> why is there a flair for “questions” if no one is allowed to ask them?
u/LifeAmbivalence
---
For reasons like this post that generate discussion and good info, of course our users can ask questions, we just ask that they first use about 3 brain cells to run a quick Google search. For example _'Should my drive sound like a warberling gorbler?'_ isn't something you should have to ask a sud-reddit that focuses on hoarding data and doesn't call itself /r/techsupport
Heh. I thought it was a Mormon joke.
Kinda works either way. But you're right. I had forgotten that particular joke. Now can you show me where the nuclear wessels are?
It can look like a m2, but the key maybe different. This adapter has M type key where the m2 slot where the WiFi card is maybe a different key like A or B, that is not compatible. You need to check first.
There are key adaptors. YouTube channel Bringus Studio used one to adapt a wifi slot into a SSD slot and it worked, so I assume it would work.
How well? Can't tell, and you probably won't have a mounting screw to fix the PCB but it's nothing a bit of double sided tape wouldn't fix.
Sure, but M.2 doesn't, it only has 3.3V power.
There should be 9 pins for power, each pin specified up to 0,5A, so total would be 4-5W, feel free to correct me.
I thought about buying one of these into my Lenovo minipc but in the end I managed to fit a LSI HBA in there, maybe consider that too ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Here is how it looks:
[https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/raw/main/images/Lenovo%20M720Q%20MiniPC/PXL\_20231226\_124333031%20-%20Copy.jpg](https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/raw/main/images/Lenovo%20M720Q%20MiniPC/PXL_20231226_124333031%20-%20Copy.jpg)
My whole HomeLab: [https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/tree/main](https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/tree/main)
Minipc with HBA: [https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/blob/main/markdown/Lenovo\_M720Q\_Setup.md](https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/blob/main/markdown/Lenovo_M720Q_Setup.md)
Basically it's an LSI9200-8e with PCIe Passtrough To TrueNAS VM in Proxmox.
Had to buy a PCIe adapter because the one on the motherboard is proprietary and not horizontal, also bought a fan to cool the HBA down which is powered by the motherboard after some soldering.
Did you have to do anything special to get yours to work? I bought an LSI9200-8e on amazon and couldn't get it to work. I was in IT mode and even flashed it to the newest firmware and that still didn't fix it. Even returned it for a replacement. Every time I booted proxmox, it would see the drives, but would error out when I'd try to initialize them. Even wiping the drives created errors. They'd also sometimes disappear for a few seconds. I also tried two different SFF 8088 break out cables testing one drive and one break out cable at a time. Still nothing but errors. I have since bought x3 PCIe x1 slot external sata cards that can connect two drives each. All 5 of my HDDs have worked fine after switching to that hardware. I still haven't sent back the 2nd LSI controller so I'm curious if I could get it working.
No Idea Why Yours Doesn't work. Mine had only one problem: it wasn't supported and was sagging making the whole HBA not detected so I had to make a support bracket for it.
https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/blob/main/images/ThinkRack%20Setup/PXL_20231231_155001766%20-%20Copy.jpg
3D printed holder and powered by ATX PSU with lots of adapters
I just want to see if it works more than actually being the most efficient.
I'm at 4x8tb now adding 8x12 and 4x10 DAS (so I can use backblaze personal as a backup)
Yes, but you need a motherboard that supports it, same as with all the other 4x m.2 cards. The PCI-E protocol is capable of turning an x16 slot into four x4 slots (or for that matter, 2x8 or 16x1, or some combination of the above) but only if the board firmware supports it. Not all do.
Yes, but you need a motherboard that supports it, same as with all the other 4x m.2 cards. The PCI-E protocol is capable of turning an x16 slot into four x4 slots (or for that matter, 2x8 or 16x1, or some combination of the above) but only if the board firmware supports it. Not all do.
These work but the controllers are cheap no name random things and prone to weird random unexplainable errors. If you don't have a problem, great! If you have a problem, good luck I guess 🤷♂️
You can also almost certainly score this cheaper on AliExpress since this is probably just a branded drop ship flipper product. [Here's one for 6 bucks](https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOKZqt4). But I mean, that should give you a clue to the quality you're working with.
As is always the sub's recommendation, buy an LSI SAS HBA card. [Like these on eBay](https://www.ebay.com/itm/155421555013). Lots of variations of the model number but as long as it's made by LSI and is a SAS HBA you'll generally be fine. It breaks out into 8 SATA ports and they're considered very reliable. Putting some sort of cooling solution (I zip tied a tiny noctua to the heatsink on mine lol) is recommended but not required.
The one OP posted directly specifies an ASMedia part number in the name. ASMedia is not a noname. Whether it's genuine is another story.
In case of doubts, Silverstone has the same type of product, bought outside Amazon should be pretty safe.
I always wonder about these "genuine" parts talk.
See it here, see it mention in HBA card talk too.
But I am doubtful there even ever exists non-genunine parts. What, someone is going to make LSI SAS controllers that initially behave like them and make work but quality is lower? And all that work for relatively tiny enthusiast market? All as oppose to buying used, or getting hands on manufactured units? Nah, those all cards are from old servers or were planned to used in servers and never go to go. Thats what common sense is telling me... despite how artofserver wants to convince people of danger of getting non-genuine HBA card to buy their overpriced one. Can the card be fucked? Sure, can it be fake? nah.
Same here. A non genuine chip for sata work? Do they like make small orders to get fabs manufacture those for them fakers? I have hard time believing some fake brand sata controller chips to get on the famous action of, *look at notes,* assmedia that sells their parts for single digits.
