Question Dell XPS-8300 and a PCIe to SATA Adapter

In2Photos · Sep 23, 2024

I have a motherboard (OY2MRG), i5-2300, and 8GB of RAM from an old Dell XPS-8300 that I am using for my unRAID server. Recently I have started getting back into storing media on this server and so I picked up a couple of 12TB HDD to add to the server for more storage. I also bought a PCIe to SATA adapter to add more ports as the 4 onboard were already in use. I bought this one as it has the ASM1064 chip which is supposed to be supported by unRAID (Asmedia and J Micron controllers supposedly work the best with unRAID). I got everything installed and powered on the system, but the BIOS nor unRAID see the drives. The card has some LEDs on it and they turn on when the PC boots up, but go off as soon as post completes and do not come back on. The BIOS is severely limited in its options and I don't see any options that jump out at me but I'm certainly open to suggestions. Otherwise it looks like I'm limited to 4 SATA devices for the time being until I upgrade the platform (which might be sooner rather than later if I can't get these drives working, lol).

In2Photos · Sep 23, 2024

Turns out the card only works in the x16 slot on this motherboard. So the drives appear now at least I just can't add a GPU to this system to handle transcoding. Bummer.

bba-tcg · Sep 23, 2024

Pretty bizarre that a x1 card only works in an x16 slot. Maybe there's a BIOS option to enable/configure the x1 slot or perhaps a jumper on the motherboard.

In2Photos · Sep 23, 2024

bba-tcg said:
Pretty bizarre that a x1 card only works in an x16 slot. Maybe there's a BIOS option to enable/configure the x1 slot or perhaps a jumper on the motherboard.

It's very weird. I have a gigabit NIC in the bottom x1 slot as the onboard NIC went out years ago. It works in any of the three x1 slots. But not the SATA card. I'll look for a jumper on the motherboard. The BIOS is so basic. No PCI settings that I could find anywhere.

bba-tcg · Sep 23, 2024

In2Photos said:
It's very weird. I have a gigabit NIC in the bottom x1 slot as the onboard NIC went out years ago. It works in any of the three x1 slots. But not the SATA card. I'll look for a jumper on the motherboard. The BIOS is so basic. No PCI settings that I could find anywhere.

If another card works, probably nothing else to configure. But that's a pretty high cost, slot-wise, to run a x1 card.

Edit: maybe a limit of only one x1 slot active at a time? Have you tried it without the NIC installed (just to see if that's the issue)?

In2Photos · Sep 23, 2024

bba-tcg said:
If another card works, probably nothing else to configure. But that's a pretty high cost, slot-wise, to run a x1 card.

Edit: maybe a limit of only one x1 slot active at a time? Have you tried it without the NIC installed (just to see if that's the issue)?

Hmmm. I have not tried it without the NIC. I'll do that as soon as my new parity drive syncs. Gonna take a few more hours (12TB).

In2Photos · Sep 24, 2024

bba-tcg said:
If another card works, probably nothing else to configure. But that's a pretty high cost, slot-wise, to run a x1 card.

Edit: maybe a limit of only one x1 slot active at a time? Have you tried it without the NIC installed (just to see if that's the issue)?

No luck. Doesn't work in any x1 slot, even with the NIC removed. Strange. I might try it ion another PC at some point and see if it works there. For now, it is doing what I need it to do, just tying up a slot I might need down the road.

bba-tcg · Sep 24, 2024

In2Photos said:
No luck. Doesn't work in any x1 slot, even with the NIC removed. Strange. I might try it ion another PC at some point and see if it works there. For now, it is doing what I need it to do, just tying up a slot I might need down the road.

Bummer to have to give it a x16 slot, for sure.

DAPUNISHER · Sep 24, 2024

In2Photos said:
Turns out the card only works in the x16 slot on this motherboard. So the drives appear now at least I just can't add a GPU to this system to handle transcoding. Bummer.

So not a compatibility issue. Maybe the x1 is not giving it enough juice?

In2Photos · Sep 24, 2024

DAPUNISHER said:
So not a compatibility issue. Maybe the x1 is not giving it enough juice?

Not sure. The lights come on during boot, but once it posts they go away. Maybe Dell did something weird on the x1 slots, although I've seen several different posts of people using a USB card, sound card, NIC, etc in the x1 slots. Not sure why a SATA adapter would be any different to those really.

Steltek · Sep 24, 2024

They advertise it should work in any slot, so it might be worth returning it and trying something else.

bba-tcg · Sep 24, 2024

Steltek said:
They advertise it should work in any slot, so it might be worth returning it and trying something else.

