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?
Most if not all of them are fake cards with real recycled components. They take broken server boards with soldered HBA chips and put them onto a new fake PCB, then sell it back to you. Same thing is true with network cards