PCi 1X HBAs option

mrwxyz

Cadet
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
2
My motherboard has only on SATA port free and has a PCI 3 1X slot available, is there any recomendation for PCI 3 1x hardware which can be used to connect SATA drives?
PCI 4X slot is already occupied by Quadd core NIC card.
I am using HP 290 Mini PC for setting up NAS and PFSense.
 

blanchet

Guru
Joined
Apr 17, 2018
Messages
516
You probably never find a HBA for a PCIe 1x slot, because such a slot does not provide enough bandwidth for the disks behind the HBA.
But as a possible alternative, you can replace the quad-port NIC by a dual port PCIe1x NIC, like the Broadcom BCM5720, to free a PCIe 4x slot for a HBA.

The BCM5720 board
  • can be found for a very small fee on ebay, for example the DELL BCM5720.
  • exists in low and high profile
  • is very well supported by any OS, including VMware ESXi, Linux and FreeBSD because BCM5720 is the default onboard ethernet chip on many HPE and DELL servers.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,680
The Broadcoms are sometimes flaky. Beware. The Intel cards are OK, even a desktop CT card.
 
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