The Dell PERC H310 is a Dell 6Gb/s SAS-2 controller with 8 internal ports and 2 x SFF-8087 (Mini-SAS) connectors. It ships in RAID mode; presenting raw disks for ZFS is a firmware change, and any listing claiming it is already done is making a seller claim.
Prices updated
| Manufacturer | Dell |
| Ports | 8 internal |
| Internal / external | Internal (adapter and mini-mono variants) |
| SAS generation | 6Gb/s SAS-2 |
| PCIe | PCIe 2.0 x8 (adapter variant) |
| Connectors | 2 x SFF-8087 (Mini-SAS) |
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A RAID card as Dell ships it, and the cheapest route to an LSI-class HBA if you are willing to take on a firmware procedure that Dell does not support. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how you value your evening against the price difference.
In specification terms it carries 8 internal ports, it is a 6Gb/s SAS-2 part, and its drive-side connectors are 2 x SFF-8087 (Mini-SAS). It occupies a PCIe 2.0 x8 (adapter variant) slot. Those are catalogue facts and we publish them as such — you will not find throughput or performance claims on this page, because the number that matters for a spinning-disk array is what the drives can do, not what the card can.
The H310 is a PERC RAID controller as Dell ships it. It shares silicon with the LSI 9211-8i, and crossflashing it to LSI IT firmware is one of the most widely documented procedures in the homelab community. We link that documentation rather than reproduce it: it is unofficial, it can render the card unusable, and it is not something to attempt from a summary. Listings advertising a 'flashed H310' are making a seller claim.
Source: community-documented crossflash; Dell ships the card as a PERC RAID controller
Because this card's useful mode is a firmware question rather than a property of the part, the thing to establish before buying is what firmware the specific card is running. A listing that says “IT mode” or “preflashed for ZFS” is telling you what the seller says, and sellers are frequently right — but you are buying a claim, not a specification, and you should verify it on arrival rather than assume it. We do not publish flashing instructions. The procedure is unofficial, it is sensitive to firmware version and motherboard, and a mistake can leave the card unusable. The community write-ups on ServeTheHome and the TrueNAS forums are maintained, corrected by people who have done it many times, and better than anything we would write from a summary. Go and read them there.
This card terminates in 2 x SFF-8087 (Mini-SAS), and the cable question catches people out more often than the card question does. The connector on the card and the connector on your chassis backplane have to be matched by a cable with the right ends — SFF-8643 is the Mini-SAS HD connector used by 12Gb/s-era hardware, and SFF-8087 is the older Mini-SAS used by 6Gb/s-era hardware. They are not interchangeable, and forward and reverse breakout cables are different parts again.
Work out what your backplane presents before ordering, because a card that arrives with the wrong cable is a working card you cannot connect. Some used-card listings include cables and some do not; the listing text is the only reliable guide, and where it is silent, assume not.
Dell PowerEdge 12th and 13th generation machines. For a build where you would rather not touch firmware, an HBA330 or a 9207-8i is the boring answer.
For the drive side, a card of this class drives SAS hard drives and — because SAS controllers speak to SATA devices by design — SATA drives as well, which is the combination that makes a used enterprise chassis worth filling. Which specific chassis you are filling, and how many bays it has, is covered in the used server buyer's guides.
The naming on these cards is systematic once you know the scheme, and knowing it saves you from a surprising number of bad purchases. In the LSI and Broadcom lines the digits identify the family and generation, and the suffix identifies the port arrangement: the number is how many ports, and the letter is where they face. An i means internal ports, facing the drives inside the chassis. An e means external, facing a port on the back of the machine for an external enclosure. Cards exist with both.
So the 310 designation on this card tells you it presents 8 internal ports, and that they are internal. This matters because an external card in a build that needs internal ports is useless, and the two are separated by a single letter in a listing title that is easy to skim past. If you are filling bays inside the chassis, you want the internal variant, and you should check the letter rather than assuming.
The straightforward answer is 8 internal — one drive per port, directly attached. The answer that matters in a real chassis is usually larger, because of a part most people do not realise is already in their machine: the SAS expander.
An expander is a switch for SAS. It takes a small number of ports from the controller and fans them out to many more drives, and a great many enterprise backplanes have one built into the board. This is why a 24-bay server can run perfectly well from a single eight-port card: the card talks to the expander, and the expander talks to all twenty-four drives. Whether your chassis has one is a property of the backplane rather than the card, and it is worth establishing before deciding how many ports to buy — people routinely purchase a sixteen-port card for a chassis whose backplane would have been happy with eight.
