Externals, Internals, Installation, and Testing
Externals
We've already shown the front, so here is the rear layout:
While there are plenty of motherboards with eight SATA ports on-board, anything pushing beyond that figure typically requires a RAID card or higher end HBA, and these parts moved on to some form of grouped cable nearly a decade ago. These include mini-SAS and more recently mini-SAS HD. The SAS format is physically compatible with SATA, and many SAS cards are electrically/logically backwards compatible with SATA as well, so no issues there.
Given the above, the MB516SP-B switches over to mini-SAS HD ports (which accept SFF-8643 cable ends), which drops the connector count to 4 instead of the 16 individual SATA ports that would otherwise be required. This opens up some additional room that can be used for extra SATA power connectors (also a total of four, though they are all on a common bus internally, so less can be connected if necessary). Another welcome addition is an 80mm fan, which is much larger than the previous model. This fan moved a decent amount of air, even at the low setting, and was very quiet while doing so.
Internals
We worked with ICY DOCK early on in testing this particular part, and in that process, we updated to a revised version of the PCB, so we had two on-hand and could show both the front side and back side in the same pic. The newer version of the PCB is what will be present in all shipping models of the MB516SP-B.
The PCB layout was good, and any discrepancies I'd pick out are likely attributable to our early parts likely being hand soldered.
Installation
The drive sleds are not tool-less, but the four screws per drive were not overly difficult, though it was definitely repetitive when dealing with 16 drives. Seen here is the unit powered up on the test bench. Indicator lights are a single color, solid green for installed drives that are idle. The individual drive lights flash during activity.
Testing
Since the MB516SP-B does nothing more than act as an electrical pass-through for the data lines passing through its backplane, there's not a lot to test here beyond confirming that all drives negotiate at full speed. We confirmed this with two different RAID cards – A Highpoint RocketRAID 840A and an Areca ARC-1883ix-24. Here's a quick result with the 840A:
Above was with the full array of 16 Kingston DC400 960GB SSDs. That doesn't work out to full SATA bandwidth of all SSDs, but that's because we are bumping up against the rated 6GB/s bandwidth of the RAID card itself. Let's drop that down to 14 drives:
Still going 6GB/s with 14drives, which works out to 428 MB/s. This is well above the 'next rung down' of 3Gb/s – in the case where the SSDs were negotiating at a lower speed, but let's try and get closer to full drive throughput using some better tools:
Dropping down to 8 drives and using Iometer, we see over 4GB/s (at 128K sequential QD32). Dividing this throughput across the drives works out to 515 MB/s, which is much closer to the expected full-speed throughput of the installed SATA 6Gb/s SSDs. I then created another 8-drive array using the second half of the drives and got the same result, confirming all ports/drives were capable of full speeds via the MB516SP-B.
Allyn, We’d LUV to see a
Allyn, We’d LUV to see a future review of the recently announced IcyDock ToughArmor MB699VP-B:
4 Bay 2.5″ NVMe U.2 SSD Mobile Rack For External 5.25″ Bay
https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=255
This is interesting. What is
This is interesting. What is the highest temperature on prolonged read/write?
It’s barely above ambient so
It's barely above ambient so long as the fan is running. There is a lot of room for airflow on this cage, and the 80mm fan moves a decent amount of air even at low speed.
I just read the review of
I just read the review of this and it looks like a real winner in both the performance aspect being fairly good and the ease of use.
My real question is this do the cables to connect the unit to a raid card come with it or do you have to buy those on your own. If they do not come with it what will a set of Data cables set you back. The raid card you have in the picture what is it worth and are there other options that are cheaper if that card is a bit costly?
This setup looks like it would work well with lets say 16 2TB 2.5 HDD drives or for that matter 1TB HDD drives and still give you great performance and a lot of storage but I would think that with 16 spindle drives the heat output would be a lot higher.
Allyn and I have had a long
Allyn and I have had a long running debate about
Highpoint controllers, and I must concede that
he is usually always right for preferring
the more expensive models like Areca.
As Allyn explains, he used two different AICs,
one of which is a Highpoint RocketRAID 840A.
“We confirmed this with two different RAID cards – A Highpoint RocketRAID 840A and an Areca ARC-1883ix-24”
https://www.pcper.com/image/view/90613?return=node%2F69501
HighPoint RocketRAID 840A PCIe 3.0 x8 6Gb/s SATA RAID Host Bus Adapter:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP4VE3760&Tpk=9SIA6ZP4VE3760
As far as I know, that model 840A does NOT come
with compatible cables; they must be purchased
separately. Perhaps Allyn could provide us
with a make and model number for the cables
that he did use successfully.
HighPoint RocketRAID 3740A 12Gb/s PCIe 3.0 x8 SAS/SATA RAID Host Bus Adapter:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115206&Tpk=N82E16816115206
The latter is designed to work with 12G SAS devices.
Unfortunately, SATA-III is still stuck at 6G.
It would be nice if the industry would embrace a
SATA-IV standard that supports 12G and 16G clock speeds,
and optionally supported the 128b/130b jumbo frame
in the PCIe 3.0 standard.
This approach would allow chipsets to “sync” with
storage subsystems:
http://supremelaw.org/patents/BayRAMFive/SATA-IV.Presentation.pdf
We can still hope.
You have to buy the cables,
You have to buy the cables, which makes sense because you could also use this enclosure with a RAID card that had mini-SAS (non HD) as an example, and would then need a different cable type. Heck, you could even connect a set of 4 SATA ports on the host to a single mini-SAS HD connector of this enclosure.
GREAT to know about these
GREAT to know about these other cabling options, Allyn!
You are THE BEST, MAN!
/s/ Paul
The 7mm spindle drives that
The 7mm spindle drives that fit in this enclosure would only be single platter and would generally be lower power designs.
Oops! Just found a 12G SAS
Oops! Just found a 12G SAS SSD:
only $2,400 for 800GB:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAD075UU5896&Tpk=9SIAD075UU5896
HP’s model is a little bit cheaper:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA25V6X63773&Tpk=9SIA25V6X63773
only $2,365!
Also, Allyn, I may have
Also, Allyn, I may have missed it, but after a second read, I didn’t see any mention of the RAID mode you used during testing. Was it RAID-0, or some other RAID mode? Thanks!
It was RAID-0. Keeping it
It was RAID-0. Keeping it simple for these tests.
If anyone is curious, the
If anyone is curious, the Highpoint 840A is also bootable:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series-rr800-specification.htm
click on “Advanced RAID Features”
and find:
Bootable RAID Array YES
This looks like an
This looks like an interesting “ingest option” for those HD/UHD Cameras that use standard SSDs for recording media. Being able to “insert” 16 SSDs could allow you to ingest from 16 SSDs to a “big” drive or drive array on board the “ingest machine”, whether that’s 16 individual cameras, or simply 16 SSDs from a smaller number of cameras.
Great review Alyn. Your input
Great review Alyn. Your input is always the highlight for me on the podcast.
We will be applying shortly
We will be applying shortly for a Utility Patent
on a device that clones Allyn Malventano.
Stay tuned: Film at 11!