Nice Deal $28 - Adaptec ASR-71605 PCI-E 3.0 x8 16 Port SAS Controller

[UhClem]

Has anyone measured the maximum throughput of this card? Can it sustain the full bus potential (PCIe Gen3 x8 [in reality] =~ 7000 MB/s) ?
If you have enough decent SataIII SSD's connected, and are on Linux, please do:

for i in DrvLtr1 DrvLtr2 ...
do
hdparm -t --direct /dev/sd$i &
done

and add up the speeds. Thanks.
======
"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over." -- Fudd's First Law

 

[Sleyk]

There is no ASR-71605H. The adapter being discussed in this thread is ASR-71605 (no -H) which is different from ASA-71605H.
ASR is RAID, ASA is HBA. They have different firmwares (ASA's stopped being developed in 2015) and use different drivers.
So your experience does not apply.
Btw the lack of auto drive spin up (when more than 8 drives are detected) is a well documented feature of ASA line.

You know, I didnt realize there was an H variant until BL mentioned. When you mentioned about the comparison between the 2, I searched on eBay and the HBA variant goes for close to $150 bucks! And that's an an older card? Wow. I guess its definitely better to get this current ASR version while its cheap.

Notice the control board is between fan and the HD's. Your drives will cook in this thing. I have the 4 drive version and quit using it because the drives were topping 50c.

Sure thing Fritz, I will def take a look at the temps. I plan to load up 8 drives to start, then see how they run. They will be 7mm 1TB cheap Addlink SSD's. If they do well, then will load up the more expensive ones for permanent use.

sorry to say, but you are not correct. i got ASR (ASR71605E). it has both, hba and raid. i am using it in windows as hba.
i have 8 drive version, with 2 small 50mm fans. 8 drives of 7-9mm heigth inside it. got never higher than 30 degree Celsius in idle-mode.
@Sleyk, i would recommend to change the fan with more powerfull fan (e.g. 38mm thick)

Great idea brother! I actually do have stronger 80mm fans I could use, so as soon as the this beast comes, will change it out after doing alittle testing.

So.... anyway in for 2, anyone happen to know if these will take standard "LSI" full height brackets?

Sure do. Can confirm they take standard high/low profile brackets from when I had one a long time ago.

 

[Sleyk]

Awesome! Im glad this card can be useful for all. I plan to go and circle back and pick up maybe just 2 of the HP 240 cards and keep 'em for now as well. I agree with @RTM . I hope Microsemi gets more popular and serves to make some decent competition for LSI based chipset cards. Maybe Broadcom may wake from its complacency...lol!

 

[Alexdi]

I'm not even sure you need HBA mode, I think you just need to uninitialize the drives. Then they automatically enter passthrough mode.

Note that the most current version of MaxView is not compatible with this card. I use 2.05.00/22932 from 2017.

It runs hot, but not unusually so. I have a 1000 RPM 120mm fan on case side panel blowing at it and it's 45C most of the time.

RAID speeds are quite good if you want RAID. I see 700 MB/s+ from my 8x6TB 7200 RPM SAS RAID-6.

 

[kagurazakakotori]

So.... anyway in for 2, anyone happen to know if these will take standard "LSI" full height brackets?

My 71605 comes with a "Purcell,CA P1277-0007M" full-height bracket, which is the same as the one on my LSI 9217-8i.

 

[BLinux]

There is no ASR-71605H. The adapter being discussed in this thread is ASR-71605 (no -H) which is different from ASA-71605H.
ASR is RAID, ASA is HBA. They have different firmwares (ASA's stopped being developed in 2015) and use different drivers.
So your experience does not apply.

Btw the lack of auto drive spin up (when more than 8 drives are detected) is a well documented feature of ASA line.

Yup, seems you are right then. Disregard my remark.

 

[kapone]

I have this card. Got it from a prior deal (same price) and used it for a while, before upgrading to a motherboard with an onboard SAS controller.

-- Worked fine in HBA mode for 12 drives on Ubuntu 18.04 using the kernel drivers. This was a basic home storage server, & I didn't bother with any advanced features or optimization. But for basic features, this seemed to work fine.

-- I haven't used FreeNAS in a long time, but in researching this card, I ran across some folks that had problems with the HBA mode and ZFS in FreeNAS. YMMV. (edit: I see above that @frogtech is using one of these with FreeNAS. I think I'd trust him over comments from unknown sources on the internet)

-- Like any HBA/RAID card, this gets pretty warm. If its not going in a server chassis, folks may want to consider a fan to blow air on the heatsink. The heatsink hole pattern isn't an exact match, but a 50mm fan could probably be made to fit over the heatsink using long machine screws to sandwich the heatsink between the fan and PCB. (Heatsink holes are ~58.5mm on the Diagonal and a 50mm fan's holes are ~56.6mm on the diagonal) Again YMMV of course.

I use a slightly different approach with these cards. I'm using the exact same cards ASR-71605 and a dual 40gbps CX3 card in each of my Starwind nodes, and I used one of those GPU FAN BRACKET thingies you can buy on Amazon/ebay all day, "over" both cards. Keep in mind this is a 4U chassis (well, technically 3U, since the bottom 1U is power supplies, it's a Chenbro/Slicestor 1440), but with an 80mm fan over both cards, I have rarely seen temps over ~45C on either card (and these cards run hot).

