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Good PCIe x1 SATA III card

H

hexden

n00b
Joined
Nov 18, 2012
Messages
41
I'm looking a for a PCIe 1x SATA 3 card with at least 2 internal SATA ports so I can add some extra SATA ports to a Intel Z77 motherboard. I'll be running Windows 7 Home Premium x64. I've looked at the SATA 3 expansion cards on Newegg and they all seem to have one sort of problem or another. Can anyone recommend a card from personal experience? Are there any SATA chipsets to look for or avoid like Marvell or ASMedia ?
 
In all honesty, unless you are running SSD's and dealing almost exclusively with very large sequentially accessed files you will be much better served using the onboard Intel SATA2 ports than an add-in PCIe card.
 
I'm already using up all the Intel motherboard ports. I just need a few more SATA 3 ports .
 
Ah. Unfortunately, many/all of the el-cheapo PCIe x1 SATA3 cards use controllers that many people have had issues with of one sort or another (depending on OS or use you intend). What OS do you plan on running and how do you expect to configure the attached drives (Single drives, software RAID, JBOD, etc?)
 
I'm running Win 7 Home Premium x64 and am using the Intel DZ77BH-55K motherboard with a 3770k CPU which already has a Marvell Sata 3 chipset on it as well as the built-in Intel Sata ports. And yes even with 8 Sata ports I need more and I can't afford a server motherboard and associated parts. I plan on running the add on Sata ports as single drives. This is for a ripping/video encoding machine as I have a lot of VHS & LaserDisc video to digitize as well as DVDs. I'm using 3 optical drives (1 Blu-ray, 1 DVD and 1 HD-DVD), 1 SSD for OS, 1 SSD as a scratch drive, 1 hard drive for capturing video, and one drive to hold the final rendering. The last motherboard Sata port is reserved for the ESata port on the back of the motherboard. I'd like to add a front mounted ESata port so I don't have to reach around to the back of the case to reach it when I need it.
 
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diizzy said:
ASMedia ASM1061 is what you want...
//Danne
Click to expand...

a card based on this chipset is the best option for cheap 1x controlers, it has the best performance of cheap 1x cards

to get better you would need to speed 5x as much as one of those cheap cards.
 
Why has it to be a SATAIII port after all? A PCIe x1 slot will already bottleneck a single port, let alone 2.
 
a single pcie v2 x1 port might bottleneck on a single port, it gives 500MB/sec read and write at once. sata3 normally caps out at 550MB/sec combined.

So I would say 1 port is ok, two ports, heh, depends.

But if this is for ssd usage, the only reason sata3 is really needed, I wouldn't want to skip out on a x1 port with a value brand sata card.
 
patrickdk said:
a single pcie v2 x1 port might bottleneck on a single port, it gives 500MB/sec read and write at once. ...
Click to expand...
Dreams are often based on "theory" (or good drugs:)). Put down the spec sheets ... do actual measurements. Reality can be a bitch ... if you don't do proper capacity planning.

To OP: How about a PCI card w/4xSATA ports, and connect your 3 opticals to it? Since you have an Intel mobo (they tend to do PCI right), there should be sufficient bandwidth for 2-3+ opticals at once. That frees up your mobo SATAs for more taxing uses. myce.com (formerly cdfreaks.com) should have some good threads on controller cards for opticals (Look for cards based on the SiliconImage 3114/3124). Also, leaves that PCIe slot available.
 
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patrickdk said:
a single pcie v2 x1 port might bottleneck on a single port, it gives 500MB/sec read and write at once. sata3 normally caps out at 550MB/sec combined.
Click to expand...

PCIe 2.0 caps at about 400 MB/s, PCIe 1.0 saturates at around 150 MB/s already. Unless you significantly increase the payload size (most desktop mainboards won't let you).
To give some actual numbers, for a payload size of 128 bytes you will see a efficiency of 0.75 to 0.85, while a payload of 256 bytes can go up to 0.9. I just took a quick look on my server, all cards are set to 128 bytes except the SAS HBA, which is set at 256 bytes. Intel server ethernet controllers (I350, X540) seem to support up to 512 bytes while the SAS controller supports the maximum size of 4096. I think however, that the chipset (C204) is limited to 256.
 
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Your estimates are really low, for 128b it would be around 220MB/sec, not 150MB/sec.

and using 256b it would be 245MB/sec.

Yes the theoredical is 250MB/sec, and as I get very close to that in real life, 240MB/sec, I could attribute it to any number of issues. But still the margine of error between 240mb/s and 250mb/s is rather small.
 
With a 20 byte overhead (16 header + 4 checksum) it is in theory not possible to go over 232 MB/s with 256 byte payloads. For 128 bytes the limit would be 216 MB/s. But that are theoretical maximum values, nothing you will see in reality with multiple nested protocols and upper layers requiring acknowledgements (mostly network workload). As least as far as I recall. Maybe my estimates were a bit low. Do you know the payload size of the average desktop board?
 
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