Building out a new Elite Desk 800 g3, Sata card suggestions

[dasbooter]

Hello thanks for any input. I have read quite a bit. Thank you @IG-88 and @flyride for all the posts with useful information.

 

I currently have 1) synology 218+(apollo lake) with 2 Toshiba N300 NAS 4TB spinners,16 gig ram, running DSM 6.xx

 

  2) Xpenology i7 2600k sandybridge, ASUS P8Z68-V PRO(4 sata 6gbs + 4 sata 3gbs + 2 esata 3gbs ports) 16 gig ram(it think there is 32 gig but only recog 16), 4 WD80ezaz11TD-ba0 spinners, 800 watt OCZ platinum PS, 120gb vertex ssd running DSM 6.xx (DS3615xs) 

 

I was given by my IT dept at my hospital(I regularly dumpster dive for old hardware ala war games and they know me) an elite desk 800 g3 sff with an i5-6500(4core, 4 thread Skylake),32 gigs of ram,180 watt PS, It has 3 sata ports (I think 6gbs),1 M.2 2230 for optional wireless NIC, 1 M.2 internal connector for optional SSD drive,2 low-profile PCIe (x1),2 full-height PCIe x16, one wired as x4.

 

My use case 1)synology 218+ : Plex stack in docker

         2)sandybridge XpenologyNAS and Home assistant runs in a VM 

 

Network environment: Brocade 6450p 48 port enterprise switch(4 unlocked 10gbs ports and 48 gig ports). I'm trying to get cat 6a installed in my house but it's a challenge.

 

I have been for a long while thinking about switching the sandybridge system to the elitedesk but I am not sure about exactly what hardware to get or even if I should bother. I would like to add the 4 drives currently in use and make room for 2 more spinners with room for more in the future

 

The biggest barrier I think on the elitedesk is the lack of sata ports which the OLD Asus has in abundance. 

I have read quite a bit about expansion cards to add hard drives either spinners or SSD’s and I think this is probably where I need the most advice. 

I am getting confused between HBA, SAS, and sata controllers. I am also getting confused about what's going on the expansion card in terms of lanes and what's best. Here is what I have come up with after reading. https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/35882-new-sataahci-cards-with-more-then-4-ports-and-no-sata-multiplexer/

 

1)M2 key slot sata expanders are bad

2)If I can find a cheap sas controller at the recycler/dumpster dive maybe try it even though it sounds iffy with  918+ (is skylake good enough to transcode do you think?)

3)I probably should get a sata/ahci card based on JMB585 but maybe ASMedia ASM1166 is acceptable now? I can't tell from the thread here https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/35882-new-sataahci-cards-with-more-then-4-ports-and-no-sata-multiplexer/

 

Here are some options I have looked at https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00120961 (I can't find the chip that the manufacturer used)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004525617521.html chipset:JMB585

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003346314019.html the 4x 6/10 sata port chipset:JMB582

 

Im open to any feedback ...sorry for the long post just trying to include all the details

[rojoone2]

You are limited by the number of hard drives that desktop has room for.
I only see room for three drives unless you asl plan to replace the optical drive with a SSD, or move the internals to a new case. 
 

[dasbooter]

oh for sure this will sit in the basement so it doesn't to look pretty I could even move the mother board from the  HP to the old tower server that the sandybridge lives it...hacking up a reasonable home is not a barrier but the hardware needs to fulfill my requests in the opening post.

[IG-88]

On 10/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, dasbooter said:

e,2 low-profile PCIe (x1),2 full-height PCIe x16, one wired as x4.

