Recommendations for an SATA controller?

[Raident]

I essentially have 3 requirements:

 

[*]4 or more ports

[*]Compatible with ESXi passthrough (in theory all PCIe devices should work, but in practice ESXi is so buggy that even HCL-certified hardware doesn't always work - as of 5.5 no Intel onboard controllers can be passed through, for example, despite all of them being HCL certified)

[*]Something that won't break the bank

[BobPhoenix]

I've passed through on my SuperMicro X7SBE & X9SCM and Tyan S5512GM2NR MBs with SandyBridge CPU all of the following SATA controllers in ESXi 5.0 (not used any later versions and this worked - later version broke too many things): IBM M1015,  SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8, SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8,  SilconImage SIL3132,  HighPoint 622, 1742, 2310, AsMedia 1061.  I've yet to find one I can't pass through with the MB/CPU/ESXi 5.0 combination that WON'T pass through but I am limited to those you see.  The SIL3132, HighPoint's and AsMedia were for Windows VMs and external drive cages.  The IBM and SuperMicro's were passed through to unRAID VMs.

[Raident]

(not used any later versions and this worked - later version broke too many things)

 

This is essentially the problem  For me, 5.1 is the latest version that works with my hardware.