A friend of mine had an old computer and wanted to set it up as a server and wanted to try using a sas connector's for the first time and asked me how it worked... Well i have never used sas stuff as I mostly do high end gaming and over clocking or programming etc.
So i figured it can't be that hard but i got to a certain point and now i am just lost.
Basically he wants to use a PCIe GEN 3 X16 to Mini SAS HD 8X Dual Port Adapter off amazon to hook a bunch of hard drives some sata some sas etc. it appears to have of what i know as (or at least thought were) four u2 ports on it though it says it has 8 sff-8643 connectors.
Now the board he is using is pretty old, its a lga 1155 ASUS P8Z77-V PRO i looked into it and it says that it supports pcei 3.0 x16 in the first slot as long as he has an ivy bridge processor installed which he didnt but, in my pile of computer parts in my basement i managed to find one. so i tell yeah you should be good to go.
Then he says the card he wants to put in says " The motherboard cpu and bios needs to support bifurcation to ensure pcie x16 link width to bifurcate to two x8 link width for NVMe SSD support if not card only supports x16 link width." then it goes on to say something about it con be bifurcated into 4 x4 for the sff-8643 8x dual ports.
This i am bit confused on as i normally associate the pcie lane being split by the motherboard to the pcie slots to save money by cheap manufactures i dont really know what it means in the sense of a card being plugged into a pcie x16 and being able to split that slot up.
Can anyone explain to me how this works so i can figure out if this card will work or not for him? here's a link to manufacturers website though i am not sure i am allowed to post it. https://www.microsatacables.com/pcie-x16-to-mini-sas-hd-8x-dual-port-adapter
Thanks a lot.
