L-SAS from SuperMicro X10SL7-F to SFF-8482 cables?

Hi!

I bought SAS drives from a group purchase here and have a SuperMicro X10SL7-F with 8 SAS ports. According to the manual there are L-SAS ports. What cable should I buy to connect them to those 8 SAS HDD I purchased? I took a photo just in case…

they are the blue connectors. I found those on Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sff-8482-Sas-29-P-a-7-Pin-Sata-Unidad-de-Disco-Duro-Raid-Cable-Con-15-Pines-L6T9/174099493647?hash=item288923730f:g:ELAAAOSwcdtd0jFE . Would that work?

Thank you.

ps: I also read “You may need to do the 3.3v power mod, same as WD Shuckable drives” from the Group purchase post. What does that exactly mean in my case? I eventually also have a HBA card, the LSI SAS 9210-8i 8-port so eventually I could use that card if it helps not doing the power mod :slight_smile:

Those SAS2 ports are from your onboard LSI 2308. Those cables should work. If you’ll ever need more than 8 SAS drives, you’ll want two reverse breakout cables (4x SATA to 1x 8087) from the board into a SAS expander or backplane, then forward breakout (8087 to 4x 8482) to the drives.

You’ll also need to power the drives. If no backplane, then SATA power splitters with the 3.3v line removed.

Thank you for the answer. I am still not 100% clear though: reading specifications it says SAS has built-in power in the connectors. So why do I need to add power?
Also in the event I would like more than 8 drives (which I doubt I will) can’t I use the extra SAS card and then be able to max out to 16 drives in total?

Now depending on this “adding power” issue, can I chose to use the HBA card with 2x 1 to 4 cables and avoid having to “manually” add power? Actually when does that built-in power in the connector is really implemented?

Thank you for your patience. Likewise if you know a good resource to read rather than type everything yourself I can definitely read :blush:

The drive end of the connector is all-in-one, but the motherboard end is data only. All interconnect cables you will find for the SAS drives have a power input on them somewhere - either SATA or Molex.

If using a backplane, the backplane itself will have power inputs separate from the data connectors.

Ok so that helps me understand a lot more what I was missing :sweat_smile:

Now on the power side then I can chose either SATA or Molex. Do I need to remove something from the SATA power cables which I don’t need to with the Molex power? Or the SATA input on the SAS cable end will be already “ready” to get the SATA power in the way it should?

PS: I also noticed the cables are specified to support only 3Gbps while the SAS-2 are 6Gbps. Are there faster cables which I haven’t found yet or is it normal?

If you are using the SATA power from the PSU and the drives are the white label drives removed from external enclosures like the WD Easystores, then you will need to drop the 3.3V wire at some point prior to the drives. If the SAS cables have Molex power inputs, or you are using Molex to SATA adapters, it is not an issue.

3Gbps HBAs and cables are already faster than a spinning drive can ever be.

Thanks a lot! I ordered the ones with a Molex power input then :smiley:
Ok so 6Gbps connector from mobo to 6Gbps connector on HDD using a 3Gbps cable is ok I guess. I just feel it sounded weird…

Thanks a lot, you really helped me clear out my issues!

This is just tangentially related, but you may find it interesting.

The 9201 HBA and the cables handle 6Gbps just fine. The expander is 3Gbps but can be firmware updated to 6Gbps. Unless you’re running more than about 20 drives in RAID10, or are using SAS SSDs, the spinning platters will bottleneck you long before the HBA or expander.

Hi! Actually totally related to my bandwidth question and definitely explaining me why I shouldn’t worry and eventually what I should care about.
Thank you

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