8-Drive bay/SAS 12GB HBA recommendations

[SHOES]

Hello all,

I have been struggling to find a good solution for my drives. I have 8 SAS 12GB 2.5" drives. I am looking to put them in my Fractal 7xl case (generic tower). While hot swap would be nice, it is not a requirement. My board has several PCIe 4.0 slots available. I've been looking at the 9500-8i HBA, but am not sure that is the way to go. The SF8654 ports on the card seems to demand I use a backplane. I haven't found any good options that will fit in my case.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Shoes

 

[Arwen]

Their are devices that take 1 x 5.25" drive bay and turn it into 4 x 2.5" drive bays. I have one, don't remember where I bought it, but could probably look it up if interested. The one I have requires SATA data cables. (But that is just the drive bay side connector, they can be SAS drives.)

Their are break out cables from SAS controller cards to SATA type ports. Make sure you get a "forward" cable, not reverse as I have been told the "reverse" ones don't work for "forward" uses. Not sure why. Here is one for example, (but, I don't take any responsibility for it, it just happened to be the first one I found during a web search);

https://www.amazon.com/Slim-SFF-8654-Target-Fanout-Cable/dp/B073F67WVN/ref=asc_df_B073F67WVN/

Your Fractal Define 7 XL enclosure appears to have 2 x 5.25" drive bays. So that would support your 8 x 2.5" drives. Not sure how that enclosure opens up the front panel...