Need some guidance regarding SAS expansion cards

[Pandemic]

I'm running two Supermicro 8-Port SAS/SATA Card - (AOC-SASLP-MV8) for a 15 HDD bay Unraid server at the moment. I want to put a GPU in the PCIEx16 slot so I only have room for one of these cards.

 

I've got 11 HDDs right now so I'm using 8 ports on the SAS card plus 3 SATA ports on the motherboard. I an probably continue like this for a few years, to be honest.

I'm thinking about how best to go forward. I only really use about 2-3 drives at any given time.

 

So my options are to look around for two 8 port SAS HBA thats PCIE x1  (if it exists) or a 16 port SAS HBA on PCIE x4 or x8. Gen 3 PCIE x1 seems to have a max throughput of 1GB/s which should? be fine for 2-3 drives at full R/W speeds. I doubt there would be a quality chipset or if this even exists.

 

Any suggestions are welcome. I'm not sure that running through the 3 SATA ports on the motherboard + 8 ports on the current expansion card is a good config.

 

 

[JorgeB]

11 minutes ago, Pandemic said:

so I only have room for one of these cards.

 

11 minutes ago, Pandemic said:

I've got 11 HDDs right now so I'm using 8 ports on the SAS card plus 3 SATA ports on the motherboard. I an probably continue like this for a few years, to be honest.

I don't follow, would one controller be enough then?

[Pandemic]

It is enough for now assuming the 3 onboard SATA ports + 8 through the expansion card are stable (so far they are) but I'm trying to plan for the future and/or have the most stable system running.

I've got 2 more empty ports on the motherboard as well.

 

[JorgeB]

Don't see the point in buying one now if you don't plan to need for years, but you can get a 16 port x8 LSI HBA: