another PCie question....

[Oedzes]

Good evening everyone,

 

After reading a lot of forums, I have unfortunately not yet been able to find the correct answer to my question so I hope there is someone who can help me further.

 

My motherboard and chip-set support 24 PCIe lanes and 8x sata 3.
All 8 sata ports are in use by 3.5 inch HDDs.

 

The connectors for PCIe on the motherboard:
2 x PCIe 3x16
2x PCIe 3x1
1x vnme m.2

 

the 2 PCIe x16 are used by an Nvidia GPU and an ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 Card V2.
With both x16 locks in use, the lanes are shared, so there are 16 in total.

 

The M.2 Nvme uses 4 lanes, so of the 24 lanes in total, 20 are now in use.

 

Now there are 2 x1 slots left and I still have a Samsung 2.5-inch 1Tb SSD unused in the drawer.

I tried using a very simple PCIe X1 adapter from amazon:

 

https://www.amazon.nl/Jessicadaphne-Uitbreidingskaart-Adapterkaart-Uitbreiding-compatibility/dp/B08MV1HBNQ/ref=sr_1_10?__mk_nl_NL=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&dchild = 1 & keywords = pcie + x1 + to + sata & qid = 1607020064 & sr = 8-10

 

to connect the SSD, the SSD is accepted by the motherboard but not recognized in UNRAID.

 

So my question .....

Which PCIe 3x1 to SATA is recognized by UNRAID and can I use for my SSD?

In addition, I also have an unused SATA controller:

 

https://www.ebay.nl/itm/Dell-PERC-H310-SAS-SATA-Controller-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-Unraid-LSI-9211-8i/123241184797?hash=item1cb1bf3e1d:g: a68AAOSwjJdfpdQC

 

Would an x1 to x16 addapter work?

 

https://www.amazon.nl/perfk-Express-Riser-Adapter-Converter/dp/B07HFW53XH/ref=sr_1_5?__mk_nl_NL=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&dchild = 1 & keywords = pcie + x1 + to + sata & qid = 1607020330 & sr = 8-5

 

 

Any help is greatly appreciated !!

[JorgeB]

That appears to be an Asmedia based controller, so it should work, diags might give some clues.

[SeeGee]

What motherboard/chipset are you using?
Typically the two 16x slots will run at 16x if only one slot is used. It both slots are used, they become 8x each. Keeping the total lanes used to 16. Now that means that the Asus card is being assigned only 8 lanes, 4 are used by the nvme, the other 4 would be assigned to the card as well, but are unused. This would also mean that you would only be able to use two nvme in the Asus card at maximum, leaving the two other slots unusable.

I had an issue in my old unraid server where adding a 1x USB controller would disable two of the onboard sata ports, and that was because the board had more i/o than the chipset could support at one time.

[Oedzes]

Quote

Welk moederbord / chipset gebruikt u?

Intel Xeon 2146G - is the C246 chipset with total of 24 lanes.

Mobo: gigabyte C246M (2x x16 and 2x x1) 

 

Asus in x16 slot    =    8 lanes 

Nvidia in x16 slot  =    8 lanes 

Nvme M.2            =    4 lanes 

 

So in total 20 in use and 4 left.

 

Or am I seeing this so completely wrong?

 

 

 

[SeeGee]

3 hours ago, Oedzes said:

Intel Xeon 2146G - is the C246 chipset with total of 24 lanes.

Mobo: gigabyte C246M (2x x16 and 2x x1) 

Just taking a look at your motherboard manual: on pages 6,7, and 16 it explains a bit more about your pcie options.

It looks like the 4 lanes you have remaining can be used as a second m.2 drive (Read note on pg16 regarding type of m.2 connector!) OR the two 1x slots. I dont think the 1x slots will work if there's a second m.2 drive installed.

 

It might be best to look into a PCIe 3.0 1x SATA controller that works properly in unraid, or getting to the bottom of why the one you have seems to be recognized in the bios, but not by unraid. 

 

I just noticed that this item is listed under this category on amazon:

   Health & Personal Care ›Cleaning & Housekeeping ›Washing products ›Fabric softeners

lol.

Edited December 6, 2020 by SeeGee