March 3, 201115 yr Anyone know of any SATA controller with 4 ports using PCI-E that's around $40 or less? I don't see how a 2 port controller could be $8 shipped and 4 port controller almost $100.
March 3, 201115 yr Much less demand and competition I suppose. There were some bargain price BR10i controllers available a while back. This is an 8 port card made for x8+ slot. Not fully supported but looking pretty good in 5.0 betas. But no bargains recently. Plus you need special cables which add to the cost.
March 4, 201115 yr Author I ask because there are many mini ITX/micro ATX boards out there in cases that hold more than 6 HDDs. Many of these boards have PCI-Ex16 slots that don't usually work with x1 cards, but might work with x4 cards. It's just a waste to use a SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 if the case can only hold 8 to 10 HDDs and the board itself can already support 4 to 6. A 4 port controller would actually be perfect to just fill up the case with no additional waste.
March 4, 201115 yr Many of these boards have PCI-Ex16 slots that don't usually work with x1 cards... Do you say that from experience? I've never run into a board that couldn't run a PCIe x1 card in the PCIe x16 slot save for those few that can only run graphics cards in the PCIe x16 slot (which are typically older boards).
March 4, 201115 yr Author Many of these boards have PCI-Ex16 slots that don't usually work with x1 cards... Do you say that from experience? I've never run into a board that couldn't run a PCIe x1 card in the PCIe x16 slot save for those few that can only run graphics cards in the PCIe x16 slot (which are typically older boards). Not experience, just been checking motherboard manuals of various motherboards. I guess those motherboards support video cards only in the slot when it says it doesn't support 1x. The manual doesn't explicitly state that it supports video cards, just that it doesn't support 1x. The Zotac board I just got last week says that in the manual, though I didn't actually test it.
March 4, 201115 yr Many of these boards have PCI-Ex16 slots that don't usually work with x1 cards... Do you say that from experience? I've never run into a board that couldn't run a PCIe x1 card in the PCIe x16 slot save for those few that can only run graphics cards in the PCIe x16 slot (which are typically older boards). Not experience, just been checking motherboard manuals of various motherboards. I guess those motherboards support video cards only in the slot when it says it doesn't support 1x. The manual doesn't explicitly state that it supports video cards, just that it doesn't support 1x. The Zotac board I just got last week says that in the manual, though I didn't actually test it. The ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS I got for my unRAID build says the same thing. But when I tryed my sil3132 port multiplier controller in the PCIe x16 slot it worked the same as the PCIe x1 slot. So I plan on putting another one in that slot along with a 3 in 2 cage and another multi bay external enclosure and increase my build to 19 drives. Instead of the 13 I initially planned.
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