I probably would. Especially since it's so easy to return with Amazon.

In2Photos · Sep 24, 2024

Yeah I might try a different version and see if I get any different results.

Steltek · Sep 24, 2024

Problem is, most of what is sold on Amazon these days is cheap made-in-China no-name crap that isn't worth anything.

Down in the reviews, there are several reports of the cards failing and totally bricking all the drives attached to them.

Not worth a chance to me, given how expensive hard drives are. I'd probably get a Startech or something similar even if it costs twice as much.

In2Photos · Sep 24, 2024

Steltek said:
Problem is, most of what is sold on Amazon these days is cheap made-in-China no-name crap that isn't worth anything.

Down in the reviews, there are several reports of the cards failing and totally bricking all the drives attached to them.

Not worth a chance to me, given how expensive hard drives are. I'd probably get a Startech or something similar even if it costs twice as much.

Unfortunately the StarTech models that are x1 only have 2 ports. While technically that's enough for now I'd like to have a couple of extra ports available for future expansion. Plus, if it starts costing too much just to find an adapter card I might as well upgrade the motherboard/CPU/RAM which I've thought about doing in the future anyway.

DAPUNISHER · Sep 24, 2024

In2Photos said:
I might as well upgrade the motherboard/CPU/RAM which I've thought about doing in the future anyway.

That'd be my call. I see killer deals on CPU/board/ram combos in for sale/trade forums all the time.

Steltek · Sep 24, 2024

In2Photos said:
Unfortunately the StarTech models that are x1 only have 2 ports. While technically that's enough for now I'd like to have a couple of extra ports available for future expansion. Plus, if it starts costing too much just to find an adapter card I might as well upgrade the motherboard/CPU/RAM which I've thought about doing in the future anyway.

I'd forgotten how PCIe limited those Dell XPS 8300s were.

Out of curiosity, how are you fitting all of those hard drives inside the 8300? I presume you are using 5.25" bay converters?

Micrornd · Sep 25, 2024

Some SATA cards require that the "option ROM" be enabled for the slot they are in.
Some MBs have this setting, while other have it enabled by default.
Just something else you might check.

tcsenter · Sep 26, 2024

Go through the BIOS option pages. Sometimes I have seen where Dell has offered the feature to actually disable slots. Or enable/disable option ROM; legacy or UEFI modes, etc.

In2Photos · Sep 28, 2024

OK, new PCIe card came, decided on a 6 port model this time as I realized while doing research on this that 2 of the motherboard SATA ports are capped at 150, not 300. I went through every setting in BIOS but there is nothing to enable/disable any PCIe ports on this model. Any port other than the x16 slot just doesn't work with either card. Even in BIOS any HDD connected to the card does not show up in the boot options. So for now I'm using the new 6 port card and have all of my drives connected to the card and I will see how it performs. Of course this means no GPU for transcoding right now. I'm going to start looking for some sort of platform upgrade I guess. I have a few PCs at work that I need to upgrade, maybe I'll find one I can use for my new server. If not, I'm sure I can find some used parts that will suit the task.

Oh, found something interesting as well doing this. The original NIC does work, for some reason it was disabled in BIOS. The cable doesn't click in though. Maybe that's why a card was added.

tcsenter · Sep 29, 2024

You could get a refurb/used HP Z240 Workstation (Tower) with 6th/7th Gen (and Xeon) Intel CPU and 8GB ~ 16GB RAM for like $100 ~ $120 shipped. Install own OS and drives. Would be heads above that aging 2nd Gen Core XPS 8300.

In2Photos · Sep 29, 2024

tcsenter said:
You could get a refurb/used HP Z240 Workstation (Tower) with 6th/7th Gen (and Xeon) Intel CPU and 8GB ~ 16GB RAM for like $100 ~ $120 shipped. Install own OS and drives. Would be heads above that aging 2nd Gen Core XPS 8300.

Found one with an i7-6700, 32gb RAM, 500gb SSD and a quadro P620 for $150 shipped. Looking now to see how much trouble it is to move to a different case and use a standard ATX PSU. Hmmm.

tcsenter · Sep 29, 2024

In2Photos said:
Found one with an i7-6700, 32gb RAM, 500gb SSD and a quadro P620 for $150 shipped. Looking now to see how much trouble it is to move to a different case and use a standard ATX PSU. Hmmm.

