# Storage Add-in Card Advice



## 5 o'clock Charlie (Mar 9, 2020)

Good day everyone!

I am looking to expand the number of drives in my system and looking for a non-raid card that can support up to 8 drives in a pci express x4 slot. I would prefer to use the x4 slot on my maximus v gene in order to keep all 16 lanes with my graphics card as I play games on it as well. I came across a Syba SI-PEX40137 that matches my criteria. Below is a link of the product on Amazon:






						Amazon.com: Syba 8 Port SATA III Non-RAID PCI-e x4 Expansion Card Supports FreeNAS and ZFS RAID - Includes Mini SAS to SATA Breack Out Cables (SI-PEX40137) : Electronics
					

Buy Syba 8 Port SATA III Non-RAID PCI-e x4 Expansion Card Supports FreeNAS and ZFS RAID - Includes Mini SAS to SATA Breack Out Cables (SI-PEX40137): SCSI Port Cards - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases



					www.amazon.com
				




This product sounds too good to be true for what I want. However, I have never used a storage add-in card before, so my experience and knowledge is limited. This card uses two Marvell 9215 with a Asmedia ASM1806 PCI-e Bridge chip. I have no knowledge if these chips are decent and reliable. My hesitation with buying is the lack of criticism of this card when searching product reviews or user feedback in forums. I can only find reviews on Amazon, which are mixed. Some report that it is a great card for FreeNAS, while one reviewer using Windows 10 complains the boot-up process is longer. I am currently running Windows 10 1909.

This card will be installed on my primary system. My use for the card will be taking older SATA mechanical drives and using them to create a file/plex server. So I am looking for advice from the community to see if the chips used in this card are worth it before taking the plunge. Thank you everyone in advance for your feedback and recommendations.


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## Regeneration (Mar 9, 2020)

My experience with Marvell been negative (poor performance). See if you can find another brand, and make sure the card is true PCIe 3.0 or 2.0 x4 or performance will be bottlenecked.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 9, 2020)

Raid cards can be configured for non raid


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## TheLostSwede (Mar 9, 2020)

I wouldn't suggest that card. It's "cheap" for a reason.
You're much better off with something along these lines. Assuming it fits.





						Amazon.com: SAS9211-8I 8PORT Int 6GB Sata+SAS Pcie 2.0 : Electronics
					

Buy SAS9211-8I 8PORT Int 6GB Sata+SAS Pcie 2.0: RAID Controllers - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases



					www.amazon.com


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## Regeneration (Mar 9, 2020)

Some of the cheap cards have fake specifications. Says "PCIe x4", "PCIe 2 compliant", but it is PCIe 1.0 x4.




It appears the Syba SI-PEX40137 is one of these cards.


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## 5 o'clock Charlie (Mar 9, 2020)

Thank you Regeneration,  eidairaman1 and TheLostSwede for your responses.

I understand that raid cards can be configured to not use raid, though I was more concerned with the configuring part as that could be a daunting task? I was looking at the SAS9211-8I as well, and here are some further questions. I guess to run in JBOD mode instead of RAID mode, one would need to flash the firmware to run in "IT Mode". Is that correct?
Secondly, at the physical level, as this is a x8 card I can add it into my x4 slot as it is open-ended. Question now is, would only one sas port work since it is then running at x4 thus only 4 drives are able to be used? Or is the only the speed cut in half? I think this is explained in the manual from broadcom's site: https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12353333


> The LSI SAS 2008 controller chip JTAG signals are not connected to the corresponding signals in the PCIe connector.


So this sounds it may be the latter, as in speed is reduced only. Any clarification is much appreciated.


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## TheLostSwede (Mar 9, 2020)

Regeneration said:


> Some of the cheap cards have fake specifications. Says "PCIe x4", "PCIe 2 compliant", but it is PCIe 1.0 x4.
> 
> View attachment 147619
> 
> It appears the Syba SI-PEX40137 is one of these cards.


If you look at the spec, it's actually two PCIe x1 or possibly x2 Marvell controllers and an ASMedia PCIe bridge. This means that each controller operates as a "normal" PCIe x1 card (assuming the parts are PCIe x1). This would explain the feedback from the users seeing it operating in PCIe x1 mode, rather than x4.
I'm not sure I'd go as far as calling it "fake spec", but it's indeed misleading if people don't understand how the cards are designed.



5 o'clock Charlie said:


> Thank you Regeneration,  eidairaman1 and TheLostSwede for your responses.
> 
> I understand that raid cards can be configured to not use raid, though I was more concerned with the configuring part as that could be a daunting task? I was looking at the SAS9211-8I as well, and here are some further questions. I guess to run in JBOD mode instead of RAID mode, one would need to flash the firmware to run in "IT Mode". Is that correct?
> Secondly, at the physical level, as this is a x8 card I can add it into my x4 slot as it is open-ended. Question now is, would only one sas port work since it is then running at x4 thus only 4 drives are able to be used? Or is the only the speed cut in half? I think this is explained in the manual from broadcom's site: https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12353333
> ...


No, both ports would work, but the chip would of course have reduced bandwidth, so it won't operate at full speed. It's like how TPU has tested graphics cards in the past by taping off parts of the PCIe connector to reduce the bandwidth. 

Not sure about hte rest, but JTAG is for debugging as far as I'm aware and in general not used during normal operation.


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## 5 o'clock Charlie (Mar 9, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> No, both ports would work, but the chip would of course have reduced bandwidth, so it won't operate at full speed. It's like how TPU has tested graphics cards in the past by taping off parts of the PCIe connector to reduce the bandwidth.