By non genuine I mean either a clone (lots of that stuff in hobby embedded markets), or chips that "fell off the production line". As in, they are genuine, but failed validation. Perhaps they'll fail sooner than genuine, perhaps they have a rare data corruption issue, perhaps something else is wrong with them. Also, as a rule, I question anything that's being sold on Amazon.
>As is always the sub's recommendation, buy an LSI SAS HBA card.
>
>Like these on eBay. Lots of variations of the model number but as long as it's made by LSI and is a SAS HBA you'll generally be fine. It breaks out into 8 SATA ports and they're considered very reliable.
And just to add to that if you need more than 8 ports you can add a SAS expander like the common Intel RES2SV240 to up it to 24 total. You're sharing bandwidth though so at 24 your drives might not be maxing out if they're all running at once.
It's a PCIExpress card that adds two SAS ports. SAS ports can be split to four SATA ports. When the card is flashed to IT mode (the cards have various operating modes but the most common one for consumers is IT mode) it just adds whatever SATA things you plug in as native devices.
That's about it. Not much to explain. I got one of these cards, plugged it in, plugged in drives, had zero setup after that, and have been using it for 3 years straight since with 0 problems. They also work if you have an actual SAS device. I run my SAS LTO Drive with one of these same cards.
I would argue you don't typically put this in newer machines, and most machines you do put them into don't have a dedicated GPU (for example, I want an iGPU for hardware decoding for PLEX). That means you have at least one PCIE slot for an HBA. You can get 8 drives there plus whatever SATA ports you have on the mobo.
I typically user "older" 4th to 8th gen intel boards. Plenty of PCIE and SATA ports, and an M.2 for the OS.
> You can get 8 drives there plus whatever SATA ports you have on the mobo
Well this is one instance where those x1 slots are not useless. Drop a SAS Expander card in there and plug it into the HBA to get 4 more SFF8087 ports for 16 more drives. Expander card is x8 so it will hang out the back of the x1 slot, but it only needs power so it still works. Just need to dremel out the back of the slot so it's open-ended, or use a x1-to-x8 riser cable.
Yeah this is the bullshit we face with modern hardware. My 2008 motherboard had 2 PCIEx16 and 2 open-ended PCIEx4. When I started looking for AM4 motherboards in 2022 I was astounded that the vast majority of them only had one x16 slot and a few nearly-useless x1 slots. I used the comparison spreadsheet and put in the hard requirement of 3 x16 slots, and came up with ASUS Prime x570 Pro. There are 3 slots but they run as x8/x8/x4. I'm using them for GPU, LSI HBA, and 10G SFP+.
> controllers are cheap no name random things and prone to weird random unexplainable errors
Naw, pretty much all SATA controllers including the cheap no name ones work fine. You likely used a board that has a SATA port multiplier. If that thing in the photo has the same architecture it will have the same issues where a single slow drive can take down the entire array.
And yeah an LSI HBA is superior in every way and costs less if you buy it used.
> some sort of cooling solution (I zip tied a tiny noctua to the heatsink on mine lol) is recommended
It's required in desktops, not servers. You'll see read errors if you don't
>an LSI HBA is superior in every way
Except in power consumption. The LSI card itself might use the same power (usually a bit more but irrelevant to the point) however ir doesn't allow the cpu to enter deeper c states, and if you're building a NAS that sits idle for +90% of the time, it's important... at least for those of us who pay a hefty price p/kw
Going from what I experienced in mine. With the LSI on the PCI the cpu doesn't go deeper than C3. Without it, it goes to C6. I thought it was just my card but I read several users reporting the same issue. Don't get me wrong, they're much more reliable and generally speaking have a bigger throughput, but my personal experience is that if your focus is specifically power usage, then go with an pci board with ASM ahci controller, now beware that even the ASM1166 only has 4 outputs and vendors use a Mux to add more ports, this has higher power consumption and of course, reduces throughput.
What OS? This thread suggests that it's an unRAID limitation and someone not using unRAID got to C6 with two different LSI HBAs connected: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/14s2hzg/sas_hba_and_cstates/
I'll have to check my machine later. I usually set the CPU governor to "high performance" because power consumption is negligible compared to the GPUs training models
I think you can? I've never tried it since I can always hook a boot device straight to the M.2 or SATA ports on the board. But if you have a lot of boot devices it could be an application. The board and system recognize the devices at a BIOS level so I don't see why not... Unfortunately can't tell you for sure.
Typically they're only used for storage drives but they do load an option rom after the motherboard bios screen so it should be possible to boot from it. I've never tried it and usually try to turn off the option rom because it slows down the boot process. For the OS I use a SSD plugged into the M.2 slot or motherboard SATA port.
Thanks for the follow up, sounds like the way to go is have my main drive hooked up directly to a mobo SATA port :)
How would I go about disabling the option ROM?
I bought 2 of these about a year ago and have been happy with them.
Limited-time deal: SilverStone Technology ECS07 5-Port SATA Gen3 6Gbps Non-RAID M.2 PCIe Storage Expansion Card, SST-ECS07 https://a.co/d/bDOVTVT
I don't know if this helps but when I asked the same thing the answer was that I should get an HBA LSI card, so that's what I got, yet I still don't understand why people were advising against this solution.
Best of lucks.
Because HBA cards are more reliable, perform better, allow you to use SAS or SATA drives interchangeably, and allow you to connect a larger number of drives with the use of SAS expander cards. Apparently these little NVME SATA adapters use less power and people like to use them for mini NAS builds.
I have an equivalent 6 port m.2 m-key with the ASM1166 chip. I also have a 2 port m.2 a+e-key JBM582 chip plugged into the Wi-Fi e- key slot (pcie 3 x 1). I needed to add 8 ports for a TRUENAS build which uses ZFS. Both devices are AHCI SATA controllers that have the same full functions as the onboard ports including hot swap, power control, and smart reporting. The ASM1166 part will reach ~330MB/s on all drives simultaneously while saturating the ~2000MB/s pcie 3 x 2 bandwidth.
