m1015 freenas build

[lbonnell]

can anyone suggest a systemboard that i can use with the ibm 1015 raid/hba card? it seems that it needs x8 pci express. ideally id like a board that i could use 2-3 of these cards on. seems many boards have multiple x16 slots but they work at x8 and x4 but very few with multiple x16/x8 slots that actually work with x8 electrical.

thanks.

 

[ian351c]

Super Micro boards are very popular around here. This one has three 8x PCIe slots: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/X58/X8ST3-F.cfm

 

[b1ghen]

I am also very interested in getting a couple of M1015 since they supposedly work with drives bigger than 2TB.

When you say it needs 8x you mean it has a 8x connector right? Just because it does doesn't usually mean that it needs 8x electrical to work. I haven't used any of these cards but I think it's pretty much in the PCIe standard that any card should work with any number of lanes available as long as it fits physically.

I personally think that using the M1015 in a 4x electrical slot (8x or 16x physical) shouldn't cause any performance issues unless you are using SSD's. 4x PCIe 2.0 is 2GB/s which should be plenty for any 8 mechanical disks you put on the card, sure if you use a SAS expander and hook up 64 drives to the M1015 then it would probably be wise to have it in a 8x electrical slot :)