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

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.

(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.