S2600CW2 motherboard sata0-3 ports

[RNoac1]

Hi,

I have recently purchased an Intel S2600CW2 server board. Sorry in advance if this question is obvious, but, for the life of me I can not figure out what kind of cable I need to connect to the SATA 0-3 ports. They are not standard sata ports, and as far as I can tell they are not mini-sas either, I purchased a mini-sas cable and it did not fit.

Can someone direct me to the cable which can fit into this connector?

Thanks

Robert

[AP16 · Accepted solution]

You need a mini-SAS HD cable, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI SFF-8643

[RNoac1]

Thanks for the reply. I ordered the cable now. Interesting that the only options for purchasing this cable seem to ship from china, either its just highly server specific and not sold from the usual retailers or its just not a very common cable? I never built a server before this, just desktops, so this is new to me. Also the cable is like $25 versus the mini-SAS (standard) which was only like $10. Also, seems the mini-sas HD connector is larger. Its just blowing my mind why intel decided to use a less common, larger, more expensive, and less available connector, and, on top of that, why they wouldn't label it in the manual or motherboard diagram.

I do appreciate the response though, I hope this cable will work for me since the ultimate goal is to get the drives connected.

Thanks

Robert

[Salem_W_Intel1]

Hi!

Although we, Intel Technical Support, do not have pricing information, we do appreciate your feedback. To better address your question/feedback, would you, please, provide the following:

1. Where did you purchase the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI# /media/File:SFF-8643.jpg high-density cable from?
2. What is the cable part number of the cable you ordered?
3. Where did you get the information that the cable is hard to find? Did you check with any of our /thread/locate.intel.com Intel resellers?

As for the cable not being "label it in the manual or motherboard diagram", while we thank you for your feedback on that, we comment we have two relevant-to-the-board documents, also found on the http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/server/s2600cw main, technical website for the Intel® Server Board S2600CW Family (see links below), where the Intel(R) cable part numbers are mentioned in conjunction with the available backplane-RAID solution configuration, which would explain the different cable lengths:

1. http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-034924.htm Intel® C610 Based Systems Backplane and RAID Controller Cabling Guide.
2. http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/s2600cw/sb/CS-034838.htm Spares/Accessories List and Configuration Guide.
3. http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/s2600cw/sb/CS-034914.htm Service Guide.

[RNoac1]

Hello,

I appreciate your response but I have a hard time taking it seriously.

I have determined from the 2nd document that the Intel branded version of the cable in question is AXXCBL450HD7S. I don't know how much these cable might be from Intel resellers, but the cheapest I could find it on google shopping search is $29.49 + $7.29 shipping. Compared to the cost of a standard mini-SAS to 4x SATA cable which I obtained on Amazon.com for around $10 this is about 400% markup. I would say it's because the intel branded cable is overpriced, but the cable I ordered after reading the reply to this part (which was not the intel branded part) was only about $5 less expensive (on Amazon.com). I highly doubt that intel resellers are cheaper. I would imagine they are more expensive, I find it amusing that anyone would try to argue this as I thought it was a well established fact that the only reason people order from resellers is because they don't know any better or like being locked into contracts in order to obtain discounts which still end up costing them more money.

Setting this aside, The first document you link only references the parts by name in correlation with the Intel chassis that Intel manufacturers and "recommends" for their motherboards. I do not have an Intel chassis, because the cheapest I could find said chassis for was in the vicinity of $500, whereas I obtained the third party chassis I am using, for around $150. Without looking up the intel chassis, then seeing the connection instructions, etc. I don't know how I ever would have determined what cable this was without the pre-knowledge of knowing what it is.

Forgetting everything written above - it makes absolutely zero sense that the port type is not documented on the documentation which comes with the motherboard. If you take a look at it, you will see an arrow pointing to the port where the high density mini sas plugs in, and the documentation saying "sSATA/SATA 0-3". No mention of mini SAS. No mention of high density. Don't know why, this is the perfect place to write this information. There is also a perfectly nice sticker describing the motherboard which also totally lacks this information.

To me your reply is just defensive and unhelpful, and does absolutely nothing in the way of actually solving the problem. It certainly doesn't give me the courage to know that I can buy more intel boards in the future and expect them to be well documented and well labeled. Unless of course I also buy the overpriced Intel chassis, and the other overpriced matching parts, etc. But the whole point of building a server from scratch instead of buying one from Dell, HP, or similar other provider is to pick and choose the components you want and to be honest to get a better deal. So why would I ever stay in this overpriced infrastructure? It makes no sense.

It's unlikely I will buy an intel board again.

-Robert