Looking to buy a new hba since the first one had enough daisy-chained expanders and the bandwidth just isn’t enough.
Checking on ebay, I see that there are lots of Chinese sellers offering 9211-8i or equivalents for less than half the price I paid for the first one at theartofserver.
One seller has a 40k+ ratings with a 99%+ positive feedback, which got me thinking if the cards they are selling are genuine refurbished cards or counterfeit? I’d be glad to get some feedback if you got a card from one of these sellers.
Should I take my chance or not take any risks trying to save 25-30 bucks? I’d choose the latter, but if you got any experience about the aforementioned cards, I’d love to hear it.
Extra question: I see that there are two versions(?) of cards selling under the 9211-8i name. One’s ports are on the right side of the heatsink, far from the bracket (I have this one), and the other one has ports near the bracket, marked port 1 and port0 from left to right. Are these both genuine or is the latter one counterfeit?
I’d buy a 9207-based card rather than a 9211 at this point, something like this listing or this one. No sense in getting something that uses PCIe2 when you could get something that uses PCIe3 for the same price.
I haven’t bought one of these, but my experience buying stuff from China is that it’s likely to be perfectly fine, and I’d buy one if I needed a SAS card.