Cheapest way for 10-15 sata ports? RAID not needed.

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computerpro3

LightningRod
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Mar 29, 2003
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What's the most cost effective way to get a minimum of 10 but preferably 15 sata ports? I do NOT need RAID or any type of redundancy - just the capability to hook up between 10 and 16 2TB hard drives.

Is that cheap HP expander still the way to go? The OS will be windows.
 
What about 2 x 8 port SAS cards? On eBay you can get some of these for $75 shipped. Or don't you have two PCIe x 8 slots free?
 
Note that this is going to be a from scratch pc build, so if a motherboard has onboard SAS I can do that too if it's not outrageously priced.

Can anyone link me to a specific card around $100 that won' have compatibility problems with windows and is basically plug and play? ALso, what cables will I need with this?
 
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I know this wouldnt be the cheapest way but considering the timing....

I would wait for x79 chipset (socket 2011)

I think they have something like 14 sata ports total on the board.

On top of it is going to be a replacement for x58 for high end chipset.
 
How about the supermicro x8si6-f? it has a total of 14 ports onboard (6 sata from the ICH, 8 SAS from a LSI controller) and apparently it comes with the sata cables and the sas breakout cables (handy as SAS breakout cables aren't particually cheap).

It also has nicities like dual intel gigabit lan and IPMI with KVM support

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-X8SI6F
 
Hmm, what kind of budget are we talking about for the storage controller? Also, how much bandwidth do you need? And how about reliability? Options are VERY different if you need ~200MBps or ~2000MBps (slight exaggeration, of course), same thing for professional or home use.

I can't help you very much on the professional arena, but for home use I can think of a few options.

Probably the cheapest per-port option is an AMD-based Brazos or Llano motherboard, since I believe both of their SB chips can handle Port Multipliers (about $70 each for passive PMs, "passive" meaning the PM not having a dedicated controller). So up to 30 HDDs per motherboard right there.

Also, I believe FIS-based PM support is standard on SATA3 (not 100% sure, though), so just about any motherboard with SATA3 ports should be able to handle 10+ drives.

Then you have SiI-based cards with PMs for ports galore. You can get 10 drives with a PCIe 1x 2-port controller (SiI3132, about $30/card) and a couple of PMs; or 20 drives over PCI (SiI3124, about $70) and four passive PMs. A uATX mobo fully loaded with those could potentially handle 40+ drives, and that's not even considering the motherboard itself has usually at least 2 to 6 SATA ports, which may or may not support FIS-based PMs themselves, so that number can grow quite a bit.

Then you have the famous Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8E (check this thread), 8 ports, though you might need to get creative when placing the thing, the Supermicro UIO slot is a shifted PCIe slot, so though the card works perfectly on PCIe slots, the backplate won't line up properly.

These, apart from the ideas already given, seem the best cheap ways of getting that many HDDs in a system. Mind you, there are limits on the max bandwidth:

1) PCI-based solutions are limited to 133MBps, no matter how many HDDs you use (which means there are even current low-power HDDs that won't be able to get to full speed);
2) The SiI3132 is a 1st-gen PCIe 1x controller, so you'll be limited to 250MBps on each direction;
3) I don't know about SATA3 PMs being available yet, so even PMs connected to SATA3 ports will limit the port to SATA2 speeds;
4) Total bandwidth available for storage, audio and network subsystems (all running through the PCH/FCH/SB) are capped by the DMI/UMI interfaces, which are equivalent to a 1st-gen PCIe 4x link (2GBps).

Hope this helps.
 
__Miguel_ said:
... Mind you, there are limits on the max bandwidth:
Click to expand...
So true.
__Miguel_ said:
...
2) The SiI3132 is a 1st-gen PCIe 1x controller, so you'll be limited to 250MBps on each direction;
Click to expand...

In theory, anyway (and "in our dreams":)); in practice, the SiI3132 will limit you to a maximum throughput of ~125 MB/s on a single port (the other port being idle), and a maximum combined throughput of ~150 MB/s with both ports active. Direction (in any combination) is immaterial.

On the plus side, a SiI3132 PCI-E card (2-port) is ~$15 (monoprice), and it handles the "multiplexing" (FIS-switching) of multiple "drives" efficiently and equitably (within its bandwidth limits, of course).

-- UhClem
 
At that point of paying $15 for 2 ports that get you 150MB/s total bandwidth why not pay $75 to $100 for a LSI SAS card with 8 ports that allow > 120 MB/s per port with all 8 ports doing simultaneous transfers. I say > 120 because I have only tested with sata hard drives and they are clearly not bottlenecked at all.
 
drescherjm said:
At that point of paying $15 for 2 ports that get you 150MB/s total bandwidth why not pay $75 to $100 for a LSI SAS card with 8 ports that allow > 120 MB/s per port with all 8 ports doing simultaneous transfers. I say > 120 because I have only tested with sata hard drives and they are clearly not bottlenecked at all.
Click to expand...
I was merely clarifying/correcting that particular part of Miguel's (very informative) post. How, or even whether, the SiI3132 fits into any potential solution, is a separate matter.

-- UhClem
 
UhClem said:
I was merely clarifying/correcting that particular part of Miguel's (very informative) post. How, or even whether, the SiI3132 fits into any potential solution, is a separate matter.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Sorry to sound contradictory..
 