 

[kapone]

Has anyone measured the maximum throughput of this card? Can it sustain the full bus potential (PCIe Gen3 x8 [in reality] =~ 7000 MB/s) ?
If you have enough decent SataIII SSD's connected, and are on Linux, please do:

for i in DrvLtr1 DrvLtr2 ...
do
hdparm -t --direct /dev/sd$i &
done

and add up the speeds. Thanks.
======
"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over." -- Fudd's First Law

I did, to a degree...a while ago. With 8x SAS3 SSDs (all I had at the time) hooked to it with breakout cables (no expander), in a Gen3 x8 slot,, in a RAID-0 config, it topped out at ~4.5GBps or ~4500MB/s (the attached pic shows burst writes over 5GBps, but once I tuned things, that's where it settled down).

Based on that, I'd say, hooking up all 16 might hit the bus limit easily.

 

[kapone]

btw, these use the AFM-700 Supercap and if you watch Amazon/Ebay carefully...sometimes they can be had for a song. I bought 4x of the supercaps earlier this year for...$5.99/ea. The listing on Amazon said "Used/Like new" but they were brand new, sealed (likely returns). But for less than 6 bucks...

 

[nthu9280]

That’s a great price for the AFM-700 kit if you plan on using it in RAID mode. I believe they are compatible with 8 series cards too.

 

[kagurazakakotori]

I have this card. Got it from a prior deal (same price) and used it for a while, before upgrading to a motherboard with an onboard SAS controller.

-- Worked fine in HBA mode for 12 drives on Ubuntu 18.04 using the kernel drivers. This was a basic home storage server, & I didn't bother with any advanced features or optimization. But for basic features, this seemed to work fine.

-- I haven't used FreeNAS in a long time, but in researching this card, I ran across some folks that had problems with the HBA mode and ZFS in FreeNAS. YMMV. (edit: I see above that @frogtech is using one of these with FreeNAS. I think I'd trust him over comments from unknown sources on the internet)

-- Like any HBA/RAID card, this gets pretty warm. If its not going in a server chassis, folks may want to consider a fan to blow air on the heatsink. The heatsink hole pattern isn't an exact match, but a 50mm fan could probably be made to fit over the heatsink using long machine screws to sandwich the heatsink between the fan and PCB. (Heatsink holes are ~58.5mm on the Diagonal and a 50mm fan's holes are ~56.6mm on the diagonal) Again YMMV of course.

I used some cable ties to attach a ~2000rpm 6010 fan, and also applied new thermal paste onto the chip, the temperature is around 60℃ and its pretty silent. Replacing the thermal paste will significantly low the temperature as most cards come with thermal paste totally dried out. Probably a higher speed fan will decrease the temperature more.

 

[i386]

I saw this thread like two weeks ago and started to search on ebay for differnt adaptec product numbers.
I found a 3162-8i (3000 Smart Series) raid controller for 500€ (new prices are 890+ €) , it looked brand new & was sealed like other adaptec controller from retailers
So thank you guys for this thread!

 

[UhClem]

I did, to a degree...a while ago. With 8x SAS3 SSDs (all I had at the time) hooked to it with breakout cables (no expander), in a Gen3 x8 slot,, in a RAID-0 config, it topped out at ~4.5GBps or ~4500MB/s
...

Thanks for the data point! Getting at minimum 4500 is no slouch; means running 16 current HDDs (12+TB/250-275MB/s) will not bottleneck. "But,"

Based on that, I'd say, hooking up all 16 [SSDs] might hit the bus limit easily.

that remains to be seen. Can't extrapolate when it comes to determining a [card-/chip-limited] throughput ceiling.
====
"A man's gotta know his limitations." -- one of the Dirty Harry sequels

 

[Sleyk]

I used some cable ties to attach a ~2000rpm 6010 fan, and also applied new thermal paste onto the chip, the temperature is around 60℃ and its pretty silent. Replacing the thermal paste will significantly low the temperature as most cards come with thermal paste totally dried out. Probably a higher speed fan will decrease the temperature more.

View attachment 14345

Hey brother, what size you use? 60mm? I wonder if I could get away with a quiet Scythe 40mm. They dont spin loud, but their pretty quiet.

 

[kagurazakakotori]

Hey brother, what size you use? 60mm? I wonder if I could get away with a quiet Scythe 40mm. They dont spin loud, but their pretty quiet.

Yes it's a 60(L)x60(W)x10(H)mm fan. I think 40mm one will work without any problem, though the temperature might be slightly higher. And I used 20cm cable ties to attach the fan.

 

[ari2asem]

i have noctua 40x40x10mm fan on metall cool block, fasten with screws for wood, chipset temp's are around 50°C, in dekstop chassis.

 

[pricklypunter]

I hate having to spell out ELI5 level crap.

Hehe (puts hand up), can I go to the bathroom?

 

[kapone]

Thanks for the data point! Getting at minimum 4500 is no slouch; means running 16 current HDDs (12+TB/250-275MB/s) will not bottleneck. "But,"

that remains to be seen. Can't extrapolate when it comes to determining a [card-/chip-limited] throughput ceiling.
====
"A man's gotta know his limitations." -- one of the Dirty Harry sequels

You know what I meant...

 

[jerryxlol]

about 2-3 years ago i have bought dell 78165 and until few weeks ago i lost data on one raid. Not sure exactly what happened, but when i tried expand 3x6TB r5 to 5x6TB r6 something happened in the maxview storage utility and raid stucked splitter between two raids. I have seen old raid5 inaccessible and new raid 6 inacessible and software said that for both raids are missing members Anyway still using them for 2x raid 6 (7x3TB and 5x6TB). Speed is average for this kind of arrays. But as mentioned, they runs hot!, and when not cooled properly they tend to throttle. So i mounted a fan airen, but they didnt last more than half a year, now using gelid silent 6. You dont have to use cable ties for that eww, you can use screw M3 x width of your fan plus 1cm.

 

[ari2asem]

best thing of 78165 it has own 3 pin fan power connector. on your photo top corner at right side, whit colour