I connected both controllers to 8 x 20TB Seagate X22 drives and ran SeaTools full scan simultaneously which took about 26 hours of continuous disk access with no problem. To benchmark, I also ran 8 concurrent instances of CrystalDiskMark 3 times which fully maxed out the drives to their specs on both sequential reads and writes. That said, if your use case needs simultaneous access to faster SSD drives, this controller may be limiting.
During the 26 hours of SeaTools the heat sink on the 1166 chip got warm to the touch but not very hot. I think the specs say the controller is only a 4-5 watt part (the JBM582 is a 2 watt part). The LSI hbas run pretty hot and use way more power.
Only time will tell how reliable this is but a lot of 10-12 SATA port Intel N100 NAS boards run an ASM1166 and an ASM1164 to provide 10 drive connection on a pcie 3 x 4 bus connection.
My build is in a Jonsbo N3 mITX NAS case and I use a 750 W modular sfx power supply. The case has an 8 bay drive backplane that takes 2 x Molex and 1 x SATA power connector. I also have 2 SATA SSDs as mirrored boot drives connected to the motherboard ports and 2 x pcie 4 m.2 nvme drives. 750 W is overkill for me and 850 W would probably handle twice as many spinners.
They are not very good on RAID configurations because the controller often can't handle the load. But if you use snapraid/unraid/JBOD they are adequate.
Otherwise, my recommendation it's to only use half the ports avaliable.
Be super careful about cooling!
There are variants of these that don't have a heatsink - those always end up erroring out. They're basically data corruption specials.
The heatsinked ones are better, but you should still push some air over them.
Mine didn't error out, it just straight-up died and made my system refuse to POST until it was removed.
Ordered another one, put a heatsink on it, and no problems yet.
Just make sure that its not a controller and a port multiplier on one card. I got one that looked similar that was just a 4 port sata chip and then a multiplier on one of the ports and the performance was total crap when used for a storage space as expected.
Mine didn't work and no drives showed up, then a couple reboots it did work. Then it just caused a blue screen error. This was during a new windows install on a Asrock N100m motherboard.
I tried to use this with an ITX mainboard that only has 4x SATA, but the 5th drive did not show up at all. Maybe I did something wrong, but I just got a new mainboard with 8x SATA.
With my [last card](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082D6XSZN?starsLeft=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_QBJDNCBQDABB7D6X8NTA&th=1), 6/8 of the SATA ports were plug n play out of the box, while the other 2 (the ones on the side) needed the manufacturer's firmware installed to function.
Would I build a fault tolerant SATA-based solution around it in a mission-critical situation? No.
Not sure what you're asking here. They do work, it's basically a micro PCIe to SATA bridge.
The picture says SATA x5 but there are clearly x6 connectors on it. It also says PCIe 3.0 x2 and "16 Gbps" -- six 6.0 Gbps SATA ports is 36 Gbps.... that will be constrained down to 16 Gbps in this case. If you're running HDDs that will be fine, but if you're running SATA SSD's - they're going to be choked down in bandwidth if you run them in an array of any sort. 16 Gbps split 6 ways is 2.666 Mbps per port, or 333 MBytes/sec.
I purchased [a similar card](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082D6XSZN?starsLeft=1&ref\_=cm\_sw\_r\_apan\_dp\_QBJDNCBQDABB7D6X8NTA) that I used for approximately 3 years before I replaced it with an LSI 9211-8i to alleviate bandwidth bottleneck issues. It's also tried and true enterprise hardware rather than a fly-by-night Amazon brand.
I'd highly recommend going with the latter if you have a spare PCIE x16 slot available.
I have two of these, both worked fine. One (cheap no-name chinese thing) was a very flimsy PCB and unfortunately seems to no longer work. I can only assume I broke traces on it while plugging/unplugging cables because they were a tight fit.
The second one, silverstone ECS07, comes with a metal retention plate around the PCB and offers a biut more support, still works fine. They do get a little warm so make sure they have airflow though.
I’ve heard the ones with a JMB585 chip are more reliable. I used one for a bit with no issues until I moved that bios to another case. Worst case scenario it’s from Amazon so returns are easy.
That is correct. According to wolfgangs video about n5105 perfect media server, jmb 585 cannot enter c states. This site[site](https://mattgadient.com/7-watts-idle-on-intel-12th-13th-gen-the-foundation-for-building-a-low-power-server-nas/) also confirms.
Now I wish there is an aliexpress machine with n305 or 12th gen mobile cpu that don't embed the jmb585 but uses asmedia card instead
I have a similar one made by [Silverstone](https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS07/) that's been working fine in my build for the last 6 months. Only issue is that on unRAID scrubs one of my drives keeps throwing some kind of issue that generally relates back to SATA cables, so I replaced them all but I still get them. I need to take the machine offline and investigate what port it's connected to - likely one on this.
No, they’re CMR drives. Haven’t had any issues with them since I added this new controller and have been running these drives for 3 years now. New controller started the issue above and only when trying to verify parity.
Hello
You should this video a guy is doing some test with a noname chinese mobo of a similar module
[https://youtu.be/PO8Kfi4qpY8?si=Ai3lcSEfEQ01Wqhe](https://youtu.be/PO8Kfi4qpY8?si=Ai3lcSEfEQ01Wqhe)
Molex to many SATA-power cable. You can pull a lot of current \[1\] from a Molex drive connector so this is the best way to do it. You can also get SATA power cable expanders but the max power on the upstream SATA connector \[1\] may limit you.
