4 port PCIE controller $37.95 - now $60

[Kaygee]

Bought one of these from dinodirect () never bought from them before (a friend has and his stuff turned up OK) but it was cheap and they do free international shipping. Will report back in a week providing it turns up.

 

PCI-E x1 card with 4 ports for less than 40$ (£24.00) seemed a good deal.  Search for dinodirect discount for 10% off vouchers. I had some fun and games with the order but the online chat person was helpful.

 

http://www.dinodirect.com/2-5Gbps-Full-Duplex-Channel-SATA-RAID-PCI-Express-Card-PCESA2-4R.html

 

Looks like a JMB363 and two JMB360 chips all on a x1 card. Since these are all reasonably well supported I'm hoping it'll work. But at that price if it doesnt then I'll stick it in a windows box...I'm pretty sure it wont work in VMWare ;-) 

 

I'll report back in a week or so.

[Kaygee]

Looks like a JMB363 and two JMB360 chips all on a x1 card.

 

It is a jmb363 alright but with two jmb20330's bolted onto the jmb363s pata port to the give two sata II ports and two sata I ports(master/slave).

 

Since it will appear to unraid as two sata ports and two pata ports it should work ok!

Should work ok with three disks performance wise. Be happy with 60MB/s.

 

 

 

 

[WeeboTech]

Looks like a JMB363 and two JMB360 chips all on a x1 card.

 

It is a jmb363 alright but with two jmb20330's bolted onto the jmb363s pata port to the give two sata II ports and two sata I ports(master/slave).

 

That's a nifty way to squeeze out two more sata ports. 

[Kaygee]

It certainly shows creativity on the part of the designer. Block diagram for the jmb363 looks promising. Command based port multiplier support, means the design might be blocking like ide which means parity checks and generation will take a big hit but read/write performance will still be ok.

 

50MB/s is the max I could expect from x1 4 port pci-e design, if it can get anywhere near that with three hdds I'll be happy.

 

Be interesting to see how sil3114, sil3124 and adaptec 2410sa compare performance wise to this card. All are 66mhz pci. The mb is pci 66mhz capable.

 

My case will hold 12hdds. I figure 3hdds on 66mhz pci, 3 on pci-e x1 and 6 mb ports and should still perform well...

 

This also leaves a couple of spare sata ports which could drive an external hdd box or two. Should the need arise. Also a spare pci-e x16 slot.

 

[Kaygee]

Arrived today, indeed its a 363 with two sats/pata adaptors on the IDE port. So two sdx ports and two hdx ports show up in unraid.

 

Good news, it works in unraid on all four ports. Works in my x16 slot which is even btter news... 

 

Bad news, parity generation and check performance is not great. With more than two disks attached performance is similar to a SIL3124 PCI card with the same number of disks attached. Price is back to $60. 

 

Parity generation examples:

 

4 Hdds on MB, 3 Hdds on pcesa2-4r (sata II x 1. sata I x2) = 26 MB/s

4 Hdds on MB, 3 Hdds on pcesa2-4r (sata II x 2. sata I x1) = 42 MB/s

5 Hdds on MB, 2 Hdds on pcesa2-4r (sata II x 2) = 56 MB/s

 

Disk speed tests show up fine when just using two sata II ports. Disk speed test using sata I port shows 20MB/s drop on the sata I devices.

Sata II ports 75MB/s, same as MB ports.

Sata I ports 55MB/s.

 

Pros: Cheap, 4 ports, works with unraid, PCIe x1

Cons: Performance is comparable to a fast PCI card.

 

Summary

Good port density, cheap, performance is OK in normal operation, parity check and generation suffers a performance hit with 4 drives in use.

 

Given the price is back to $60, I'd go with a SIL3132 based solution for half the price.

 

 

[BryantD]

My MB has 2 JMB363 controllers (GA-MA790FXT-UD5P) that work with unRAID but do not spin down as SMART does not work with them. Do you have this issue?

[Kaygee]

I'll tell you in 4 hours after the current parity rebuild has finished. I can get SMART info from them OK. Obviously with parity build running I cant spin a drive down currently.

[Kaygee]

@BryantD Works fine, using beta 13, spin up and spin down (from unRaid console). SMART all working and reporting temperature no problems seen thus far. Pretty fast when using the SATA II ports, parity built at 57MB/s avg. Not bad for a 7 disk system IMO.

 

 

 

 

[WeeboTech]

Thanks for the info!

[BryantD]

@BryantD Works fine, using beta 13, spin up and spin down (from unRaid console). SMART all working and reporting temperature no problems seen thus far. Pretty fast when using the SATA II ports, parity built at 57MB/s avg. Not bad for a 7 disk system IMO.

 

Thank you for testing that. I'll upgrade and try it out.

[Chris Pollard]

Hmm I was thinking about upgrading my PCI 3114 with one of these when I first saw your original post,  looking at your test results I'd guess its not gonna be much of an upgrade...

[mufdvr3669]

Pretty sure this is a SYBA SY-PEX40013.  I bought one on Ebay a few months ago for $32 shipped.  I found a listing for $27 shipped on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/Internal-Sata-II-4-ports-raid-PCI-express-x1-card-PCIe_W0QQitemZ250532116715QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3a54e0b8eb.  The card I got is working great on my box.  Not a speed burner but needed more ports on a x1 card.

[Kaygee]

Yes that is the one (I put a listing in the WIKI mentioning the Syba cards details and the dino direct part number). For $27.00 inc free shipping in the US it's a good buy.

 

I wouldn't replace a SIL3114 with one of these, but moving two or three drives to one of these over the SIL3114 is a good idea performance wise. If it means leaving only a couple of devices on the PCI bus.

 

Assuming an eight or ten hdd system with four or six mb sata ports and four SIL3114 PCI ports. Picking up one of these for $27.00 and moving two devices to the PCIe x1 port should give you a nice performance bump for parity checks and generation.

 

At around $30.00 each I'd say they are a good buy.     

[Chris Pollard]

I'll have to look out for one cheap on eBay, I'm in the UK and they are usually listed for about £40 shipped from HK.

[Kaygee]

If you are in the UK, try Span. I'm hoping these could be back in stock in the new year...

http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_714_2502&products_id=17142

 

If not, they have this one in stock now...

http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_714_2502&products_id=16957

 

With a pata to sata adapter both of those cards would give an additional 5 sata ports. The last one means wiring the esata port back into the case to use the external port but it is doable and reasonably priced.

[Chris Pollard]

If you are in the UK, try Span. I'm hoping these could be back in stock in the new year...

http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_714_2502&products_id=17142

 

If not, they have this one in stock now...

http://www.span.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_714_2502&products_id=16957

 

With a pata to sata adapter both of those cards would give an additional 5 sata ports. The last one means wiring the esata port back into the case to use the external port but it is doable and reasonably priced.

 

first card looks perfect.... thanks for the heads up.