Rich Freeman wrote: > On Tue, Jun 4, 2024 at 2:44 AM Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I did some more digging. It seems that all the LSI SAS cards I found >> need a PCIe x8 slot. The only slot available is the one intended for >> video. > The board you linked has 2 4x slots that are physically 16x, so the > card should work fine in those, just at 4x speed. > >> I'd rather not >> use it on the new build because I've thought about having another >> monitor added for desktop use so I would need three ports at least. > You actually could put the video card in one of those 4x slots if you > wanted to prioritize IO for the HBA, though I would only do that if > you weren't playing games, and had a lot of SSDs plugged into the HBA. > Crypto miners routinely run GPUs in 1x slots. > >> The little SATA controllers I currently use tend to only need PCIe x1. >> That is slower but at least it works. > The LSI cards will work just as well in a 1x. That is, assuming you > only plug as many drives into it as you do one of those SATA HBAs and > don't expect miraculous bandwidth out of them. > > The only gotcha is that on the board you linked the 1x slot doesn't > say it can accomodate cards larger than 1x, so you might need a riser > and someplace to put the card. >
So the LSI controllers are a option, just a little slower. Cool. The main reason I wanted to go with the SAS to SATA controller, number of drives I can connect. Keep in mind, I need to get to almost 20 drives but with only one card. Almost none of the mobos nowadays has more than a couple PCIe slots. Right now in my current rig, I have two little SATA cards and put one LVM on one card, another LVM on the other card. To kinda balance out the speed. What little speed there is. ;-) At least I know it is a option even if I don't or can't use the video slot. Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
