SAS 9305-24i Host Bus Adapter

[Adam]

Dear HWiNFO Author


I have just purchased SAS 9305-24i Host Bus Adapter and as we all know any LSI Raid/HBA card tend to run pretty hot, so good active cooling is important to keep the heat at bay.

Atm. I have 60mm Noctua fan blowing directly at the passive heat sink at roughly 80% of the speed keeping the chip at 45C at all times.

The fan has curve to rump up to 100% when case temperature gets beyond 23C and that ensures to keep the chip still at 45-46C I have tested this method with Mega Raid manager as this seem to be the only way to see the actualy chip temperature.

Until recently I have been measuring cards temperature using IR temperature gun but that is not exactly the best way of doing it because the chip underneath is much hotter, we talking 10-12C hotter.


I have been using HWiNFO for a long time in combination with Aquacomputer aquasuite to control other things in my system and tbh. of all monitoring software that I have tried and that includes payware, HWiNFO is my favorite, its clear to read, I like the system tray icons that are very visible and it simply works well.

I know this has been asked in other LSI forums and such, whether the HBA card actually temperature can be read by other monitoring software and the answer was always to use either IR temperature gun or Mega Raid manager.

I'm OK with using Mega Raid from time to time to occasionally check chip's actually temperature, but the software is not really great any I rather not even installing it.

Is it possible to implement LSI chip temperature in HWiNFO, that would be so cool.



Thank you

 

[Martin]

I'm sorry, but I don't have any information how to read temperature of LSI adapters. If it's possible, then it's most probably some proprietary method that the vendor doesn't want to disclose.
If you'd come across a tool that's capable of this then let me know...

 

[Adam]

Thanks for your input.


Yes the only thing thus far is Mega Raid and even then, Its very limited.

Thanks anyways.

 

[Martin]

What does it mean that it's very limited?

 

[Adam]

After getting your first response and me login off I didn't realize there was anything else you've asked.


Mega Raid Manager is limited in few areas and that was actually point it out to me by Avago's support as well when I was asking about more details about their software.


For one, If any of the disks or SSD's that are connected to the card would go into sleep mode or died, the software becomes totally unresponsive as it its frozen, you can't even close it, all attached disk have to be ON so in other words not even temperature can be seen and the software has no ability to wake the disks.

Also, If there is an error that accrues in any of the disks, no detail info is giving other then disk error, that's it.

When speaking with Avago support I've been pretty much told that the best is to use with Hard Disk Sentinel, It works well then, other than that its only good for firmware updates and see the chip temperature.

 

[Martin]

Thanks for the additional information. So Hard Disk Sentinel is able to show the temperature too?
And just to be clear - this is the temperature of the Host Controller, not particular drives, correct?

 

[Adam]

Sorry I should have made it more clear. No, the Hard Disk Sentinel cannot read the chip temperature, but so is the Mega Raid Manager can't read drives temperature and that's why Mega Raid is so limited, so ultimately what Avago support said is that they tend to use both in combination to have both, chip and drives temperatures alongside with other info that Hard Disk Sentinel can give them.


Tbh. I'm surprised that LSI is not making this easier, obviously their Raid and HBA cards are very popular , why would the software be so limited, beats me.

 

[Martin]

Well, in that case the only possibility would be to inquire LSI, but I doubt they will provide this kind of proprietary information...

 

[Adam]

I think Aida and other payware monitoring software did tried to acquire the appropriate libraries to be able add the chips temp, but with no luck. I don't understand the secret behind LSI thinking...o well, It is what it is

Thank you for your effort.

 

[Dalai]

Hmm, MegaRAID Storage Manager can read the host controller temperature on a SuperMicro H11SSL-C board with onboard LSI/Broadcom 3008 controller. It also shows the temperatures of the two connected Samsung 860 Pro drives (in RAID-1). See these screenshots:


So if it can't read temperatures from your controller, it seems it depends on the RAID controller.

Regards
Dalai

 

[Adam]

Might be compatibility reason or simple fact that Raid and HBA runs differently. I can see host controller temp but that's all and obviously it seem to be common as the Avago rep mentioned to me not been able to read HDD temp unless using Hard Disk Sentinel.



Btw. I'm on win 7 pro . I think between hardware itself and OS, the info you can access via Mega Raid Manager can be seen differently.