What SAS HBA for ASUS Sabertooth Z87 LGA1150?

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MacPara

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May 5, 2017
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Hey guys,

I am trying to add a SAS HBA to my ASUS Sabertooth system. No need for disks, just a simple 6Gb/s HBA to support a LTO-7 tape drive. Any recommendations as to what works and what doesn't?
So far I have tried an Adaptec 78165 RAID controller set to HBA mode. It seems to work somehow as the BIOS extension shows up during boot (that's how got into the card's setup to set it to HBA mode, but the card never shows under W10 Pro's device manager, so I am wondering if there is another card that has been proven to work with this motherboard under W10 to save some time getting the tape working.

I contacted adaptec about the issue as well and they told me this 78165 card is an OEM version for Dell with the ID KT1V. I am having a hell of a time finding a driver for this thing.
(This has been covered in another thread and the solution is: Don't worry, the adaptec 78165 driver works for the OEM Dell version as well, no difference).
 
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M
A PCIe 2.0 card should cause you no problems at all. Could have just been something with the driver trying to drive that other card.

I install LSI 9266-8i RAID cards in PCIe 3.0 slots ALL the time. Its never a problem. Naturally the best read/write I can get off of any array is 4000MB/s but that's of no concern as my arrays are all using spinning disks, and only 5 typically. I've run a SAS expander off a 9266 with 12 x 8TB enterprise drives on a PCIe 3.0 slot. No problems, full speed as expected.

My only concern would be what else you have connected that is using PCIe lanes. Double check your mobo manual to verify you don't have anything connected to one PCIe connection that's sharing PCIe lanes with another slot somewhere...
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marko55

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Nov 29, 2015
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The LSI (now broadcom) 9200 works great.

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-8e
https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-4i4e

Take your pick based on the need for external only, which I'm assuming you want for the tape drive, or a combo of 4-internal and 4-external (maybe you'd benefit from some more internal SATA connections via a SAS-to-SATA breakout cable).

I suggest hitting up ebay for these. Just be careful as you probably need the high profile bracket, not the low profile. You can also find just the bracket for a few bucks also. Also, I wouldn't buy any that are branded HP/Dell/etc. Find one that's specifically LSI.
 
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MacPara

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May 5, 2017
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The LSI SAS 9207-4i4e looks like a good match. I just can't seem to find a Windows 10 driver on their website. Their other cards don't list W10 drivers either, it seems. Or are they supported natively?
 
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MacPara

Prominent
May 5, 2017
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My LSI 9207-4i4e is on the way but I wanted to add another data point. I finally got my adaptec 78165 to work - kind of. It's a PCIe 2 card and I didn't think much of that fact before adding it to my PCIe 3 Sabertooth board. I also have a GTX 1060 which is in the PCIe16_1 slot running at 16x. The 78165 would not work in any other slot than PCIe16_2 which is right next to the GTX card, setting both slots to 8x speed.
While trying to get the LTO7 tape drive installed, after getting the 78165 recognized I spent hours with the system running and rebooting over and over. The overall feel was that the system (running an i7-4770K) had become somewhat sluggish. I didn't take the time to really investigate it so I don't have any numbers but it really felt wanting.
Finally after hours of ticking around the tape drive was added to the system and drivers seem to all be happy. That's when the system froze. I mean no response to keyboard or mouse, no "blue screen", nothing. It just froze. I forced a shutdown and tried again only to find that it froze again after about 15 minutes of use. I gave up at that point as it was too late to play Sherlock with this one. Removed the card this morning and - voila - the system was right back to its former performance.
The LSI card is a PCIe 3, so I hope to get a better experience with the installation. If not I might change my plans and build a small backup server instead of trying to integrate it with the main workstation.
 
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marko55

Honorable
Nov 29, 2015
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A PCIe 2.0 card should cause you no problems at all. Could have just been something with the driver trying to drive that other card.

I install LSI 9266-8i RAID cards in PCIe 3.0 slots ALL the time. Its never a problem. Naturally the best read/write I can get off of any array is 4000MB/s but that's of no concern as my arrays are all using spinning disks, and only 5 typically. I've run a SAS expander off a 9266 with 12 x 8TB enterprise drives on a PCIe 3.0 slot. No problems, full speed as expected.

My only concern would be what else you have connected that is using PCIe lanes. Double check your mobo manual to verify you don't have anything connected to one PCIe connection that's sharing PCIe lanes with another slot somewhere. Your first two PCIe slots should be just fine and will run at x8 like you said. Once you start playing with the 3rd PCIe slot and m.2 connectors things can vary widely depending on how the board is set up, and Asus is BRUTAL about resource sharing on their boards (this is why I ditched them ages ago).
 
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