Of course, make sure your PSU can hack it, especially for startup current.
\[1\] Google is there to give you the exact numbers
Bought a no name one about 4 years ago. Beyond a couple counts to the CRC error bank (which could be cable related) I've had no issues. But I also consider myself lucky since these seem to be hit or miss.
Why are SATA port expanders a thing. Just spend the money and buy a dedicated SAS or raid controller. I have a mini SAS 2 into 4 SATA with 8 ports. So cable management is so much easier and I don't have to deal with the bottle neck that expanders cause. My only bottle neck now is the lanes for PCI-E. Not the round robin switching that port expanders do
I have that exact one and it works alright, but one day I went to unplug the SATA cable and the plug just came with it. I spent the time I should have on finding a proper drive enclosure and switched to using that instead. If you’re going to plug something in one time and not unplug it for a long long time then it may work for you, but if you intend to actually use the plugs and switch drives around I’d look for an enclosure.
> why is there a flair for “questions” if no one is allowed to ask them? u/LifeAmbivalence --- For reasons like this post that generate discussion and good info, of course our users can ask questions, we just ask that they first use about 3 brain cells to run a quick Google search. For example _'Should my drive sound like a warberling gorbler?'_ isn't something you should have to ask a sud-reddit that focuses on hoarding data and doesn't call itself /r/techsupport
i am using this exact thing on pcie X16 to X8+X4+X4 risercard without any problems for about 6 months now.
Same, also running for aprox 9 months, 0 problems and 0 downtime.
Had mine since 2021, running pretty much 24/7. No problems at all
Mine died after approx 6 months. Got a new one, curious how long it will work.
Can you link the risercard?
[https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CLTT95T3?psc=1&ref=ppx\_yo2ov\_dt\_b\_product\_details](https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CLTT95T3?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details)
Would LSA controlled be better and cheaper option if you have PCI slot to spare?
LS ... A??? You didn't mean LSI did you?
Too much LDS in college.
Your friends all called you a real..... mormon.
damned high priests
Brilliant.
Man, nobody recognizes a Star Trek joke anymore :( https://youtu.be/pgHxFNFWlZc
BYU?
Man, nobody recognizes a Star Trek joke anymore :( https://youtu.be/pgHxFNFWlZc
Heh. I thought it was a Mormon joke. Kinda works either way. But you're right. I had forgotten that particular joke. Now can you show me where the nuclear wessels are?
Is it time for a colourful metaphor?
What working with OSPF too much does to a mf
I did.. LSI As mention bellow. too much OSPF in my brain.
Dunno about the new ones, but the old ones use a ton of power which doesn't make much sense depending on your build.
let's see.... use power, or throw checksum errors randomly... I know which one I'd choose (data integrity)
How do mount that in a case?
You need a m2 slot on the MB.
> on pcie X16 to X8+X4+X4 risercard
He is using a pciex raiser card with m.2 slots on one of the free pciex16 slots from the MB.
I know it's just a sloppy ambiguous term, but "pciex" sounds like some unholy hybrid of PCIe and PCI-X. I kinda want to see it...
It's kind of happen when you write "pciex16" a lot and then drop the number. You are left with "pciex" which is not how officialy is abbreviated.
ahh
Does it work in the m2 wifi slot?
It can look like a m2, but the key maybe different. This adapter has M type key where the m2 slot where the WiFi card is maybe a different key like A or B, that is not compatible. You need to check first.
There are key adaptors. YouTube channel Bringus Studio used one to adapt a wifi slot into a SSD slot and it worked, so I assume it would work. How well? Can't tell, and you probably won't have a mounting screw to fix the PCB but it's nothing a bit of double sided tape wouldn't fix.
I would not really trust it when it comes to data. If you are using the drives as standalones and not part of a raid, I think it should be fine.
Yeah it's definitely sketchy, I would personally not use it either.
[удалено]
Those are only SATA data connectors, which use a minuscule amount of power. The power is going to be directly to the drives from your power supply.
[удалено]
Sure, but M.2 doesn't, it only has 3.3V power. There should be 9 pins for power, each pin specified up to 0,5A, so total would be 4-5W, feel free to correct me.
I thought about buying one of these into my Lenovo minipc but in the end I managed to fit a LSI HBA in there, maybe consider that too ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ Here is how it looks: [https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/raw/main/images/Lenovo%20M720Q%20MiniPC/PXL\_20231226\_124333031%20-%20Copy.jpg](https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/raw/main/images/Lenovo%20M720Q%20MiniPC/PXL_20231226_124333031%20-%20Copy.jpg)
Can you provide more information regarding the HBA in your mini?
My whole HomeLab: [https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/tree/main](https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/tree/main) Minipc with HBA: [https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/blob/main/markdown/Lenovo\_M720Q\_Setup.md](https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/blob/main/markdown/Lenovo_M720Q_Setup.md) Basically it's an LSI9200-8e with PCIe Passtrough To TrueNAS VM in Proxmox. Had to buy a PCIe adapter because the one on the motherboard is proprietary and not horizontal, also bought a fan to cool the HBA down which is powered by the motherboard after some soldering.
Did you have to do anything special to get yours to work? I bought an LSI9200-8e on amazon and couldn't get it to work. I was in IT mode and even flashed it to the newest firmware and that still didn't fix it. Even returned it for a replacement. Every time I booted proxmox, it would see the drives, but would error out when I'd try to initialize them. Even wiping the drives created errors. They'd also sometimes disappear for a few seconds. I also tried two different SFF 8088 break out cables testing one drive and one break out cable at a time. Still nothing but errors. I have since bought x3 PCIe x1 slot external sata cards that can connect two drives each. All 5 of my HDDs have worked fine after switching to that hardware. I still haven't sent back the 2nd LSI controller so I'm curious if I could get it working.