Thanks for clarifying this as well as referring to the TPU test at different speeds (e.g. x1, x4, x8, x16) that W1zzard has done over the years. That test is very informative, and a great reminder as I forgot all about it. Maybe I should revisit it and see how much of difference is between x8 and x16 with my system if I decide to place this card in my second x16 slot. I game at 1080p with my 1070, so I will read over again the review "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 PCI-Express Scaling".

Within the next year, I am looking to upgrade my system (e.g. cpu/motherboard/ram), so as the 9211-8I is a x8 pci express 2.0 card, maybe I should look at a 9207-8i? This is a x8 pci express 3.0. Thoughts?



TheLostSwede said:


> Not sure about hte rest, but JTAG is for debugging as far as I'm aware and in general not used during normal operation.


Sorry, I threw the term JBOD loosely there, and forgot that spans multiple drives into one single logical volume, which I am not doing. Each drive is going to have its own separate entity. At first, I thought 'JTAG' was a mistype. Then I looked up what JTAG was as I have never heard of the term, which goes into detail about debugging the physical connections and the chips. Very interesting. Thanks.


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## Regeneration (Mar 9, 2020)

Your motherboard has:

2x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)
1x PCIe 2.0 x4 (black)

You prefer to avoid running GPU at x8. Both 9207-8i, 9211-8I require long PCIe slot (x16) and therefore aren't good neither.

Look for a card that runs at PCIe 2.0 x4, like SI-PEX40139, SI-PEX40138, SY-PEX40096.


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## 5 o'clock Charlie (Mar 9, 2020)

Regeneration said:


> You prefer to avoid running GPU at x8. Both 9207-8i, 9211-8I require long PCIe slot (x16) and therefore aren't good neither.


Correct, however *@TheLostSwede *pointed out W1zzard's bandwidth test with the number of pci express lanes used, there is minimal difference with comparing x8 vs x16 speeds at 3.0. But if I use one of the LSI cards in my second x16 slot, I am wondering if there will be a cpu bottleneck with my 3770k as W1zzard's test system is more modern than mine.



Regeneration said:


> Look for a card that runs at PCIe 2.0 x4, like SI-PEX40139, SI-PEX40138, SY-PEX40096.


Actually, I was looking at both the SI-PEX40139, SI-PEX40138 offerings first before looking at the SI-PEX40137. I take it that the JMicron JMB585 Chipset is more reputable? I remember years ago with SSD issues with JMicron controllers, but my guess it is different? Since these aren't raid cards and just port multipliers, what are the advantages/disadvantages in going with these? Hardware raid of course would not be available, but not sure what else in a significant manner. Though it would be nice to have 8 additional drives compared to 4/5 drives. Thanks.


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## Aquinus (Mar 10, 2020)

Regeneration said:


> You prefer to avoid running GPU at x8. Both 9207-8i, 9211-8I require long PCIe slot (x16) and therefore aren't good neither.


Are you sure about that? The PCIe 8x LSI cards I've worked with have been 8x long, not 16x with half of it disconnected and the pictures of those two look like half the size of a 16x connector. I'd give up half of the lanes for an LSI card though. That's enough bandwidth for spinny disks.

Edit: If that 4x electrical slot is the size of a 16x slot, then a 8x card will work with half the lanes. Depending on the use case, that might be acceptable.


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## Regeneration (Mar 10, 2020)

5 o'clock Charlie said:


> Correct, however *@TheLostSwede *pointed out W1zzard's bandwidth test with the number of pci express lanes used, there is minimal difference with comparing x8 vs x16 speeds at 3.0. But if I use one of the LSI cards in my second x16 slot, I am wondering if there will be a cpu bottleneck with my 3770k as W1zzard's test system is more modern than mine.
> 
> Actually, I was looking at both the SI-PEX40139, SI-PEX40138 offerings first before looking at the SI-PEX40137. I take it that the JMicron JMB585 Chipset is more reputable? I remember years ago with SSD issues with JMicron controllers, but my guess it is different? Since these aren't raid cards and just port multipliers, what are the advantages/disadvantages in going with these? Hardware raid of course would not be available, but not sure what else in a significant manner. Though it would be nice to have 8 additional drives compared to 4/5 drives. Thanks.



Dual x8 is more of a stress for the chipset rather then CPU.

Since you plan on running HDDs, the PCIe 2.0 slot should be sufficient (maximum of 75-150MB/s per drive).

JMB585 > outdated Marvell 9215 > 10-year-old JMB36X which had no native support for SSD trim and ran on PCIe 1.0 x1.

High-end SATA cards can be very expensive. Those are cheap and will get the job done.



Aquinus said:


> Are you sure about that? The PCIe 8x LSI cards I've worked with have been 8x long, not 16x with half of it disconnected and the pictures of those two look like half the size of a 16x connector. I'd give up half of the lanes for an LSI card though. That's enough bandwidth for spinny disks.



LSI are x8 cards, but it is very rare to have x8 slot on a desktop motherboard. Most have x1, x4, and x16 slots.


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## 5 o'clock Charlie (Mar 17, 2020)

Sorry for delay. For those who may have been curious in what I decided to choose, I went with the 9207-8i . I bought it last week and received it yesterday and installed it. I still have to wait for my cables to arrive before I can start attaching drives. Thank you *@Regeneration*,* @TheLostSwede, @eidairaman1*, and* @Aquinus *for taking the time to provide your comments and recommendations.


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