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Myanmar, Naypyidaw
1 Level
766 Review
64 Karma

Review on IO Crest Controller Non Raid SI PEX40064 by Brad Collins

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Overheating but manageable

So I use them in a budget server I've built and I use them quite heavily. So overheating, which I don't see as an inherent design flaw, just the potential to use it for more than what's probably intended. I had 3 cards with 10 disks with software RAID 10 on an Ubuntu server with mdadm. Things became more and more unstable and the server stalled. I switched to Windows thinking there might have been a problem with Linux and the card drivers, but when the symptoms were the same I realized I had a hardware problem. The machine worked fine without the cards so I started testing it. Nothing really happened, but when I felt the card after removing it, the heatsink actually gave me a real burn. I'm fine, nobody's worried. So I replaced the factory heatsinks with these: http://a.co/iAfqtT0. Then they added a fan mounted above the cards to constantly blow air around them. Things are really moving now that 3 of these cards are installed with 10 hard drives on top of the cards. No more freezing and the system works fast. The drives work as expected in RAID 10. Big budget cards, just don't overload them without proper cooling.

Pros
  • Large selection
Cons
  • Makes me nervous