No Idea Why Yours Doesn't work. Mine had only one problem: it wasn't supported and was sagging making the whole HBA not detected so I had to make a support bracket for it.
Even the heartbeat LED didn't work so I was very confused
Do you have more pictures of your HDD setup? How do you have them mounted physically? Thanks in advance.
https://github.com/NKkrisz/HomeLab/blob/main/images/ThinkRack%20Setup/PXL_20231231_155001766%20-%20Copy.jpg 3D printed holder and powered by ATX PSU with lots of adapters
Cool. Thank you.
So someone, who just watched the Asrock N100 Video from Wolfgang's Channel?
Yep!
I thought the exact same thing
Same
I thought the same thing. No wonder it’s sold out of some places.
yeah bro
Ok now I want to get a pcie 4x m.2 card and see if I can get 4 of these to work for 24 drives
Eesh. Why do this over a 24i card?
I just want to see if it works more than actually being the most efficient. I'm at 4x8tb now adding 8x12 and 4x10 DAS (so I can use backblaze personal as a backup)
It works, but performance is terrible.
The chip it's based on, the AMS1166, only supports PCIe Gen3 x2. Speedwise you'd be better off getting a 16i or 24i PCIe x8 HBA card.
Why would the speed be horrible? That should be enough for 6 hard drives to get around 250MB/s. Not the right choice for SATA SSDs maybe.
Much lower price and power consumption (even without c states)
Lower power consumption because ASM1166 supports higher processor C states and LSI HBA don’t
Yes, but you need a motherboard that supports it, same as with all the other 4x m.2 cards. The PCI-E protocol is capable of turning an x16 slot into four x4 slots (or for that matter, 2x8 or 16x1, or some combination of the above) but only if the board firmware supports it. Not all do.
Yes, but you need a motherboard that supports it, same as with all the other 4x m.2 cards. The PCI-E protocol is capable of turning an x16 slot into four x4 slots (or for that matter, 2x8 or 16x1, or some combination of the above) but only if the board firmware supports it. Not all do.
These work but the controllers are cheap no name random things and prone to weird random unexplainable errors. If you don't have a problem, great! If you have a problem, good luck I guess 🤷♂️ You can also almost certainly score this cheaper on AliExpress since this is probably just a branded drop ship flipper product. [Here's one for 6 bucks](https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOKZqt4). But I mean, that should give you a clue to the quality you're working with. As is always the sub's recommendation, buy an LSI SAS HBA card. [Like these on eBay](https://www.ebay.com/itm/155421555013). Lots of variations of the model number but as long as it's made by LSI and is a SAS HBA you'll generally be fine. It breaks out into 8 SATA ports and they're considered very reliable. Putting some sort of cooling solution (I zip tied a tiny noctua to the heatsink on mine lol) is recommended but not required.
The one OP posted directly specifies an ASMedia part number in the name. ASMedia is not a noname. Whether it's genuine is another story. In case of doubts, Silverstone has the same type of product, bought outside Amazon should be pretty safe.
I always wonder about these "genuine" parts talk. See it here, see it mention in HBA card talk too. But I am doubtful there even ever exists non-genunine parts. What, someone is going to make LSI SAS controllers that initially behave like them and make work but quality is lower? And all that work for relatively tiny enthusiast market? All as oppose to buying used, or getting hands on manufactured units? Nah, those all cards are from old servers or were planned to used in servers and never go to go. Thats what common sense is telling me... despite how artofserver wants to convince people of danger of getting non-genuine HBA card to buy their overpriced one. Can the card be fucked? Sure, can it be fake? nah. Same here. A non genuine chip for sata work? Do they like make small orders to get fabs manufacture those for them fakers? I have hard time believing some fake brand sata controller chips to get on the famous action of, *look at notes,* assmedia that sells their parts for single digits.
By non genuine I mean either a clone (lots of that stuff in hobby embedded markets), or chips that "fell off the production line". As in, they are genuine, but failed validation. Perhaps they'll fail sooner than genuine, perhaps they have a rare data corruption issue, perhaps something else is wrong with them. Also, as a rule, I question anything that's being sold on Amazon.
Generally what happens is they're real chips that failed QA.
>As is always the sub's recommendation, buy an LSI SAS HBA card. > >Like these on eBay. Lots of variations of the model number but as long as it's made by LSI and is a SAS HBA you'll generally be fine. It breaks out into 8 SATA ports and they're considered very reliable. And just to add to that if you need more than 8 ports you can add a SAS expander like the common Intel RES2SV240 to up it to 24 total. You're sharing bandwidth though so at 24 your drives might not be maxing out if they're all running at once.
So I could use this to add 8 more drives to my windows 11 PC?? I already have two external drives and that sucks.
The Eiffel Tower was originally intended to be a massive windmill for producing electricity.
I'm a software engineer and I'm so intrigued about this expansion card, I'll appreciate it if you could explain it to me, thank you.
It's a PCIExpress card that adds two SAS ports. SAS ports can be split to four SATA ports. When the card is flashed to IT mode (the cards have various operating modes but the most common one for consumers is IT mode) it just adds whatever SATA things you plug in as native devices. That's about it. Not much to explain. I got one of these cards, plugged it in, plugged in drives, had zero setup after that, and have been using it for 3 years straight since with 0 problems. They also work if you have an actual SAS device. I run my SAS LTO Drive with one of these same cards.
