Are there any HBAs that DON'T require cooling?

[CrayonEater]

Hi,

First, this forum has been helpful in getting my feet wet, but I need to find some sort of drive expansion that doesn't require any airflow, or virtually none. My NAS requirements are absolute silence, and the lowest power consumption I can get away with. I've seen some posts here and on other sites suggesting that the Dell H310 and the IBM M1015 *might* run cool enough to get by, though everyone still recommends a fan.

If it's a "no", that there are no HBAs that can stay sufficiently cool under light load without a fan, I'd grudgingly consider a small fan if it contributes absolutely no noise whatsoever and it pretty close to an out-of-the-box solution that's cheap, quick and easy. I'm not very handy, and using an HBA is not important enough that I'd instead get a cheap SATA card and call it a day. However, any thoughts, comments and opinions are appreciated.

 

[Samuel Tai]

SATA card support in FreeNAS is hit or miss. HBAs don't count silence as a design criterium, as they would typically be installed in a server inside a data center, and be managed remotely, so fan noise wouldn't matter.

If this is a critical design factor for you, consider getting a motherboard with a lot of SATA ports, and connecting them to SSDs.

 

[Redcoat]

I have 2 boxes with H310's that do not have their own fan, but the 6 HDD's in each box are cooled by two front and one rear case fan (there's also a large CPU cooler in each), so the whole stays adequately cool, but it isn't "silent". But I'm a 76-year old with tinnitus, so my silent isn't likely the same as yours...
If you don't have to resort to SSD's to have a "silent-enough" server, but can keep HDD's cool enough with fans and meet your auditory limits, then I imagine you might be able to use an HBA as long as the enclosure doesn't limit heat dissipation.
Don't even think about the "cheap SATA card" route - there are enough bad stories here to dissuade you if you look for them. Go to ebay and get a used HBA for the price of two "cheap SATA cards" as many of us here have done - or forget the need for a card and make the motherboard choice as @Samuel Tai suggests.

 

[jgreco]

Or you can see about bapping a large heatsink onto the HBA and leaving the slot next to it open, to decrease the need for forced airflow. It is totally possible to get 10 watts dissipated without a lot of drama, it's just that the card's normal heatsink isn't designed for that, and relies on forced air cooling.

 

[CrayonEater]

Any idea what kind of heatsink would work for an H310? I've seen some people recommending some sort of Enzotech, but no specifics on model, and they still used a fan.


Alternatively, would a SATA expander or port multiplier allow me to add more ports? Performance isn't a huge concern for me. I'm just going to be adding conventional hard drives, no SSDs.

 

[jgreco]

SATA expanders are highly dependent on the chipset used, and most of them are semi-tragic.

Port multipliers are not even well supported by Windows, and the idea of ZFS sharing a single SATA lane with five drives has been well-debunked by people who've tried it at scale, like BackBlaze. Doesn't work even if the hardware "works", which it often doesn't, so, double fail.

 

[Etorix]

Hard drives are not silent, and it only takes a few of them to make background noise that cannot be suppressed. They also need some cooling, i.e. airflow.
Even if you go for an all-flash NAS, the SSD and motherboard still need a minimum of airflow—which admittedly can be provided by very quiet fans.

Depending on how many drives you want (with the above warning that HDDs make noise), your requirements of low power consumption (again, HDDs consume power) and low noise would lead to an Atom C3000 board (Supermicro A2SDi family, up to 12 SATA onboard). These boards still require some cooling for the CPU and the 10 GbE NIC, if present. Take one with a "passive" heat sink and slap a Noctua NF-A6x25 on it: The heatsink is designed for use in a server and does expect to have airflow. The Noctua fan cannot be heard from 50 cm away in open air, much less inside a case, but provides the required cooling.
The second best option is a Xeon D-1500 board (X10SDV family), also with a NF-A6x25—and some case airflow if it has a SAS controller onboard and/or a 10 GbE NIC. 10-15 W more, but more computing power and more PCIe lanes for add-in cards.

 

[CrayonEater]

Thank you. I haven't had much trouble with cooling (or noise) in my Fractal Define R5, though I've only had this a couple weeks. I have 2 PWM fans up front, 1 in the back, and they never ramp up, even under the heaviest of loads. Right now, I have a 14Tb EXoS, and a hodge-podge of 3Tb and 4Tb drives, 2 ODDs and a single Samsung boot SSD. I did just notice two things about my build.

First, there appears to be a manual fan control for what looks like a 2-pin fan header.

Second, I just realized that the only available PCIe slot on my motherboard only runs at x4 2.0 standard. I had been under the impression is was an x8 slot, silly me. I caught a post on another site about somebody trying to run the H310 in a 2.0 x4 slot and it ran terrible despite being a 2.0 card. I'd be curious if the 9207 ran any better, even at the slower speed.