I need recommendation for a Non-RAID PCIe for music production studio


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Hello,  I am not sure if I am welcomed here at all, this being a appereantly a specific product platform or but here I am because this community sounds about right...

 

I have been posting on all the main computer forums now and I have been informed way more than I was before...

 

So, to make it short;

 

I have an ASUS Maximus XIII Hero card (Z590 chipset), working with an Intel 11900K.

The MOBO provides 6x 6GB/s SATA ports, I have 12 SATA drives (2x SSD - 10x HDD).

So I need a SATA card that I won't be needing to RAID anything with.

 

All that in mind, with what I think I've learned, any PCIe 2.0 x8 card would be sufficient enough to run 6x SATA drives.  

So, wouldn't it be smarter, if I get a PCIe 3.0 x4 card and save some lanes? 

 

My main concern is safety, reliability and at least 8GB HDD capacity support. So, I don't care if I have to get a SATA/HBA card or just simply a SATA card, as long as it's not too expensive...

 

Thank you

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Thank you for the replay. 

I feel like an idiot now! And my next sentence will be proof of that...

Does that mean PCIe 3.0 x2 is  enough to drive 6x SATA 6Gb/s HDDs or SSDs? No speed problems, no bottleneck?

 

That's a FLASH news to me by the way...  When I started this journey to find a suitable and fair card, after a while, I was pretty sure that I needed a PCIe 3.0 x16 12Gb/s card. :':

The Best! :)

 

Then, people of reason explained to me the mathematics of it... All the things I kinda had to learn was to much to digest, but at least with help from my friends, I figured out that (or at least I think I did) the PCIe 2.0 x8 can handle the task, with the same speed the PCIe 3.0 x4 can... And there fore I gain extra lanes with the later...

 

And now, it seems with PCIe 3.0 x2, I can gain even more lanes without compromising any performance or speed...

 

So that's why I feel like an idiot! 

 

Since I have no idea how to utilize those lanes in the future but I am sure it will come up at some point. I tried to figure out what UNRAID is all abut and I believe I cracked the puzzle... I wanna smile but there is already too many smiles around... so...

 

I think in near future, I might be needing to be situated in a server setup... For a secondary machine to be communicating with the main WS. So that I can load lots of FX processing to the other machine... 

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Would there be any other brand suggestion? The Asmedia ASM1166 doesn't seem to be found anywhere in my neck of the woods... 

 

Awe... I've just realize; Asmedia ASM1166 is not a card it's a controller. So I need to look for the card that implemented that controller... 

Edited by cemE
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I am confused about the 6 x 300MB/s, That's SATA II, right? But My HDDs are SATA III... Shouldn't that be taken into account? I am planning to install 4x SATA III HDD and optional 2x SATA SSD drives. They are all going to be simultaneously used.

 

Also I am so confused by all the information discrepancies on the net. The values and definitions are varies so much that my head hurts. 

 

My strategy, if you can call at that, is to get the max available speed for my SATA III drives while spare as much as lanes possible. So I don't want to waste but I don't want to be short either... Does that makes sense? 

 

I apologize if I am making you tired already, seems like I have that effect on people... But for my defense there are so many conflicting suggestions that I can't help but dig deeper.  

 

And when you find someone to answer your questions (which was previously been researched the hell out of it unsuccessfully), it is crucial to not exhaust or weary them  but,

I suppose time to time it happens... :)  

 

Thank you

Edited by cemE
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15 hours ago, cemE said:

I am confused about the 6 x 300MB/s

That's the maximum usable speed when using that controller with 6 devices at the same time, since current disks can't reach 300MB/s it still won't be much of a bottleneck for the 2 SSD's, you can also connect the SSDs to onboard SATA, it will have a little more bandwidth, and connect only HDDs on the add-on controller.

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I've just now realized the fact that current disks can not reach 300MB/s! So weird though, while all these SATA III HDDs talking about 6Gb/s (600 MB/s) the reality is, they are actually 150 to 200 MB/s...

 

Why even is there PCIe 3.0 x8 cards for HDDs? Yes now there are all this N.2 stuff but what about before!?

 

Thank you for helping me to see where I need to focus to understand the problem. All this time I was thinking how to deal with this 600 MB/s speed and the suggestions that won't match up to that speed. I never thought that the 600 MB/s is not the actual speed but just the connection speed,

a hypothetical one. So weird...

 

You probably wouldn't suggest Marvel chips but is there any preferable chip other than Asmedia ASM1166? I might have hard time finding one where I live.

 

cheers

 

 

Edited by cemE
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8 minutes ago, cemE said:

You probably wouldn't suggest Marvel chip but is there any preferable chip other than Asmedia ASM1166?

Don't recommend Marvell, also don't know of any 6 port Marvell controller without using SATA port multipliers and those are not good, Asmedia is available in the various Amazon and Ebay stores, if you can't get that look for an LSI HBA, there are various non RAID models referenced here:

 

 

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Huh! I thought I replayed this already...

 

My bad! I made a faulty search. Also I miss interpreted some cards that I found...

 

However, I am confused by this two cards they are on the same page. I have no clue why I should choose one over the other.

 

https://www.amazon.com/BEYIMEI-Controller-Expansion-Non-Raid-Converter/dp/B098QMGMF3/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=ASM1166&qid=1633703772&sr=8-6&th=1

 

or

 

https://www.amazon.com/BEYIMEI-Controller-Expansion-Non-Raid-Converter/dp/B08DFK4LZ7/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=ASM1166&qid=1633703772&sr=8-6&th=1

 

 

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