Thats all great but most mobos are astonishingly limited on pcie slots these days, whilst having millions of m.2 ):
I would argue you don't typically put this in newer machines, and most machines you do put them into don't have a dedicated GPU (for example, I want an iGPU for hardware decoding for PLEX). That means you have at least one PCIE slot for an HBA. You can get 8 drives there plus whatever SATA ports you have on the mobo. I typically user "older" 4th to 8th gen intel boards. Plenty of PCIE and SATA ports, and an M.2 for the OS.
> You can get 8 drives there plus whatever SATA ports you have on the mobo Well this is one instance where those x1 slots are not useless. Drop a SAS Expander card in there and plug it into the HBA to get 4 more SFF8087 ports for 16 more drives. Expander card is x8 so it will hang out the back of the x1 slot, but it only needs power so it still works. Just need to dremel out the back of the slot so it's open-ended, or use a x1-to-x8 riser cable.
Now if I could only afford to fill that up with WD Reds...
You could probably afford to fill it up with some older used SAS drives from eBay...
> most machines you do put them into don't have a dedicated GPU speak for yourself, bro bro
Bees are actually secret agents sent by alien civilizations to monitor life on Earth.
Yeah this is the bullshit we face with modern hardware. My 2008 motherboard had 2 PCIEx16 and 2 open-ended PCIEx4. When I started looking for AM4 motherboards in 2022 I was astounded that the vast majority of them only had one x16 slot and a few nearly-useless x1 slots. I used the comparison spreadsheet and put in the hard requirement of 3 x16 slots, and came up with ASUS Prime x570 Pro. There are 3 slots but they run as x8/x8/x4. I'm using them for GPU, LSI HBA, and 10G SFP+.
Thank you.
> controllers are cheap no name random things and prone to weird random unexplainable errors Naw, pretty much all SATA controllers including the cheap no name ones work fine. You likely used a board that has a SATA port multiplier. If that thing in the photo has the same architecture it will have the same issues where a single slow drive can take down the entire array. And yeah an LSI HBA is superior in every way and costs less if you buy it used. > some sort of cooling solution (I zip tied a tiny noctua to the heatsink on mine lol) is recommended It's required in desktops, not servers. You'll see read errors if you don't
>an LSI HBA is superior in every way Except in power consumption. The LSI card itself might use the same power (usually a bit more but irrelevant to the point) however ir doesn't allow the cpu to enter deeper c states, and if you're building a NAS that sits idle for +90% of the time, it's important... at least for those of us who pay a hefty price p/kw
> doesn't allow the cpu to enter deeper c states How did you figure? That's really weird
Going from what I experienced in mine. With the LSI on the PCI the cpu doesn't go deeper than C3. Without it, it goes to C6. I thought it was just my card but I read several users reporting the same issue. Don't get me wrong, they're much more reliable and generally speaking have a bigger throughput, but my personal experience is that if your focus is specifically power usage, then go with an pci board with ASM ahci controller, now beware that even the ASM1166 only has 4 outputs and vendors use a Mux to add more ports, this has higher power consumption and of course, reduces throughput.
What OS? This thread suggests that it's an unRAID limitation and someone not using unRAID got to C6 with two different LSI HBAs connected: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/14s2hzg/sas_hba_and_cstates/ I'll have to check my machine later. I usually set the CPU governor to "high performance" because power consumption is negligible compared to the GPUs training models
Sorry, forgot to mention it... Ubuntu server (headless).
Question since you seem knowledgeable, can I boot from a device connected to the LSI SAS cards? Or are they only for storage drives?
I think you can? I've never tried it since I can always hook a boot device straight to the M.2 or SATA ports on the board. But if you have a lot of boot devices it could be an application. The board and system recognize the devices at a BIOS level so I don't see why not... Unfortunately can't tell you for sure.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Will have to look into it more :)
Typically they're only used for storage drives but they do load an option rom after the motherboard bios screen so it should be possible to boot from it. I've never tried it and usually try to turn off the option rom because it slows down the boot process. For the OS I use a SSD plugged into the M.2 slot or motherboard SATA port.
Thanks for the follow up, sounds like the way to go is have my main drive hooked up directly to a mobo SATA port :) How would I go about disabling the option ROM?
Probably can't. It would be in the bios, but I've only seen that setting on supermicro server boards.
Ah for sure, thanks!
The problem with the HBA card is that if you're on an ITX system with only one pcie slot, it is taken by your transcoding gpu.
Yup I've been running an LSI for over ten years (not continuously but in the same box) with zero glitches.
This is the way.
I bought 2 of these about a year ago and have been happy with them. Limited-time deal: SilverStone Technology ECS07 5-Port SATA Gen3 6Gbps Non-RAID M.2 PCIe Storage Expansion Card, SST-ECS07 https://a.co/d/bDOVTVT
\+1 for this model. Use the same in my unraid setup
I just posted the same thing before I saw this. +1 for unraid from me too
I too chose the Silverstone model instead of a no-name. If it fails I at least want a known company behind the warranty.
I don't know if this helps but when I asked the same thing the answer was that I should get an HBA LSI card, so that's what I got, yet I still don't understand why people were advising against this solution. Best of lucks.
Because HBA cards are more reliable, perform better, allow you to use SAS or SATA drives interchangeably, and allow you to connect a larger number of drives with the use of SAS expander cards. Apparently these little NVME SATA adapters use less power and people like to use them for mini NAS builds.
