LSI 9300-16i 16-Port 12Gb/s SAS Controller HBA Card with P16 IT Mode for ZFS TrueNAS unRAID

I was a little worried as I have a bit of an obscure server. Plugged it in to my riser card instead of the Raid Expander. Changed out the cables and booted up. OS saw every drive perfectly. Because it is in a server chassis, it runs 50c which is perfectly content.

Came loaded with 16.0.12.00 on both controller, plug and play for my unraid server, and a usual, it gets HOT found a mount for a 120mm fan in the slot next to it, keeps it nice and cool... definitely recommend!

Using with Windows Server 2022It doesnt seem to be on the lastest P16 firmware, but that is easily rectified by using IBM Megaraid to update from Windows using the files from FreeNAS/TrueNAS (Google it). This is an important thing to do as I had continual disconnections of SATA-based devices until I installed it.It runs a bit hot, but I screwed an 80mm fan into the heatsing and it runs nice and cool.A good value.

I kept reading about these things running hot. I bought fans and am prepared to zip tie a fan to one if need be. At the moment I have two of the 4 ports occupied and 8 drives running off of it. It has worked great an as expected. It leaves a lot of room when I can potentially get 16 drives running off of this. I am using in an UNRAID NAS configuration.I can recommend these cards but I think everyone should be aware (as I was) to the heat they can generate and be prepared to mitigate that if need be.

The product itself is good. Fully operational and works as expected. The only complaint is that product is listed with P16 IT mode firmware installed. This was not the case when the product was received from seller SCSI4ME. P16 firmware for this particular card (16i) can be found on TrueNAS as Broadcom only lists the 8i P16 firmware. Be aware that the 16i contains 2 controllers and will need firmware on both to be updated.

This is my first time using an HBA and I was very pleased to see how plug and play it was. I ordered some cables featured in the "frequently purchased together" section on Amazon and thankfully it all played nicely together. I have 7 SATA SSDs connected to this thing with no issues so far. I plan on adding more drives shortly.As noted in the headline - this thing gets HOT HOT HOT. I pulled an 80mm fan out of my PC graveyard and zip-tied it to the PCIe brackets at the back of my NAS case. I also put a 140mm on the size with the connectors blowing toward the card and it's slightly warmer than room temperature now. Without the fans I nearly burned my fingers removing the card during my initial testing.10/10 would recommend this card.

Arrived quickly in good packaging. Firmware version was not same as advertised.

3D printed a fan mount for it but honestly this is thing is great for what I need!