Jump to content
XPEnology Community

Xpenology on B250 Mining Expert anybody? 72 potential HDD slots on 1 board?


C-Fu

Recommended Posts

Hmmm... Would this even work? With 18x 4 port SATA card... Why? Well... Why not! 😂

 

I don't have a spare DDR4 RAM to test it out at the time being, and I just found this board in my storage cabinet (it's a board for mining during glory days 🤣) B250 Mining Expert.

 

Imagine a consumer board that can take at least 18x4=72 HDDs...

 

The motherboard in question: https://www.asus.com/my/Motherboards/B250-MINING-EXPERT/specifications/

 

 

 

aa.jpg

s-l1600.jpg

aaa.jpg

Edited by C-Fu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well why not? Aplying the right config changes.....

 

But you can buy a HBA like dell H200 and plug in 8 drives. I'm no expert, but there are plenty of HBA, even for more drives, and with port multipliers the amount of hard drives you can connect grows.

 

For example, Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage, they use only 4 sata cards and 9 multipliers to connect 45 drives

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/13/2019 at 2:52 AM, usus said:

Or u can try something like this

 

I suppose my problem is a bit unique. There are no > 2U servers where I live. I've been searching for years trying to find 4U servers, let alone 4U server that's full of HDD trays at the front. 

 

On 3/13/2019 at 12:57 AM, endormmc said:

Well why not? Aplying the right config changes.....

 

But you can buy a HBA like dell H200 and plug in 8 drives. I'm no expert, but there are plenty of HBA, even for more drives, and with port multipliers the amount of hard drives you can connect grows.

 

For example, Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage, they use only 4 sata cards and 9 multipliers to connect 45 drives

You can. However this is a spare, unused mobo and cpu that I have lying around. I reckon the mobo might be cheap now that GPU mining isn't like in 2017 anymore. Mind you that *IF* this is possible, you're looking at a cheap board plus a bunch of 4 sata cards that can hold a (theoretical) bunch of AT LEAST 80 drives. That's bigger (and cheaper) than any other solution I think.

 

Just wanna see if anybody had any experience with this board before I start. I have no DDR4 RAM at the moment, so I'm just collecting infos and ideas at the moment.

 

But thanks for replying!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/16/2019 at 6:40 PM, jensmander said:

Using port multipliers in XPEnology is generally a bad idea. I would stick to "normal" HBAs.

 

How would we know if this is a port multiplier? And why is it a bad idea? Sorry new here

 image.thumb.png.fe0bc60ffc56057f35e7ee5c306561c7.png

Edited by C-Fu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, jensmander said:

Usually you can find this information on the vendor‘s website. HBAs/S-ATA cards with port multipliers are not supported by XPEnology so you‘ll not be able to access all hdds.

 

Well that's strange, it works with my current setup though, a Z97 box

 

Anyway this is a random China stuff with no documentation and no "brand" so I don't know where would the proper site be :D

 

Although I remembered seeing a video before on youtube, someone using a bunch of these for FreeNAS and it worked fine. If you searched for SU-SA3014 there'll be like a billion vendors with this model.

Edited by C-Fu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
On 4/6/2019 at 3:29 AM, bearcat said:

It's a fun experiment, but how would you be able to physically fit sata controllers to all the slots

as they look as they will "collide" lenghtwise.

You may consider using some 10 port cards if they are supoorted by DSM.

 

physically might be difficult, but even if it works with 1/3 of the pci-e ports it'll still be awesome I think

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Port multipliers will allow you to connect multiple HDD to each Sata port.  That's not what you will be doing here. You are natively hooking a single HDD to each Sata port on these cards. as long as the chipset itself is supported, you will be fine.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 5/31/2019 at 5:59 AM, mervincm said:

Port multipliers will allow you to connect multiple HDD to each Sata port.  That's not what you will be doing here. You are natively hooking a single HDD to each Sata port on these cards. as long as the chipset itself is supported, you will be fine.

  

 

So does this chipset support then? Hey I don't mind hooking up just one SATA drive to each PCI-e x1 ports available. That's like 18 additional SATA ports

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...