Supermicro case, bus throughput bottleneck potential?

[vr.]

I'm eyeballing the 216E16-R1200UB with horizontal expansion slots which uses a riser card vs. the 216E26-R1200LPB which uses vertical expansions slots and no riser.

Question is, if one were to put a couple RAID controllers into a case that has a riser, is there going to be contention on everything trying to navigate that riser card into a single motherboard slot?

 

[drescherjm]

You do want an enclosure for 2.5 inch SAS drives correct? I only ask because most users on this list would rather use large SATA drives and thus need an enclosure that supported 3.5 inch drives.

 

[wkearney99]

Also note that several RAID cards are available in low profile format. Often using a SAS port on the card and then an expander elsewhere in the chassis for cabling to the drives (or right into a backplane SAS port).

What is it that you're going to do that using that many 2.5" drives is considered a good idea?

 

[vr.]

drescherjm: Yes, I do want 2.5 inch SAS, not 3.5 inch.

wkearney99: I'm looking at this case for putting together a SQL server using only local disk for a homegrown software app. It will have separate volumes for data, logs, etc. I may have only one controller managing all 24 disks but I want to be sure that if I use more than one controller that motherboard slot doesn't create a bottleneck.

 

[vr.]

Think I answered my own question using wikipedias description of the PCI Express 2.0 spec. 16 GB/s should be enough, if I understand the description laid out there.