SATA controller cards ?

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xpd

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#323105 26-Oct-2025 19:43

I'm potentially getting given some more decent sized SATA drives that I'd like to throw into my "Server" (old i5 6500 desktop), but I'm out of SATA ports.

Whats cheapest way to resolve - looking at SATA cards on PB seem to be pretty expensive for what they are..... any cheap Ali/X recommendations ? :)

I'm not bothered by all the whiz bang features some cards provide, just want them for storage.

XPD / Gavin

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#3428080 26-Oct-2025 19:44

Raid card in IT MODE is probably the best way to go.

M1015 as something old and should be cheap

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#3428082 26-Oct-2025 19:48

Some LSI cards will be better than most asmedia el-cheapos.

And when it comes to storage... Do not cheap out.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/193629162564

As long as you're not using SSDs (because trim will not work), this will be fine for some spinning rust, it's already in IT mode so it's basically a SATA and SAS controller that will directly show the drive as it is.

If you want to use SSDs... You're gonna need triple the budget, or use your onboard sata controller and move whatever spinning rust to the LSI card.

There are also better options out there but this doesn't break the bank and isn't going to potentially shit the bed like some el cheapo asmedia ones.

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#3428083 26-Oct-2025 20:04

I think the advice on RAID cards in IT mode is solid.

But, if you do plan to go the SATA card route, the best bet seems to be cards with the ASM1166 chip. I have the StarTech card with this chip in running an Unraid box, but there are also cheap cards using the chip on Ali Express. Here's some discussion on the Level1Techs forum: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/short-review-edging-asmedia-1166-pcie-gen3-x2-m-2-to-6-x-sata-hba-chipset-it-doesnt-suck/208743/100

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#3428084 26-Oct-2025 20:05

The ASM1166 cards are ok these days if you buy something with good reviews and use a lot less power than an HBA. I use an ASM1166 NVME adapter in one of my servers and it's been rock solid for a couple of years.

The biggest problem with LSI HBAs is counterfeit cards so if you go that way buy from a reputable seller. They also do use a fair bit of power/generate a lot of heat and are designed for use in server chassis so it's not a bad idea to add a little fan. I've done it that way in my main storage server but plan on going with an ASM1166 solution when I update it in the near future to allow higher c-states and to reduce power consumption.

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#3428096 26-Oct-2025 21:44

Those cheaper cards had 6 of my drives topping out at 40MB/s. Changed to the Silverstone expansion card and now I'm getting 150+. The type of controller chip definitely matters, with this one also being ASM1166.

https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS06/

fe31nz

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#3428107 26-Oct-2025 23:03

I bought two of these, one for my Windows box and one for my MythTV box (Ubuntu):

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005427076687.html

They seem fine after 29 months of use. But it looks like they have gone up in price since then - I got them for $US15.13 each.

Previous to that, I also used two second hand LSI SAS9220-8i PCIe v2 x 8 SAS cards to put in PCs that only had one NVMe slot. I had to load different firmware on them to change them from RAID to IT mode. They support 4 SATA ports on each of their two SAS connectors, with the right cable. I have since upgraded one of those PCs and have one spare at the moment, with two SAS to 4 SATA cables. They do need a PCIe x8 or larger slot though, and new motherboards often do not have enough larger PCIe slots to have a video card and one of these also.

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#3431235 5-Nov-2025 14:25

Problem solved.... found I had a couple of LSI cards from an old server in my draw at work :) Will use one of those.... but now need new PSU to handle the load. ;)

XPD / Gavin

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Handle9

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#3431308 5-Nov-2025 19:49

xpd:

Problem solved.... found I had a couple of LSI cards from an old server in my draw at work :) Will use one of those.... but now need new PSU to handle the load. ;)

Check they are in IT mode not IR mode so the drives get passed through. Some cards can be flashed to IT mode, some can't.

openmedia

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#3431633 6-Nov-2025 14:00

fe31nz:

I bought two of these, one for my Windows box and one for my MythTV box (Ubuntu):

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005427076687.html

They seem fine after 29 months of use. But it looks like they have gone up in price since then - I got them for $US15.13 each.

Previous to that, I also used two second hand LSI SAS9220-8i PCIe v2 x 8 SAS cards to put in PCs that only had one NVMe slot. I had to load different firmware on them to change them from RAID to IT mode. They support 4 SATA ports on each of their two SAS connectors, with the right cable. I have since upgraded one of those PCs and have one spare at the moment, with two SAS to 4 SATA cables. They do need a PCIe x8 or larger slot though, and new motherboards often do not have enough larger PCIe slots to have a video card and one of these also.

What is the performance like given you've got 6 ports on a single PCIe bus

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richms

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#3431637 6-Nov-2025 14:03

gehenna:

Those cheaper cards had 6 of my drives topping out at 40MB/s. Changed to the Silverstone expansion card and now I'm getting 150+. The type of controller chip definitely matters, with this one also being ASM1166.

https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS06/

Previous cheap ones would have 2 chips - a sata controller, usually 2 port and then a 1 to 5 mulitplier on it. The way multipliers work varies - one type is total crap and you are basically switching what drive you talk to at any time, requires that a drive finishes its operation before commands can be sent to another one basically making 5 of them as slow or worse than a single drive. Ok for bulk storage as a JBOD thing, but putting an array across them and performance tanks compared to native multiport ones or better still, a HBA.

Richard rich.ms

fe31nz

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#3431809 6-Nov-2025 23:47

openmedia:

What is the performance like given you've got 6 ports on a single PCIe bus

The ASM1166 chip does PCIe v3.0 and uses up to 2 lanes of PCIe:

https://www.asmedia.com.tw/Web2/product/45aYq54sP8Qh7WH8/58dYQ8bxZ4UR9wG5.html

There are normally 4 lanes of PCIe on an NVMe slot, so it will have 2 lanes to use. And unless your motherboard is old it will do at least PCIe v3.0 on all the NVMe slots. So you should get 16 Gbit/s of PCIe. Which is enough to run only 2 SATA ports at full 6 Gbit/s, although I would expect that it would run 3 SATA ports at once pretty well.

In practical terms, no SATA port runs at 6 Gbit/s all the time. I am using my AS1166 cards with hard drives, not SSDs, and the fastest hard drive I have (Seagate Exos X24 ST24000NM002H) has a maximum sustained transfer rate of 285 MBytes/s:

https://www.seagate.com/content/dam/seagate/en/content-fragments/products/datasheets/exos-x24/exos-x24-DS2080-2307US-en_US.pdf

which works out as 2280 Mbits/s, well short of the 6000 Mbits/s of a SATA connection. So there will be gaps where another drive can be using the PCIe bandwidth. I would expect that you could run 6 such drives on an AS1166 card without getting any significant slowdown, but you would be using all of its PCIe bandwidth. It would depend on how well the hard drive caches worked though, so maybe only 5 drives could be run at full speed simultaneously. Using SATA SSDs would require a different calculation. I am only actually using 1 or 2 of the SATA ports on my AS1166 cards, so I am unable to confirm this in real life.

The other problem with the AS1166 chip is with port multipliers. It only supports the crappy command based switched protocol, so if your port multiplier allows the FIS protocol (as my four drive mount does), you would not want to connect it to an AS1166 port. Fortunately, most motherboards these days will do both port multiplier protocols on the motherboard SATA ports, so connect your port multiplier devices there.