My current MB has 6 SATA on board, a PCI Express x1 slot, and a, x16 slot.

 

If I put a Supermicro 8-port in the x16, I'll only need two more SATA ports.  How much of a bottleneck will the x1 slot be for a 2-port SATA card?

Sound similar to my set up.

 

Currently have 6 data drives onboard, 8 data on the x16 slot and my cache and another data on the x1.

 

Can't say I've noticed any downside but I try not to write to both the cache and data on the x1 at same time.

 

Even when I have I didn't really notice a stupidly low write speed I couldn't live with.

 

Give it a try see if you can live with it

 

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

 

Interestingly, I have the next MB down in that series now, and was looking at the one you have for a six-core system to utilize a Phenom X6 I have now.

 

And yeah our setups sound similar, I have a 9-bay Coolermaster I am filling with iStar 5-in-3s.

 

The only drives that would hang off the x1 card would be data drives, and then they would be the last two I ever get, as I can run 14 drives (parity, cache, and 12 data) off the x16 slot with the Supermicro card. 

 

Sounds like it would work just fine.

 

Thanks!

PCI Express 1x 250 [500]* MB/s

 

i.e. 200-250MB/s in each direction at one time. Unless you have SSD that is not a realistic, or at least a significant, bottleneck for 2 drives.

 

Personally i would use the 16x unless you need it for somehting else then i would use the 1x without worrying

A 2-port card won't be a bottleneck at all in an x1 slot s long as neither connected drive is an SSD with any currently available spinners.    The outer cylinders of 1TB/platter drives come close to the bandwidth, but don't exceed it.    The next generation of hard drives -- with higher areal densities -- may be a bit of a challenge, but even that's not likely ... and if they DO somewhat exceed the bandwidth, it won't be by enough that you'd notice it (and unless ALL of your drives were those newer, higher density drives, there wouldn't be ANY impact).