Question LSI 930016i card and ROM/Windows settings

[Steltek]

By coincidence, I was just looking at some LSI 9300 cards this week since they are both so cheap and available on eBay as I'm thinking about building a NAS/Proxmox server. Was doing research to see if there are lots of reported problems with them (I wasn't interested in RAID, only in using them as an IT mode HBA for refurb data center SATA/SAS drives).

From what I recall (I think it was in a thread over in the Level1techs forum), I believe it actually is required due to the actual power requirements of this card.

The LSI 9300 16i is an x8 card (it actually has two 8i chips welded together under that oversized heatsink) so it requires more power than an 8i card.

Per the user guide, the board requires 26.9 watts of power to function properly. A PCIe x8 connection can only deliver 25 watts at the motherboard socket. This remains true even if you plug the card into an x16 slot due to the x8 LSI card not having x16 power traces. So, they designed the power circuit to draw the additional power needed from the PSU via a 6 pin power connector.

Now, whether this helps your situation or not, I don't know. I agree though since ASUS told you it wasn't compatible it isn't worth wasting time on. However, I mainly pointed this out to indicate that the card might not be defective. It sounds like a kluge of a design for the board, though.

Edit: According to the card user manual. The auxiliary power connector needs to be used "if auxiliary power is required for your system design".

So, it may be an issue on some systems but not with others.

Here is a link to the user guide.

BTW, the LSI 9305 -16i (which is more expensive on eBay, probably being due to it being a newer card and also offering SAS3) only requires 16.2 watts per its user guide..

 

[boondocks]

By coincidence, I was just looking at some LSI 9300 cards this week since they are both so cheap and available on eBay as I'm thinking about building a NAS/Proxmox server. Was doing research to see if there are lots of reported problems with them (I wasn't interested in RAID, only in using them as an IT mode HBA for refurb data center SATA/SAS drives).

From what I recall (I think it was in a thread over in the Level1techs forum), I believe it actually is required due to the actual power requirements of this card.

The LSI 9300 16i is an x8 card (it actually has two 8i chips welded together under that oversized heatsink) so it requires more power than an 8i card.

Per the user guide, the board requires 26.9 watts of power to function properly. A PCIe x8 connection can only deliver 25 watts at the motherboard socket. This remains true even if you plug the card into an x16 slot due to the x8 LSI card not having x16 power traces. So, they designed the power circuit to draw the additional power needed from the PSU via a 6 pin power connector.

Now, whether this helps your situation or not, I don't know. I agree though since ASUS told you it wasn't compatible it isn't worth wasting time on. However, I mainly pointed this out to indicate that the card might not be defective. It sounds like a kluge of a design for the board, though.

Edit: According to the card user manual. The auxiliary power connector needs to be used "if auxiliary power is required for your system design".

So, it may be an issue on some systems but not with others.

Here is a link to the user guide.

BTW, the LSI 9305 -16i (which is more expensive on eBay, probably being due to it being a newer card and also offering SAS3) only requires 16.2 watts per its user guide..

Sweet. You wouldn't happen to have a pinout for the power connector for the 9300?

 

[Steltek]

Sweet. You wouldn't happen to have a pinout for the power connector for the 9300?

No, I don't. The manual only mentions the auxiliary connector is 6 pin, and my reading indicates that it is in fact a standard 75 watt PCIe 6-pin PSU power connector (which would obviously not be supplied by LSI/Broadcom) which would have three 12v pins on one side and three grounds on the other.

 

[boondocks]

No, I don't. The manual only mentions the auxiliary connector is 6 pin, and my reading indicates that it is in fact a standard 75 watt PCIe 6-pin PSU power connector (which would obviously not be supplied by LSI/Broadcom) which would have three 12v pins on one side and three grounds on the other.

Thanks. That's what I remember as well. There would be no need to supply 3v or 5v.

 

[Steltek]

Thanks. That's what I remember as well. There would be no need to supply 3v or 5v.

Yeah, I wouldn't think so. And, it seems like a flip of a coin that it is even needed between systems. I read some posts from folks that were troubleshooting things like unexplained drive dropouts or random strange errors that corrected when the aux power was added. I only even researched it anyway in the first place as it raised warning flags because of all the cheap 9300s on eBay (cheapest I saw was $34.20 for a used one) despite having 16 ports.

I think I'll pay the extra to go with the more expensive 9305. That way, I can avoid this kind of mess and be able to mix SATA/SAS2/SAS3 drives without needing expanders (I see no way I'd ever use over 16 ports).

 

[boondocks]

Yeah adding the aux power to the board did nothing for me.
Once drives are added, on boot up the desktop and taskbar disappear. Weird behavior, same as I ran into last year fighting with this board and this mobo.
Back to the Adaptec card until it croaks, I reckon.
Save the pennies for a newer card another day. I have spent too much on cheap cards already.

 

[boondocks]

So problem solved. I bought a 9400-16i card and it's working beautifully.

However, even after following instructions to the letter, I can't get MSM (megaraid storage manager) to work.
I downloaded JAF-1_2_0 from GitHub
I created the c:\jre\bin folders.
added the javax.activation.jar to the bin folder
created a system variable JRE_HOME and set C:\jre\jdk8u282-b08-jre\

But....no joy...and on bootup I get a popup saying failed to create process.

Any clues here??

Never mind, I got it working.

Thanks.

 

[boondocks]

Well actually I got MSM to open, but it does not recognize my pc as the server, so I can't log in. Arrgghh! lol.