BROADCOM 05-25703-00 8 Channel SAS 9305-16i Storage Controller - Multi-Colour

Your typical HBA, works well, runs hot. Comes in IT mode but plan on flashing the firmware if you want it to work in a UEFI setting (easy to do, surprisingly tough to find the firmware! Search Google and use the 45 drives result). Keep a small fan pointed at it or ensure your case has PLENTY of airflow.

Works great for my Qty 8 Exos 18TB dual-actuator SAS drives, plugged into a B550 / 5950x system, running Proxmox 8.4 hypervisor with the SAS card passed-thru to my TrueNAS Electric Eel instance. The card probably lives a very simple life with only spindle drives connected, but they easily move almost 2GBytes/sec when sending purely linear streaming writes.

I am using it as an HBA for TrueNAS with SATA drives. It worked without any problem in an older SuperMicro motherboard.

Great card, needs either a fan added or a proper server case for cooling similar to all these style of HBAs. If you are using this card for SATA drives make sure the firmware is running the latest, or near latest, version because there is a bug in older FW versions that causes SATA drives to randomly disconnect after a period of time. The card I got was still on an old version and needed to be upgraded. The Broadcom website is a pain to find downloads on so I recommend searching for "<card name> firmware reddit" to find direct links to the firmware and flashing utility downloads.

Works well as a simple HBA breakout card. No issues, with functionality. Home NAS use with 4 drives. However, my card did not come with any instructions and I had to lookup the card model and find information as close as possible for setup and configuration/confirmation. Not sure if I was unlucky and did not get paperwork, or if that was expected. Card 'should' come ready out of the box to be BIOS configured. Note: card heatsink gets very hot during operation. Uncertain of the thermal rating for the card/chip, but just in case, I installed a bracket and fan for direct air cooling. Temp is much cooler. The extra $15 for those parts is worth it to me to keep this card running as cool as possible.

I recently got this card to drive a 16 Bay Expander Backplane. The same case has two hot swap 2.5" 15mm SAS/Sata bays. The four SFF-8643 connectors proved to be plenty since an expander backplane is being used. The backplane has five SFF-8643 connectors and has a built in expander so I used the 5th connector to drive the two hot swap 2.5" bays and this controller sees and handles them all perfectly and doesn't break a sweat. I also own a 9305-24i which as two more SFF-8643 connectors where the notch in the heatsink is. Both cards have the same SOC and heatsink but this one only has 16 ports but still has 24 lanes so it does not have the limitations a standard 16 lane 16 port card would have. Out of the 16 ports, 4 per SFF-8643 connectors, eight of them can be doubled as some drives have dual capability. In my case I am using 18 drives but the expander backplane takes care of the extra two ports needed using two out of four ports on a single SFF-8643 connector, no need for a card with more ports. These cards are intended to have air moving across the heatsink as they would in a real server case. For other uses one may need an aux fan to move air across it. It's a server card and designed to be in a server case plain and simple. What I meant by the last of the Dual Mode controllers from Broadcom is that their controllers that superseded these are tri-mode, SAS, SATA, and NVMe. There is a new interface called the U.3 that SATA, SAS or NVMe drives can plug into so the same controller and backplane can be used for all three in the future but for now, Ill be using spinning SAS drives for a while yet. I do not know how many U.3 backplanes even exist yet so the 9305 series will do fine for years to come.

All I had to do was plug was shutdown my unraid server, plug this into the motherboard, connect the cable matters sas to sata cable, and that was it! easiest upgrade I've done in a long time! No issues at all! and speeds are exactly the same as my motherboard sata ports, actually faster I think. Tremendous value for the money, as now I can go from 2drives to the maximum my Fractal Design Define 7 XL can hold, which is anywhere around 18-20 drives!

Works great passed through to TrueNAS! Currently loaded with 12 18 TB SAS drives! It comes with old firmware but it’s working as intended so felt no need to upgrade! Have a case 120mm fan blowing on it and no temperature issues!