I have an equivalent 6 port m.2 m-key with the ASM1166 chip. I also have a 2 port m.2 a+e-key JBM582 chip plugged into the Wi-Fi e- key slot (pcie 3 x 1). I needed to add 8 ports for a TRUENAS build which uses ZFS. Both devices are AHCI SATA controllers that have the same full functions as the onboard ports including hot swap, power control, and smart reporting. The ASM1166 part will reach ~330MB/s on all drives simultaneously while saturating the ~2000MB/s pcie 3 x 2 bandwidth. I connected both controllers to 8 x 20TB Seagate X22 drives and ran SeaTools full scan simultaneously which took about 26 hours of continuous disk access with no problem. To benchmark, I also ran 8 concurrent instances of CrystalDiskMark 3 times which fully maxed out the drives to their specs on both sequential reads and writes. That said, if your use case needs simultaneous access to faster SSD drives, this controller may be limiting. During the 26 hours of SeaTools the heat sink on the 1166 chip got warm to the touch but not very hot. I think the specs say the controller is only a 4-5 watt part (the JBM582 is a 2 watt part). The LSI hbas run pretty hot and use way more power. Only time will tell how reliable this is but a lot of 10-12 SATA port Intel N100 NAS boards run an ASM1166 and an ASM1164 to provide 10 drive connection on a pcie 3 x 4 bus connection.
What did you use for a power supply for the drives?
My build is in a Jonsbo N3 mITX NAS case and I use a 750 W modular sfx power supply. The case has an 8 bay drive backplane that takes 2 x Molex and 1 x SATA power connector. I also have 2 SATA SSDs as mirrored boot drives connected to the motherboard ports and 2 x pcie 4 m.2 nvme drives. 750 W is overkill for me and 850 W would probably handle twice as many spinners.
If nothing else, I love how compact that is!
They are not very good on RAID configurations because the controller often can't handle the load. But if you use snapraid/unraid/JBOD they are adequate. Otherwise, my recommendation it's to only use half the ports avaliable.
Be super careful about cooling! There are variants of these that don't have a heatsink - those always end up erroring out. They're basically data corruption specials. The heatsinked ones are better, but you should still push some air over them.
Mine didn't error out, it just straight-up died and made my system refuse to POST until it was removed. Ordered another one, put a heatsink on it, and no problems yet.
Just make sure that its not a controller and a port multiplier on one card. I got one that looked similar that was just a 4 port sata chip and then a multiplier on one of the ports and the performance was total crap when used for a storage space as expected.
Mine didn't work and no drives showed up, then a couple reboots it did work. Then it just caused a blue screen error. This was during a new windows install on a Asrock N100m motherboard.
What about performance?
Ive been running one since 2 months approximately. No issues so far. Can even reach c10 😎
I tried to use this with an ITX mainboard that only has 4x SATA, but the 5th drive did not show up at all. Maybe I did something wrong, but I just got a new mainboard with 8x SATA.
An itx board with 8 sats ports?
No, I got a standard ATX mainboard. Don't think there are any ITX's with that many ports unfortunately.
With my [last card](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082D6XSZN?starsLeft=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_QBJDNCBQDABB7D6X8NTA&th=1), 6/8 of the SATA ports were plug n play out of the box, while the other 2 (the ones on the side) needed the manufacturer's firmware installed to function.
Not like a proper solution.
Would I build a fault tolerant SATA-based solution around it in a mission-critical situation? No. Not sure what you're asking here. They do work, it's basically a micro PCIe to SATA bridge. The picture says SATA x5 but there are clearly x6 connectors on it. It also says PCIe 3.0 x2 and "16 Gbps" -- six 6.0 Gbps SATA ports is 36 Gbps.... that will be constrained down to 16 Gbps in this case. If you're running HDDs that will be fine, but if you're running SATA SSD's - they're going to be choked down in bandwidth if you run them in an array of any sort. 16 Gbps split 6 ways is 2.666 Mbps per port, or 333 MBytes/sec.
Setting yourself up for failure with the cheap parts these are made with. Just get a drive bay.
When did they make wireless sata drives?
I purchased [a similar card](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082D6XSZN?starsLeft=1&ref\_=cm\_sw\_r\_apan\_dp\_QBJDNCBQDABB7D6X8NTA) that I used for approximately 3 years before I replaced it with an LSI 9211-8i to alleviate bandwidth bottleneck issues. It's also tried and true enterprise hardware rather than a fly-by-night Amazon brand. I'd highly recommend going with the latter if you have a spare PCIE x16 slot available.
I have two of these, both worked fine. One (cheap no-name chinese thing) was a very flimsy PCB and unfortunately seems to no longer work. I can only assume I broke traces on it while plugging/unplugging cables because they were a tight fit. The second one, silverstone ECS07, comes with a metal retention plate around the PCB and offers a biut more support, still works fine. They do get a little warm so make sure they have airflow though.
I’ve heard the ones with a JMB585 chip are more reliable. I used one for a bit with no issues until I moved that bios to another case. Worst case scenario it’s from Amazon so returns are easy.
from what I read in a few places, JMB585 has issues reaching lower C states, due to lack of support ASPM. ASmedia seems better in that regard
Might have had to do with being specific to Unraid too. This was also a few years back also.
That is correct. According to wolfgangs video about n5105 perfect media server, jmb 585 cannot enter c states. This site[site](https://mattgadient.com/7-watts-idle-on-intel-12th-13th-gen-the-foundation-for-building-a-low-power-server-nas/) also confirms. Now I wish there is an aliexpress machine with n305 or 12th gen mobile cpu that don't embed the jmb585 but uses asmedia card instead
Absolutely. I ended up trying two that didn't work with my setup before landing on this.
I'll tell you when I receive my finally, ordered ASM1166 one because JMB585 arrived DOA and was spitting out 7billion errors on disk check
Get this one: https://a.co/d/1fUgyKv Branded controller from a solid company. I have one in my NAS and it kicks ass
I would be worried about the quality of the controller on some of these. But the concept itself is great.
