Month: February 2024

NEW LSI 9300-16i 12Gbps SAS-3 PCIe x8 HBA P16 IT mode ZFS TrueNAS UNRAID (WHL #94)

Here’s a quick and simple one: Cooling advice for 16-port SAS cards.

The LSI 9300-16i cards have gotten surprisingly cheap over the past months. Dirt cheap, in fact. All-16 port SAS cards are traditionally pretty pricey, even though they are “just” two 8-port cards on one PCB. In the past 10, maybe 15 years, there was never a time when buying a 16-port card (used or new) was cheaper than buying two 8s. Sure, sometimes people needed a single-card solution (availability of PCIe slots, PCIe lanes, or space in general), but the usual recommendation for 16-bay chassis like my Supermicro 836 was always to buy 2×8 instead of 1×16. […]


Kautschuk Platten Dämmmatten selbstklebend Isolierung XT | 32mm Dämmdicke (WHL #93)

Back to 3D printing for a bit – still lots of changes to the printer, but this one might be interesting to a wider audience: Thermal insulation of the print bed (hard data at the very end of this post!).

You see, the stock Ender 5 Plus printer bed comes pre-“insulated”:

Soo…that is a 3mm mat of black foam material that is glued down with some obnoxious acetone-soluble gunk, and garnished with a bit of aluminium foil on top. Yup, certainly better than nothing, but it doesn’t even cover the entire area, it’s just inside of the mounting frame. […]