After having a number of weird disconnects/read errors with my Intel NUC12 + MediaSonic USB 3.2 enclosure, I've decided to switch to something like a MS-01 mini pc, which has a single low profile PCI-E slot and will allow me to remove the USB enclosure aspect of things. This seems to be a good way to maintain a low heat low power server system, but if i do that i'd need an enclosure that lets me just power the drives and then I can connect sata cables from the PCI-E to each drive.

Any suggestions for a fairly affordable way to pull this off? It seems like a JMB585 card might be good for the PCI-E card. I've read the LSI HBAs are high heat.

There needs to be separate SAS/SATA connections for each drive. There are things like that but it would probably be cheaper to just give up on your mini PC idea and build a NAS with the motherboard and drives in the same case.