The one thing to know about expanders is that SATA drives behind a SAS expander is a supported arrangement, and it is how most mixed builds work. If your backplane has no expander, then the arithmetic is simple and unforgiving: you need as many ports as drives, and a breakout cable turns one connector into four drive connections.
Two practical things catch people out when the card arrives, and neither is on the specification sheet.
The first is airflow. These cards were designed for rack chassis with substantial front-to-back airflow, and their heatsinks are passive — there is no fan on the card because the server was assumed to provide the moving air. Putting one in a quiet desktop case with gentle airflow is a well-documented source of trouble in homelab discussions, and the usual remedy people describe is directing a small fan across the heatsink. We are relaying that as community practice rather than a specification, and we publish no temperature figures because we have not measured any. In an actual server chassis, which is what this cluster is about, it is a non-issue.
The second is the bracket. Cards ship with either a full-height or a low-profile bracket fitted, and a 1U chassis needs low-profile. Sometimes the other bracket is in the box and sometimes it is not. It is a trivial part that will stall a build for a week if it is missing, so read the listing and, if it is silent, assume you are getting whichever is in the photograph.
This is a heavily second-hand market and the condition column in the table above reflects that. Cards pulled from decommissioned servers are the normal supply, they are typically cheap, and there is no moving part to wear out — which makes a used HBA a substantially safer used purchase than a used drive. The risks are different in kind: not wear, but authenticity and firmware state, which is why the counterfeit checks on the HBA hub are worth reading before you buy rather than after.
The H310 is a PERC RAID controller as Dell ships it. It shares silicon with the LSI 9211-8i, and crossflashing it to LSI IT firmware is one of the most widely documented procedures in the homelab community. We link that documentation rather than reproduce it: it is unofficial, it can render the card unusable, and it is not something to attempt from a summary. Listings advertising a 'flashed H310' are making a seller claim.
It terminates in 2 x SFF-8087 (Mini-SAS). SFF-8643 is the Mini-SAS HD connector used by 12Gb/s-era hardware and SFF-8087 is the older Mini-SAS used by 6Gb/s-era hardware; they are not interchangeable, and forward and reverse breakout cables are different parts again. Establish what your backplane presents before ordering — a card with the wrong cable is a working card you cannot connect. Some listings include cables, many do not, and where the listing is silent, assume not.
It has 8 internal ports, and in the straightforward case that means 8 directly attached drives. More is possible through a SAS expander, which is a separate part that fans one card's ports out to more drives — many enterprise backplanes have one built in, which is why a 24-bay chassis can run from an 8-port card. Check whether your backplane is expander-equipped before deciding how many ports you need.
It is a reasonable choice if you would rather not deal with firmware, but understand what you are buying: "preflashed" is a seller claim, not a specification, and it should be verified on arrival rather than assumed. The alternative is a card that is an HBA by design and needs no flashing at all. We do not publish flashing procedures — they are unofficial, version-sensitive and can leave a card unusable — and we link the community write-ups instead, which are maintained by people who have done it many times.
In broad terms yes — it is a standard PCIe card and PCIe is close to universal, so a card of this class works in most machines with a free slot of adequate width. The notable exception is Dell's mini-monolithic and integrated storage slots, which take a Dell-specific card shape rather than a standard PCIe card. Check which slot your machine offers before buying.
Relabelled and counterfeit cards are a recurring subject on ServeTheHome, r/homelab and the TrueNAS forums — we are attributing that as community reporting rather than putting a number on it, because no credible measurement exists. The practical checks: ask for a photograph of the board rather than the label, since the label is the cheapest part to fake; look for consistent silkscreen and a heatsink matching the reference design; and once the card is in your hands, use Broadcom's own storage command-line tooling to read the controller, firmware and SAS address back from the hardware. Do that before the return window closes.
LSI / Broadcom SAS 9300-8i · LSI / Broadcom SAS 9300-16i · LSI / Broadcom SAS 9305-16i · Broadcom HBA 9400-16i · LSI SAS 9207-8i · LSI SAS 9211-8i
Start at the HBA hub for the full decoder table, or the IT mode guide if you are choosing a card for ZFS or TrueNAS.