do you also is it passive cooled or do you put a fan on it.

 

[nexox]

Power for all slots smaller than 16x is the same so no problem there, theoretical slot bandwidth is 32Gbps full duplex, with some overhead, so you get around 3GB/s each in read and write bandwidth through the PCIe slot. Usually a 7200RPM disk tops out at a little over 250MB/s so you'd have enough for about a dozen of those, the fastest SAS3 SSDs can hit just about 1.2GB/s over a single link so you could almost have enough bandwidth for 3 without bottlenecks, but really they tend not to actually hit that speed very often so 4 would almost never bottleneck in reality.

 

[Dogstar359]

That sounds great. Right what i'll do is get one. Nothing like diving in head first, although in my case probably into the pavement.
I will keep you and anyone else updated, as it might help anyone in the same situation.
Again thankyou for your help. It's really been difficult to find out.

 

[itronin]

one thing to watch for especially with "older" pcie cards, hba's nics, etc. used with "newer" motherboards and in particular consumer motherboards: the card will hang the motherboard during post. this is often an pcie card smbus issue. you may need to kapton tape the smbus pins on the hba. I believe those are pins 5 & 6 on the pcie edge connector. Lots of posts here and elsewhere about this issue and how to tape off the pins.

don't freak out if it happens. the issue likely solvable.

 

[nexox]

Also, it's a server card and expects some airflow, it's a good idea to get a fan pretty close, though it doesn't have to be loud or extremely high CFM.

 

[Dogstar359]

yeah i was going to put a fan on it.
Also my motherboard boot config is UEFI. will that be a issue or will i have to enable CSM?
I wont be trying to boot from it though.

 

[nexox]

If you don't want to boot from it then don't adjust your BIOS, unless that's the way to fix some issue that prevents the machine from booting at all.

 

[kapone]

yeah i was going to put a fan on it.
Also my motherboard boot config is UEFI. will that be a issue or will i have to enable CSM?
I wont be trying to boot from it though.

Dude...the 9300 series cards are like $15 or less for the 9300-8i. Buy one and test? It's not like it's gonna break the bank.

 

[Dogstar359]

It wasn't the cost, there are things i did not know about them. My motherboard only having an x4 and a x2 slot was the real problem
as the cards available are x8. I didn't want to buy one just to find out that it wouldn't work. Thanks to the people in this thread i am
going to buy an LSI 9300 8i and try it. Like i said in my third post this is all new to me.

 

[EasyRhino]

make sure it will physically fit in the slot.

so either the slot needs to be spaced for x8 or x16 physically, or it needs to be 'open backed" with room behind so you can fit the x8 card in.

I've used a x8 HBA in a x1 slot in a pinch.

 

[Dogstar359]

yes it will fit as the slots are all x16 length just that the second slot is electrically x4 and the third is electrically x2.
like i said earlier i will probably buy a LSI 9300-8i card, unless i can find out if the LSI 9300-16i card will work as
i found one that is pretty cheap.

what are the speeds like in an x1 slot? I only plan to use between 1-4 drives.

 

[nexox]

The 9300-16i is not a great idea, it's two 8i HBAs and a PCIe switch and so it draws a bunch more power and runs hot. If you need that many ports go for the 9305-16i.

 

[Dogstar359]

Thankyou for letting me know, that explains why the seller i contacted told me it wouldn't work, he didn't tell about it being two 8i HBAs.
so i guess the LSI 9300-8i is looking even better. No i dont need that many ports 1-4. Its just me being greedy.

also i need a cable will a SFF-8643 to SFF-8482 be fine for the LSI 9300-8i ? As there are a few types.