I'm looking for a PCIe-based SATA card, to add more internal SATA-III ports. While a great many of them exist, most are based on an old Marvell series of controllers or the equivalent ASMedia (ASM1061?) controller, which only support PCIe 2.0. Due to a lack of motherboard PCIe slots, and a desire to maximise speed with minimal lanes taken, I would like a card that at least supports PCIe 3.0 transfer speeds.
I do not need a specific card suggestion (while one would be nice), if I can get a controller model I can chase down further. New and second-hand are both fine.
Hard requirements:
- Must be PCIe v3.0 or higher, i.e. at least 8 GT/s per lane.
- Must support SATA-III (6 Gbit/s) (probably a given if it meets the PCIe requirement).
- Ports should be standard internal SATA (or SAS with the appropriate cable) ports. M.2 and eSATA are unnecessary.
- TRIM support for SSDs (this can probably be assumed in any modern controller).
Soft requirements, descending order of importance:
- As few PCIe lanes as possible. x4 is acceptable. x2 is better. x1 is great.
- As many ports as possible. 2 is enough, but more is better.
Optional, nice-to-have:
- SAS support.
Unimportant:
- M.2, eSATA.
- RAID. I'm not going to do hardware raid.
- Caching. See: no RAID.
Budget: soft cap of $200, though I'm open to higher if necessary