Upgrade path - Need more SATA for little power

[SinoBreizh]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm currently running 4 x 4TB Ironwolf drives + 1 in parity + 1 Blu Ray reader. This maxes out the 6 SATA ports I have on my Z490 motherboard hosting an i3 10100. I want to increase the number of ports available to me, ideally without an HBA (airflow and mental health concerns, see TL;DR). I plan on buying more, larger hard drives at the same time.

 

My server mainly runs a Plex/Jellyfin server of 4K Remuxes, which Direct Play 95% of the time (so an iGPU is not an *absolute* must have). It also hosts a few game servers, with ~4 clients max each. Finally it runs qBittorrent with a several TB permaseed share. I do plan to add Homeassistant and maybe Nextcloud in the future.

 

Here are the options I can think of, and I'd like your opinion on them:

 

1. I have an Adaptec 71605 HBA in HBA mode I found on a bargain. It could handle 16 SATA ports, but I absolutely hate it: it burns up insanely quickly, needs a ton of airflow, and forces me to boot in CSM rather than UEFI. Apparently 10th gen Intel has issues with CSM or *something*, and I can't access the BIOS with the iGPU anymore when I turn CSM on. It needs a dedicated GPU - which I do not have. I had to spend hours pulling out my 7900XT which now barely fits in the server, just to troubleshoot. The HBA will work just fine in Unraid, I just lose access to BIOS in the process. I honestly can't be bothered (with a 10th gen Intel CPU, but I have no guarantee it'll work any better with other platforms). This is my least favorite option: it requires a ton of fixing issues (overheating, no BIOS in CSM, configuring write cache as it has issues with that, etc).
2. I have a generic Asmedia 1064 SATA expander. 4 x SATA in a Gen 3 x1 slot. Has honestly been rock solid performance wise despite what people say about them - I think it supports deep sleep and ASPM; *BUT* it suffers from the powertop autotune glitch: running powertop autotune will cause drives to lose connection to the SATA expander once it enters deep sleep. Had to parity check the whole array once because of this. Does not affect my Blu Ray drive though, but that's only one of the 4 SATA ports it offers. Do I really need the powertop autotune command if it already supports PCIe Deep Sleep (L0/L1/etc) and ASPM? If not, this could be a cheap, simple option.
3. I could upgrade to LGA1700. I've spotted a cheap motherboard with 8 x SATA and 3 x NVMe, not shared with anything else PCIe/IO wise. Perfect. I can grab a 12th/13th gen i3, or even an i5 if I want more cores and the UHD770 with double Quicksync. But upgrading for 2 extra SATA ports and an extra Quicksync engine feels stupid.
4. I could switch to AM4. My workstation currently runs a Ryzen 9 5950X, and I could reuse it in the server to give myself an excuse to upgrade my main rig. On one hand, I'd have *MUCH* more power to expand my activities for years (the i3 10100 already has hiccups when software transcoding (thanks, Plex; take notes from Jellyfin's hardware transcoding) + seeding + game hosting), and there are plenty of cheap X570 boards with 8 x SATA and 2 x NVMe. On the other hand, I'd have to run headless and give up Quicksync: not the end of the world since I almost always direct play, but I won't have access to BIOS unless I buy a cheap GT710 or something for troubleshooting.
5. A combination of several solutions: since the no video out/no boot issue with CSM seems to be an Intel 10th gen issue; maybe switching to LGA 1700 or AM4 will allow me to use my Adaptec HBA without issues?

 

TL;DR: need more SATA for my Unraid build, up to 11 max. Very interested in keeping power consumption down through either efficient chipset SATA, or proper ASPM/Deep Sleep PCIe expanders/HBAs. Want to keep things simple for my mental health's sake (spent days troubleshooting the Adaptec 71605 HBA and it has honestly ruined with week).

[Yankton]

It is possible to add a cooling fan to the 71605.  Fan has to be plugged into the motherboard or a hub.  Just an option.  Scroll down to Dec 2021 for the relevant section  https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/official-adaptec-asr-series-sas-hba-overview/9033/30?page=2