More m.2 drives in SuperMicro A2SDi-H-TF

[Kean]

My current TrueNAS build starts to be quite old now. It almost 7 years of constant operation in not very healthy environment (quite warm/hot). It's a SuperMicro Pentium D-1508 with 16 on board ports, so the board is quite capable. I use 6 SATA HDD drives and 4 SATA SSD drives + SATA DOM. I use it just as my backup/storage target, no VMs or Jails.

I started to plan replacement in the future.
The key aspect is to keep existing functionality, so 10 SATA drives as minimum. CPU performance is not that super factor here as current CPU looks like it's not bottleneck. Than, moving to other limitations: power and heat. I can't afford to put into my rack really powerful and really hot CPU (cooling and my wallet will not make it).
That's why i started to look at Atom C3000 series as it's still quite reasonable in performance and prices are acceptable. My eyes are looking currently on A2SDi-H-TF. This board has:
1. Better CPU than my current D1508
2. 12 SATA3 ports
3. 10GBE. It's not SFP+ I have and like, but ok... it's fine.
4. It has quite low energy footprint.

BUT, in the future I'd like to add some nVME drives to build better VM storage than my 2 VDEVs with mirrored 2 SSDs, which can't fully saturate 10GBE now.
I'd like to have a way to add 4x m.2 nVME drives to this board. There is only 1 PCIe 3.0 x4 (not x8). This is something I don't like, as It would limit the AOC-SHG3-4M2P I planned to use (it's PCI-E x8 in size and speed).

Now the question:
1. How do you see such combination of A2SDi-H-TF and AOC-SHG3-4M2P with 4x m.2 drives? What level of tput i could expect? I'd like to fully saturate 10GBE, so I guess it should handle.... but please correct me if I'm wrong.
2. There is X12SDV-4C-SP6F, which is more capable for sure but more expensive and more energy not efficient for my use case. Is it worth it?
3. Do you see any other optimal solution here?

 

[Etorix]

You've already identified options and solutions.
The x4 slot of the A2SDi is open, so will take a x8 card. When accessing four M.2 drives simultaneously, the drives would have the equivalent of a x1 link: Better than SATA, but not full NVMe speed.

Why not add NVMe drives to your current X10SDV-2C-7TP4F board? I see no stated use for the M.2 and PCIe slots.

 

[Kean]

In practice I could add nVME as I don't have any m.2 not all PCI-E are not populated on this system. The case here is that it's start to be somehow old and i feel risk of major failure on this system is increasing after those 7 years. System currently is fully stable and working 24/7 without any major issues. 2 years ago I updated the HDD drives there, but with the plan to update around EO this year.
How do you think, how reliable is this platform and how long it could serve (based on comments you seen here or your private experience)?

 

[Etorix]

I have no idea how long these system can operate, but they are meant for long term (to the point that Broadwell-era X10SDV boards are still sold new today…).
Unless you have evidence that the D-1508 is hindering your attempt to saturate a 10 GbE link, I would not rush to upgrade.