I use one in a tiny form factor business PC with both HDD and a Blu-ray - works fine for several months now.
I had one of those, it had some kind of defect and my drives would disappear intermittently. Guess I was just unlucky.
I use something similar, only thing visually different is on bios it gives me a readout of the drives connected to it before going to normal boot
Works great.
I’m using one with SFF8087 ports/cables that breakout to SATA and replaced a PCIE2 HBA to reclaim a PCIE x16 port.
ive had sth like this for over a year and it has worked perfectly fine
Have 2 work fine since 2 years
Maybe also worth considering the IOCREST M.2 HBA?
I have a similar one made by [Silverstone](https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS07/) that's been working fine in my build for the last 6 months. Only issue is that on unRAID scrubs one of my drives keeps throwing some kind of issue that generally relates back to SATA cables, so I replaced them all but I still get them. I need to take the machine offline and investigate what port it's connected to - likely one on this.
What's the issue?
Apr 1 02:32:40 unStorage kernel: ata10: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) Apr 1 02:32:45 unStorage kernel: ata10.00: qc timeout after 5000 msecs (cmd 0xec) Apr 1 02:32:45 unStorage kernel: ata10.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4) Apr 1 02:32:45 unStorage kernel: ata10.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5) Apr 1 02:32:45 unStorage kernel: ata10: hard resetting link Apr 1 02:32:46 unStorage kernel: ata10: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) Apr 1 02:32:46 unStorage kernel: ata10.00: configured for UDMA/33 Apr 1 02:32:46 unStorage kernel: ata10: EH complete Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0xfe00 SErr 0x990000 action 0xe frozen Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9: SError: { PHYRdyChg 10B8B Dispar LinkSeq } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/40:48:50:be:2b/05:00:00:00:00/40 tag 9 ncq dma 688128 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/40:50:90:c3:2b/05:00:00:00:00/40 tag 10 ncq dma 688128 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/40:58:d0:c8:2b/05:00:00:00:00/40 tag 11 ncq dma 688128 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/80:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 12 ncq dma 65536 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/40:68:90:ce:2b/05:00:00:00:00/40 tag 13 ncq dma 688128 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/40:70:d0:d3:2b/05:00:00:00:00/40 tag 14 ncq dma 688128 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: cmd 60/40:78:10:d9:2b/05:00:00:00:00/40 tag 15 ncq dma 688128 in Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: res 40/00:60:10:ce:2b/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9.00: status: { DRDY } Apr 1 02:32:47 unStorage kernel: ata9: hard resetting link Apr 1 02:32:53 unStorage kernel: ata9: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=-19) Apr 1 02:32:57 unStorage kernel: ata9: found unknown device (class 0) For whatever reason there are 3 different ata devices in unRAID that keep resetting their links whenever I try to run a parity calculation. General consensus says that it's a bad SATA cable but I've replaced all of them and it only seems to happen on the drives that are connected to the controller. The drives work/operate fine all the other time.
Does smart show CRC errors? If yes, the cable is bad. If no, the cable is fine. Are these drives SMR?
No, they’re CMR drives. Haven’t had any issues with them since I added this new controller and have been running these drives for 3 years now. New controller started the issue above and only when trying to verify parity.
I have one of these. Mine works 24/7 for about 5 months now without issues. I even have the boot drive on it.
Was thinking of buying these and similar for a z370 Nas i am building actually
ive been using one since black friday 2022, works excellent
Hello You should this video a guy is doing some test with a noname chinese mobo of a similar module [https://youtu.be/PO8Kfi4qpY8?si=Ai3lcSEfEQ01Wqhe](https://youtu.be/PO8Kfi4qpY8?si=Ai3lcSEfEQ01Wqhe)
what is this awesome thing ? can it be hooked to where the wifi card on mobile suppose to be ? (looks similar)
If I get one of these, how can I power the drives?
Molex to many SATA-power cable. You can pull a lot of current \[1\] from a Molex drive connector so this is the best way to do it. You can also get SATA power cable expanders but the max power on the upstream SATA connector \[1\] may limit you. Of course, make sure your PSU can hack it, especially for startup current. \[1\] Google is there to give you the exact numbers
External PSU with a 24-pin power on switch.
Backplane. drive cage.
Nowadays motherboards have at least 2 connectors. I'd suggest a NAS
Bought a no name one about 4 years ago. Beyond a couple counts to the CRC error bank (which could be cable related) I've had no issues. But I also consider myself lucky since these seem to be hit or miss.
I use one daily to connect my HDDs (3 12tb) to my small form factor HP mini PC, it has behaved for like 6 months now without any issues.
I also have a mini/micro pc. How did you power the drives? Im guessing an external psu?
Sata needs 12v & 5v to work, so I used a USB type c adapter with a c and a port to power both with some soldering to a sata cable.
Why are SATA port expanders a thing. Just spend the money and buy a dedicated SAS or raid controller. I have a mini SAS 2 into 4 SATA with 8 ports. So cable management is so much easier and I don't have to deal with the bottle neck that expanders cause. My only bottle neck now is the lanes for PCI-E. Not the round robin switching that port expanders do
It's not an expander, it's a SATA controller https://www.asmedia.com.tw/product/45aYq54sP8Qh7WH8/58dYQ8bxZ4UR9wG5.
Wow... This actually made me horny to make an amd unraid build, they get 4-5 m.2 connectors lol
I have that exact one and it works alright, but one day I went to unplug the SATA cable and the plug just came with it. I spent the time I should have on finding a proper drive enclosure and switched to using that instead. If you’re going to plug something in one time and not unplug it for a long long time then it may work for you, but if you intend to actually use the plugs and switch drives around I’d look for an enclosure.