Heck if you're going to transplant into ATX chassis, there may be better options. For the Z240, you'll need an ATX 24-pin to 6+6 pin adapter cable. I would go either with COMeap or Moddiy brand adapter cables, latest cable revision supporting Z240 TWR and SFF. These companies were the earliest to market this solution for adapting an ATX PSU to the proprietary HP motherboard connectors.

Also you might consider the SFF variant not the tower. 1) SFF units tend to be cheaper 2) the motherboard for the SFF is nearly identical in features and supported processors (they share the same BIOS), but IMO has a better layout for the SATA connectors. The tower board has them all over the place, while the SFF board are neat in a row. Plus the tower board has that protruding connector on the side for optional PCI slot expansion board. See:

TOWER

SFF

In2Photos · Sep 30, 2024

tcsenter said:
Heck if you're going to transplant into ATX chassis, there may be better options. For the Z240, you'll need an ATX 24-pin to 6+6 pin adapter cable. I would go either with COMeap or Moddiy brand adapter cables, latest cable revision supporting Z240 TWR and SFF. These companies were the earliest to market this solution for adapting an ATX PSU to the proprietary HP motherboard connectors.

Also you might consider the SFF variant not the tower. 1) SFF units tend to be cheaper 2) the motherboard for the SFF is nearly identical in features and supported processors (they share the same BIOS), but IMO has a better layout for the SATA connectors. The tower board has them all over the place, while the SFF board are neat in a row. Plus the tower board has that protruding connector on the side for optional PCI slot expansion board. See:

TOWER
View attachment 108438

SFF
View attachment 108439

Thanks, that's some good info. Looking through eBAY it doesn't look like the SFF version is much cheaper, but it does provide some more options. Seems like most of them have less RAM and very few have a GPU so I'd need to find one with at least a 7700 for decent transcoding if what I read is correct.

My current setup has 6 HDD so I'm going to have to use the PCIe card no matter which way I go and none of those cases will fit that many drives. Also seems to be a fair amount of Dell Optiplex, Precision Towers and XPS desktops out there. I like the idea of the XPS because it uses standard 24 pin ATX so no adapter necessary even though the adapter seems to work fine. I might be able to move up to an 8th gen i7 as well. Another option could be to just find a CPU/mobo/RAM since I really don't need any of the other stuff. I like the idea of staying away from the proprietary stuff, but there's so much of it that it seems to be the best price wise.

tcsenter · Sep 30, 2024

In2Photos said:
Thanks, that's some good info. Looking through eBAY it doesn't look like the SFF version is much cheaper, but it does provide some more options. Seems like most of them have less RAM and very few have a GPU so I'd need to find one with at least a 7700 for decent transcoding if what I read is correct.

My current setup has 6 HDD so I'm going to have to use the PCIe card no matter which way I go and none of those cases will fit that many drives. Also seems to be a fair amount of Dell Optiplex, Precision Towers and XPS desktops out there. I like the idea of the XPS because it uses standard 24 pin ATX so no adapter necessary even though the adapter seems to work fine. I might be able to move up to an 8th gen i7 as well. Another option could be to just find a CPU/mobo/RAM since I really don't need any of the other stuff. I like the idea of staying away from the proprietary stuff, but there's so much of it that it seems to be the best price wise.

Some caveats. Even the Dells that do have 100% standard ATX often (depending on the system model) require the Dell power switch/cable, thermal sensor/cable, USB3.0 front panel assembly/cable to be plugged, and sometimes a chassis fan in addition to the CPU fan, else the boot will halt with an error notification that requires physical presence (keystroke e.g. F1) to bypass. In some models, most of these can be configured in BIOS (pre-boot options) to bypass the notification automatically, but may not all of them. It is a bit inconsistent from one model to the next.

It's often best to buy the whole system/chassis, so that these components can be transplanted as well, even if you just let them kind of dangle around (well you can fasten or secure them down in some way) in there such as the front panel assembly/cable or power switch cable assembly because they will not fit into a non-Dell chassis.

So you can save a bit of money by reusing OEM components but there can be some extra effort and annoyances like these. But once you get everything up and running, it's a server right? You shouldn't need to reboot all that often and these pose no troubles during operation (once you bypass by pressing the right keystroke to ignore).

Question Dell XPS-8300 and a PCIe to SATA Adapter

Platinum Member

Platinum Member

Senior member

Platinum Member

Senior member

Platinum Member

Platinum Member

Senior member

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member

Platinum Member

Diamond Member

Senior member

Platinum Member

Diamond Member

Platinum Member

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member

Diamond Member

Golden Member

Lifer

Platinum Member

Lifer

Platinum Member

Lifer

Platinum Member

Lifer