Intel® RAID Adapters RS3P4TF160F and RS3P4MF088F Hardware User Guide
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5.
Connectivity and Drive Support
The Intel RAID Adapters RS3P4TF160F and RS3P4MF088F have standard female SFF-8654 (SlimSAS* 8i)
connectors to connect the internal drives.
Each connector supports up to two direct-attach Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drives (Intel RAID
Adapter RS3P4TF160F only) or up to 8 direct-attach SAS / SATA drives.
Using PCI Express (PCIe) switches can increase the number of supported NVMe drives; and using SAS
expanders can increase the number of supported SAS / SATA drives.
5.1
Connector Pinout
The tri-mode Intel RAID adapters have standard female SFF-8654 (SlimSAS 8i) connectors to connect to
drive cable. The connector pinout follows the SFF-9402 specifications. SFF-9402 defines how to share
sideband signals between SAS and PCIe.
When SAS / SATA drives are connected either as a direct attach through an SFF-8680 bay or through an
enclosure, existing 12 Gb/s SAS cables and mid-plane connector designs are supported by these Intel RAID
adapters. The next figure shows the pinout for the female SFF-8654 connectors on the adapters cards.
Figure 5. Intel® RAID Adapter RS3P4TF160F
’s
SFF-8654 Connector