UhClem said:
in practice, the SiI3132 will limit you to a maximum throughput of ~125 MB/s on a single port (the other port being idle), and a maximum combined throughput of ~150 MB/s with both ports active. Direction (in any combination) is immaterial.
Click to expand...
Well that's just yucky... 150MBps total throughput is just horrible... Hopefully something just as cheap but more decent will crop up eventually...

In that regard, does anyone know how well the 4-port PCIe 1x Marvell 88SE6145 controller fare? It's actually a 4SATA+1PATA controller (so 6 maximum potential HDDs there, not sure on PM support, though).

UhClem said:
On the plus side, a SiI3132 PCI-E card (2-port) is ~$15 (monoprice)
Click to expand...
Well, I wish... Best I can come up with is ~€22/card here in Portugal...

drescherjm said:
At that point of paying $15 for 2 ports that get you 150MB/s total bandwidth why not pay $75 to $100 for a LSI SAS card with 8 ports that allow > 120 MB/s per port with all 8 ports doing simultaneous transfers. I say > 120 because I have only tested with sata hard drives and they are clearly not bottlenecked at all.
Click to expand...
Hey, I was only pointing out the available options I knew about. SAS cards are professional territory, I clearly stated I would not be helpful on that department... If you get more ports for equal or lower per-port price, then by all means, go for it. Just make sure you have a big-enough PCIe slot, most of those professional cards need at least a PCIe 4x slot...

UhClem said:
I was merely clarifying/correcting that particular part of Miguel's (very informative) post. How, or even whether, the SiI3132 fits into any potential solution, is a separate matter.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I didn't know about those speed limitations on the 3132... Heck, 150MBps max is just... ughh... Maybe they designed it with a HDD+ODD combination in mind? It's the only plausible explanation I have in mind, surely you can get more than 150MBps out of a single PCIe lane with something like a 2xGigabit NIC, right?
 
__Miguel_ said:
...I didn't know about those speed limitations on the 3132... Heck, 150MBps max is just... ughh... Maybe they designed it with a HDD+ODD combination in mind? It's the only plausible explanation I have in mind, surely you can get more than 150MBps out of a single PCIe lane with something like a 2xGigabit NIC, right?
Click to expand...

SiL 3132 is part of a first-generation SATA chipset series from Silicon Image. They were pretty much first to market after the SATA specs came out. SiL 3112/3114 was a SATA-I PCI controller with either two (3112) or 4 (3144) ports. At the time there was no real need to go faster than 150MB/s because the PCI bus couldn't handle any more (and because most consumer SATA drives at the time couldn't come close to saturating it).

The Sil 3122/3124 was essentially an unchanged chip with SATA-II support. Still PCI, so no need to add much more throughput.

Sil 3132/3134 is is just a 3122/3124 with the bus side interface modified for PCIe. Silicon Image was targeting the low-end of the marketplace and their goals were to be first and to be cheap. They succeeded at both - and have sold 10s of millions of these things - but they made no investment in upping the performance to match what SATA-II and PCIe could actually deliver.
 
PigLover said:
SiL 3132 is part of a first-generation SATA chipset series from Silicon Image. ...

Sil 3132/3134 is is just a 3122/3124 with the bus side interface modified for PCIe. Silicon Image was targeting the low-end of the marketplace and their goals were to be first and to be cheap. They succeeded at both - and have sold 10s of millions of these things - but they made no investment in upping the performance to match what SATA-II and PCIe could actually deliver.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the excellent background info. It comforts me greatly to understand why the SiI3132-based PCI-E boards "ran with a limp":). I've been perplexed trying to explain why a product from Silicon Image, who has always impressed me as a top-notch engineering crew [good products, well-documented, well-supported (contrast with any FarEast silicon shop)], would be born with a handicap. I fully expected a ~175-190 MB/s total throughput limit (PCIe x1 v1-based) fully available for contention by the two SATA_3G ports.

-- UhClem
 
You can get a few cheap br10i controller cards on ebay...
Each card can do upto 8 sata hd's, or you could go for a m1015 and a cheap hp sas expander...
 
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UhClem said:
Thanks very much for the excellent background info. It comforts me greatly to understand why the SiI3132-based PCI-E boards "ran with a limp":). I've been perplexed trying to explain why a product from Silicon Image, who has always impressed me as a top-notch engineering crew [good products, well-documented, well-supported (contrast with any FarEast silicon shop)], would be born with a handicap. I fully expected a ~175-190 MB/s total throughput limit (PCIe x1 v1-based) fully available for contention by the two SATA_3G ports.

-- UhClem
Click to expand...
X2 Great post, PigLover. And yours too, UhClem.
 
totalanni said:
You can get a few cheap br10i controller cards on ebay...
Each card can do upto 8 sata hd's, or you could go for a m1015 and a cheap hp sas expander...
Click to expand...

Will the BR10i Play well with an older LGA775 P45 chip on a desktop board, stuck in the 16x slot if I use a PCI or PCIe 1x Video Card of some kind?
 
Can take a look at the IBM M1015 as well. PCIe x8 with 8 sata ports. It's a rebadged LSI card I believe, I'm just not sure of the model. Bought mine for 65 shipped on ebay.
 
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