I am redoing the previous Supermicro quote to reflect some recent decisions. Specifically, changing to LSI from RocketRaid.
- Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
- SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping)
- LSI SAS 3081E-R $235
- SATA cables $60
- Crucial 3x2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping)
- Xeon W3520 $310
Total price with shipping $1560
I also found that LSI card on google.
And cheaper cables.
I have seen reports of trouble from time to time with people trying to use SATA DVD/CD burners and FreeBSD. Although using an old PATA will be known to work, it is worth an effort to move in the direction of fixing any SATA DVD/CD drive issues rather than moving back to older tech. You may also not be in the ‘problem’ category either; you may be lucky and it “Just Works”. YMMV
About the controller: WOW! I have been looking for something such as this for some time. The Areca products I’ve looked at are good kit, but a little on the pricey side for non work-related servers. While I’m sure there are bigger/faster/more expensive models available (you know this I’m sure), this is a lot of controller for the buck!
Must have at least x4, and preferably x8 slot support wrt PCIe. An x1 slot only has 500MB/s bandwidth and is too slow creating a bottleneck choke point (I’m also sure you know this too). x8 cards are usually in the expensive category and x4 for use in a home server is perfectly adequate.
I would be very interested to hear reports on how well this card works for you, once you’ve done the ‘dirty work’. :-)
Mike Powell aka qbit
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