I’m starting a home build utilizing the Silverstone CS381B case. I’ve decided to go with an intel i5-11400 and a matching MSI motherboard.
My question for you is, what adapter/cables do I need to get things connected.
I tried to pull up the manual, but honestly, there was no help there. So I just googled backplane images for the case and what I could find was what appears to be three connectors.
4 pin fan connector?
6 pin PCIe connector?
SFF-8643 Mini-SAS HD 12G connector, got the information from Silverstone’s webpage.
Is that all that’s part of the backPlane? I’m assuming so, but I just wanted to make sure. I was imagining 8 SATA cables with power going to the backplane. I guess that’s why this case is so expensive. I know that SAS connections are backwards compatible with the SATA drives which is how they will still work.
My motherboard obviously doesn’t have that connection. So I figured I need some form of adapter for my pcie slot. I found this board. Gen3 PCIe mini SAS HD board. I’m guessing this and a mini SAS HD cable will do the job. However, this board has four connectors, I don’t really need that. Is there a single port or dual port option thats of better quality. I’m concerned with the single point of failure regarding the pcie board.
There are also different standards such as SFF-8639, SFF-8654, or SFF-8611 are these better options?
I just looked into the case a bit, it seems what you need is:
One 8-Pin PCIe Connector, the case should come with an PCIe 8-Pin to 2* PCIe 6-Pin Splitter Cable.
Fan Connector only has to be connected if there’s fans in the drive bays installed
Two SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 Cables
A HBA that accepts two SFF-8087 Connectors and Supports IT Mode
For the latter one a LSI 9211-8i seems like a good option, alternatively you can buy one from an OEM like Dell (H310) and flash it into IT-Mode yourself to save them money.
Edit to add something: That recommendation only Supports SAS and SATA 6Gbit/s.
If you want to use SAS 12G you’ll need a better HBA, I recommended this one due to Price/performance
Hello and thank you. I just wanted to clarify a couple things from your reply.
I’m assuming you mean one 8-pin PCIe connector, from the power supply? The split that it comes with should split the power to both 4 drive bays. Correct?
fans, in the bays, check.
see next
why SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 and not to SFF-8643? I know you
in regards to your edit. What card are you recommending? you didn’t post anything. I would like to hba comparable to the backplane.
The 8087 connector is a bit slimmer than 8643. That’s the only real difference I know of. There might be others related to max cable length or something, but I’m not sure how much that matters for your use case.
The motherboard in my NAS(Supermicro X11SSH-CTF-O) has an onboard LSI3008 controller which also uses the 8643 connector, so that’s what decided what cables I needed. If I was breaking it out into individual sata ports, then I’d need to use the breakout SATA cables that split it back out into four separate cables.
I don’t know what you’re running for an OS, or if there’s some ZFS in your future, but there’s also a dude on ebay who goes by “the art of server” who sells HBAs pre-flashed to IT mode if you’d rather skip that part. It’s not bad really. I flashed the onboard controller in my NAS myself, but if you’ve never used the UEFI shell or aren’t familiar with general CLI shenanigans then there might be a bit of a learning curve there.
SFF-8087 is quite common on HBAs to my knowledge, most of the ones readily available on the Used Market have two SFF-8087 connectors, not SFF-8643.
As has been said by redocbew, there is no real difference to my knowledge.
I highly recommend LSI 9211-8i for your use case, it’s widely used in the Homeserver Community and readily available pre-flashed to IT Mode from Sellers like the one mentioned by redocbrew.
Just Type in LSi 9211-8i IT-Mode in your countries eBay Search.
If you want something that supports SAS 12G - which won’t be any advantage to you if you use SATA Drives - I would recommend an LSI 9300-8i HBA. Same goes for sourcing pre-flashed ones.
Backplane is connected via PCIe 6+2 connector from the PSU. I had a adapter in my box, so one 6+2 cable fuels both backplanes with 6 pins each.
About the mini-SAS connector. Silverstone has the correct cable if you want to connect SATA drives. Check under accessories, I bought those cables to plug in into my on-board SATA. just works. But my board has 8x SATA ports, so I didn’t have a need for a HBA.
Backplane is smart enough to stagger the start of the drives, so you don’t get a power spike when spinning up 8 drives at once. I wouldn’t bother with fans as the slits are blocked by HDDs when fully populated. I’m running with 6 HDDs and 2 SSDs and rely on negative pressure to draw some air from the front, works.
I had two extra fans laying around, so I stuck them on the side in addition to the two fans on the back. Probably unnecessary, but it spends life in the closet where I’m not going to hear it anyway.
so here’s another question for you. I understand the SaTA drives I’m using are max 6G, in an ideal world. And that the back plan is configured for 12G primarily for use with SAS drives.
However, if the OS is reading and writing to from multiple drives wouldn’t the better 12G HBA still be better? Wouldn’t be possible if multiple programs are trying to talk to multiple drives the higher throughput of the 12G HBA be a benefit? Similar to how Link Agregration might work?
It’s a thing you need to do if you’ll be using ZFS as your file system. It basically strips out all the RAID functionality from the controller and just passes the drives through to your OS.
If you’re not using ZFS, then don’t worry about it.
As a RAID Card, where it puts all the HDDs connected into one or more RAID Arrays, stringing them together for more storage or redundancy depending on what you set in their options.
→ The OS only gets access to the RAID Arrays, depending on how you defined them. There is no direct access to the HDDs.
As a HBA Card / in IT-Mode, where it passes through all the HDDs to the OS. This is different from selecting singular HDDs in RAID Mode.
->The OS gets access to every single HDD and all its properties and functions.
The Latter is neccessary if you’re using Software Defined Storage, which would be for example UNRAID’s Storage Capabilities or also ZFS.
That’s not how it works, those Connectors (SFF 8643 or 8087) have 36 Pins in them, meaning that they carry exactly the same amount of data as four separate cables. You would not benefit from a 12G HBA in your use case, as the HBA gets access to a 6G connetion PER DRIVE.
