LSI SAS Card compatibility with Z370 chipset.

[PerhapsJames]

Hi, my system is a Z370 platform using a i5-8600k with 32 gigs of ram. (this is an older photo)

 

For storage I've been using a Samsung 970 Evo for my boot drive along with 6 other drives for storage and other stuff.

The motherboard has only 6 physical sata data ports and I want to expand it with a SAS Card if possible. 

 

The IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller LSI SAS9220-8i seems like a good budget option for expansion. My only concern is that of compatibility, does my system have enough PCIE lanes for adding a SAS card?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also are there any other things I should keep in mind when trying to flash the SAS card into it mode?

Thanks

 

[AbydosOne]

17 minutes ago, PerhapsJames said:

Z370 platform

Which motherboard?

 

17 minutes ago, PerhapsJames said:

does my system have enough PCIE lanes for adding a SAS card?

What are those other PCIe cards under the GPU? And what slots are they plugged into?

 

17 minutes ago, PerhapsJames said:

Also are there any other things I should keep in mind when trying to flash the SAS card into it mode?

A lot of those LSI cards can be bought in IT mode to save the trouble. FWIW, the only way I could get the flash program to run was through a UEFI terminal.

[PerhapsJames]

It's an AsRock Z370 Pro4 with the latest bios that supports resizable bar.

 

Those other PCIE cards are Wi-Fi card and a pc pwr/restart card that is controlled via a remote. I'm getting rid of both of those since I've got a m.2 Wi-Fi chip that is onboard. So, I've only got the GPU occupying the topmost x16 slot, the rest are empty.

 

The seller that sells these LSI cards in my region aren't flashed to it mode. 

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, PerhapsJames said:

Hi, my system is a Z370 platform using a i5-8600k with 32 gigs of ram. (this is an older photo)

 

For storage I've been using a Samsung 970 Evo for my boot drive along with 6 other drives for storage and other stuff.

The motherboard has only 6 physical sata data ports and I want to expand it with a SAS Card if possible. 

 

The IBM ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller LSI SAS9220-8i seems like a good budget option for expansion. My only concern is that of compatibility, does my system have enough PCIE lanes for adding a SAS card?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also are there any other things I should keep in mind when trying to flash the SAS card into it mode?

Thanks

 

Is this a “server”, or your gaming PC? 
 

If it’s a server, do you need the GPU? If you do, you likely don’t need it working at x16 anyways, since transcoding is not bandwidth heavy. If it’s your gaming PC, depending what GPU it is, running in 8x mode would only make a very, very small impact on performance. 
 

The mobo should automatically put it in 8x if it sees another cars plugged into the PCIe bus which requires lanes of its own. 
 

Or, likely some of the PCIe slots are wired to the chipset and not directly to the CPU. These would have a little more latency, but you could try and see if the SAS card would be happy in of those slots. 

[PerhapsJames]

11 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Is this a “server”, or your gaming PC? 
 

If it’s a server, do you need the GPU? If you do, you likely don’t need it working at x16 anyways, since transcoding is not bandwidth heavy. If it’s your gaming PC, depending what GPU it is, running in 8x mode would only make a very, very small impact on performance. 
 

The mobo should automatically put it in 8x if it sees another cars plugged into the PCIe bus which requires lanes of its own. 
 

Or, likely some of the PCIe slots are wired to the chipset and not directly to the CPU. These would have a little more latency, but you could try and see if the SAS card would be happy in of those slots. 

This is my gaming pc and productivity system for 3ds max, maya etc. I also run  jellyfin on it with the intel igpu for transcoding. 

 

My motherboard manual says the top slot is x16 but the lower full length (PCIE 4) slot is only wired for x4.

 

[LIGISTX]

2 hours ago, PerhapsJames said:

This is my gaming pc and productivity system for 3ds max, maya etc. I also run  jellyfin on it with the intel igpu for transcoding. 

 

My motherboard manual says the top slot is x16 but the lower full length (PCIE 4) slot is only wired for x4.

 

It’ll run at x4 speeds, but that is plenty fast enough for some harddrives. 
 

For reference, a PCIe gen 3 x4 link can do 4 GB/second. That’s way faster then some harddrives will ever be able to achieve. 

[PerhapsJames]

Great so it's compatible. Thanks a lot for the help