Any reason to prefer LSISAS1068E over onboard Intel 5 Series/3400 Series?

[Robert Trevellyan]

Dell PowerEdge T110, Xeon X3440 @ 2.53GHz, 16GB ECC
RAIDZ2: 2x WD6400AAKS, 2x WD20EFRX
FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE
(two more WD20EFRX arriving tomorrow to replace the two WD6400AAKS)

The T110 motherboard has 5 onboard SATA ports and one eSATA port. In dmesg the chipset is reported as Intel 5 Series/3400 Series.

When I bought the T110 used it came with a Dell SAS6/iR card (LSISAS1068E), which I haven't been using, but it finally dawned on me that I could flash it to IT mode using the LSI SAS 3081E-R firmware.

As far as I know, both the onboard SATA ports and the LSI 1068E don't benefit from hard drives larger than 2TB, so that's moot.

The LSI 1068E supports more drives, but the case only has 4 bays and my storage needs are modest, so that seems like a non-issue too.

My forum and Google searches didn't reveal any direct comparisons - that would have been too easy - nor any big red warning signs over either. Any reason to prefer one over the other?

EDIT: the cabling is a bit tidier with the LSI card ... meh.

 

[marbus90]

none.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

none.

Yes, the only potential benefit I can still see is that if for some reason I want to find a way to install more drives, it's an LSI controller, unlike the controller in my HighPoint Rocket 640L.

Thanks.