Suggestions for a reliable SATA expansion card for P8Z77

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BusyBeaverHP

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This is my build, I have the motherboard, and plan on occupying all the SATA slots and looking for expansion. What I'm looking for in a SATA expansion card:

- PCI-E 2.0 1x slot
- Doesn't have to have RAID, but it wouldn't hurt
- Doesn't have to be SATA 6 Gb/s, but it wouldn't hurt either
- 4 SATA slots
- Compatible when Marvell and Intel controllers are on
- Around $100 at most

Many of the SATA expansion cards I was looking at in NewEgg has low ratings. Perhaps [H] might know what works in my situation. Anyone have suggestions I'd appreciate it! Thanks!
 
I recommend that you get an IBM M1015 8 port SAS card used on eBay for $50 to $75 US shipped.
 
drescherjm said:
I recommend that you get an IBM M1015 8 port SAS card used on eBay for $50 to $75 US shipped.
Click to expand...

that would not fit the pci-e x1 slot

if your not looking for performance, I am sure a Cheap Standard Sil 4 port card would work. If you want better Performance, you might have to sacrifice the x16 slot..
 
is it not possible to use the 3rd pci-e slot and get a normal 4x card?

if you can set the lanes I think you can do 8x 8x 4x which would solve your problems.
 
Performance is not important in this SATA expansion card, as I'm relegating the drives on it to storage. A card in the PCI-E 2.0 4x slot will block my GPU's airflow, so that's a no-go.

A list of SATA cards on NewEgg sorted by rating. The $89.99 HighPoint RocketRAID 2640X4 SGL PCI-Express x4 SATA / SAS Controller Card seems to fit my need, but I'm gonna wait and see what [H] has to say about that.
 
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BusyBeaverHP said:
Performance is not important in this SATA expansion card, as I'm relegating the drives on it to storage. A card in the PCI-E 2.0 4x slot will block my GPU's airflow, so that's a no-go.

I'm looking at the SATA expansion cards in NewEgg, but a lot of them have low ratings, due to not working when Marvell Controller is turned on, any more suggestions and personal experiences?
Click to expand...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-Express...090?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4844344342

does this change anything for you? you can rise the card above and place it elsewhere in your motherboard to not block the air.

otherwise yeah I guess keep looking for that 1x dream.
 
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The riser is a good way to go. The M1015 is not any kind of terrible idea. It's 73x better than any cheap card you could get, and the riser would help preserve airflow.
 
I'm actually going to consider that riser idea with the IBM M1015 on eBay... before I make the purchases though, a few questions:

1. Given that the 8 SATA slots on the motherboard are occupied, the Marvell controller will be on. I've heard stories about RAID controllers having problems when Marvell is enabled. Does anyone have experiences with this?

2. I will be running a RAID0 array on the Marvell Controller, as well as a RAID0 array on the IBM M1015. Any foreseeable issues?

3. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, is the IBM M1015 compatible?

4. Coming from eBay with only the card, do I need to download any driver/software/firmware?
 
Greetings

Is there any particular reason you got a Socket 1155 board instead of a Socket 2011 one?

I note that your using both video cards slots so this implies you will probably be using a high end cpu like the 2700K or 3770K.

For the price you paid for the board and will also pay for the cpu if you could return your current board and buy a 2011 one instead together with a I7 3820 it would not cost you that much extra. This would also allow you the flexibility of upgrading to a hexacore CPU if you so desire.

If you get say a Gigabyte UD5 you will have 6 Sata 6's + 4 Sata 3's + 1 esata 6 + 1 esata 3 total 12 sata's, even with say an Asus P9X79 Pro motherboard you will have 4 + 4 + 2 + 0 total 10 with no need to get any additional cards, you'd just have to feed the esata's back into the case.

Another problem is that Socket 1155 only has 20 PCIe lanes so that's 8+8+4 so you firstly have to make sure the HBA card works at x4, also secondly, I do vaguely recall a problem with either Z68 (or might have been with the immediately proceeding p67? boards) whereby if you used up all 20 lanes you lost a couple of USB3's or Sata 6's or suchlike as those peripherals used a lane or two for the additional traffic, don't know if this is still an issue but I thought I'd mention it in case it still is.

So with 2011 you have 40 PCie lanes, more slots and since you have plenty of Sata's you don't need to spend extra money buying a m1015 or riser cable, also IB cpu's are not looking so good either, see here

http://www.forums.custompcreview.com/f61/intels-3770k-tdp-raised-77w-95w-403/

If you do get a M1015 it's best you flash it from IR mode to IT mode.

You have to check that HBA's of any kind work with the board you choose as some don't, best check with people that state they have a similar config actually running without problems. If you want to be absolutely certain that they will work you have to get a server motherboard, most of the time HBA manufacturers don't support consumer motherboards, the main reason for this is that apparently the manufacturers tweak the BIOS's for better SLI/Xfire performance and as a consequence of that the slots deviate from the PCIe specifications causing problems for the HBA cards, another modification I once read on the net a while back is a GPU X16 slot providing 16 lanes down but only one lane back up. Anyway who knows what the actual situation is with any certainty.

That's my 2 cents worth for what it's worth..

Cheers and best of luck
 
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