 

from the manual for the SFF unit there is no "full high" pcie slot all 4 are on the mainboard (no riser) and are side by side so the case will limit it for all 4 to low profile

you might need keep that in mind when going for added pcie sata card

as its skylake it should have pcie 3.0 support so a newer pcie controller like the jmb585 or asm1166 might give some advantage but the 1G nic will limit the usable performance to ~115 MByte/s

the psu with 180W would be ok for 6 x 3.5" disks but fitting these in and have them properly cooled ... i guess even 4 x 3.5" disks will not fit into that thing (by design its just 2 x 3.5" and 1 x 2.5"), it already hast 4 x sata onbard (there is no use for the ODD with DSM so the 4th sata ist free for disks too)

 

so is guess some frankenstein mod into a new case might be needed (HP usually has some custom stuff so standard mountings in a normal housing might not fit)

even the psu might not be the normal atx so si might be needed to use that too in a new housing (i have seen 12v psu that do 3.3v and 5v on the board and that might even limit the usable amount of sata power connectors (depending on how strong the regulators on the board for 5v are)

so there can be some headaches with these HP units when trying to go beyond the spec design

 

the sata ports can be added as it has 4 pcie slots (2 x pcie 1x, 1 x pcie 4x, 1 x pcie 16x),  the low profile is just a limit of the original housing so when using a different housing the card's size is no problem but if you have to use the original psu and all 5v comes from the mainbaord (12v only psu) then your limit in in that area

On 10/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, dasbooter said:

Here are some options I have looked at https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00120961 (I can't find the chip that the manufacturer used)

looks like a jmb585 and from the text its a Vantec UGT-ST655 and as it only has one chip on it and say's pcie 3.0 its for sure a jmb585

https://www.vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=286

when using the pictures and zooming in there is a jmb logo in the chip and with some imagination you can also read the 585 (but there is no other pcie to 5x sata chip from jmb so its for sure a jmb585 based card)

On 10/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, dasbooter said:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004525617521.html chipset:JMB585

link did not work for me but if its jmb585 the it should do it

 

On 10/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, dasbooter said:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003346314019.html the 4x 6/10 sata port chipset:JMB582

also link did not work but when its jmb582 aka two sata ports coming from pcie and ends in 10 sata ports the ist a multiplexer for sure (every "real" sata port gets a one to five multiplexer chip) - no go for dsm/xpenology

 

On 10/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, dasbooter said:

1)M2 key slot sata expanders are bad

especially with this board i would guess you m.2 slot is just a sata m.2 slot no nvme (aka pcie) so a m.2 pcie card will not work - also i hyve not much faith in these cards even when working properly there are mechanical problems with these thin cards (direkt sata ports on the m.2 card, i successfully used a m.2 to pcie dapater with a short cable between m.2 and the pcie slot, but a 2nd wit a slightly longer cable hat problems so there are material/quality issues i expect)

 

On 10/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, dasbooter said:

2)If I can find a cheap sas controller at the recycler/dumpster dive maybe try it even though it sounds iffy with  918+ (is skylake good enough to transcode do you think?)

you might read up on that with the newer loaders, not sure how well they work on 918+/920+ images, will work for sure on 3617/3622 but you "loose" the intel quick sync hw transcoding that way, sata support seems to be build into all synology kernels, so ahci sata ports are kind of a safer bet

[dasbooter]

Thanks so much for answering. Your definitely throwing me a life preserver here.

Agreed The HP case is restrictive and I thought of migrating it to a server tower case I have but I believe I have done that once before and well that's sort of mechanical engineering problem but maybe I will get lucky...I could also buy/make an external HD rack. It would slave away in the Utility Room Salt Mines so it doesn't have to look nice(it will look organized). 

 

What is the minimum power supply suggested to run say 8 total 10 terabyte spinners? I might find a HP power supply in the bin at work or the recycling store or I could power the HD's separately with the OCZ 800 Platinum I have running the sandybridge.

 

I thought I could add a 10gb NIC in here somewhere is that not correct? I do have parts for 10 gb infrastructure hopefully going into place. I would then need ssds to saturate that anyway I suppose. I just thought in the future I might have multiple people watching 4k streams.

 

Thanks so much for the direction on the sata cards. I will post some screens shots and hopefully you can confirm for the first one? There is a definite price difference between the cards here at a local retailer VS Aliexpress.

 

How should the m2 slot be utilized then? I have read that its not useful for an SSD cache for most of us.

 

Is it correct the newer hardware would have any benefit over the sandybridge as a NAS? . As a separate issue I do wonder if transcoding with the skylake is worth it too. If graphics card were cheaper I might try something like truenas scale and a patch nvidia driver. Sorry I tend to overanalyze I have highlighted the important questions 

 

 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by dasbooter