Looking to build a DIY server, can't find PCI-E card with 4x U.2 ports

[terroralpha]

hello,

 

as the title says, i'm trying to build a DIY server using U.2 drives. i already got the drives, they are intel 8TB D4502 nVME drives on a U.2 interface. i don't need a raid controller since i don't want to use conventional raid anyway. i just need a way to wire 4 drives to every PCI-E 16x slot. 

 

my solution right now is to buy Asus Hyper M.2 x16 cards and plug 4x StarTech U.2 to M.2 adapters into each card. it's not elegant, but it's cheap. comes out to $115 for every four U.2 drives. but if possible i'd like to just get a single, ready to go x16 card with 4 U.2 ports already on it. i've been googling for 2 days, can't find anything like that. there has to be something out there. i can't possibly be the only person to want to try this. anyone know of any. 

 

i don't want to buy an actual server as this will be in my living room. my only choice right seems to be DIY. 

 

anyone know of anything like that? thanks 

[Windows7ge]

I know LSI has a PCI_e card with 4 SFF-8643 ports that they state with a firmware update allows the use of NVMe drives. I use to have the model number but I've forgotten it.

 

Will attempt to find it again.

[Electronics Wizardy]

broadcom 9400-16i?

 

highpoint has a few too.

[terroralpha]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

broadcom 9400-16i?

 

highpoint has a few too.

if i understand correctly, that broadcom card has its' own controller that communicate with the drives. it's only an 8x card, so plugging in 4 drives into that will create a bottleneck.

 

i'm looking for a way to get all the nvme drives to communicate directly with the CPU through a bifurcated PCI-E slot. i'm doing that now on my threadripper desktop but with M.2 nvme drives. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, terroralpha said:

if i understand correctly, that broadcom card has its' own controller that communicate with the drives. it's only an 8x card, so plugging in 4 drives into that will create a bottleneck.

 

i'm looking for a way to get all the nvme drives to communicate directly with the CPU through a bifurcated PCI-E slot. i'm doing that now on my threadripper desktop but with M.2 nvme drives. 

then you want the highpoint cards.

 

But also what are you doing that needs more than pcie x8 speeds, I don't think it will limit you for almost all workloads.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, terroralpha said:

hello,

 

as the title says, i'm trying to build a DIY server using U.2 drives. i already got the drives, they are intel 8TB D4502 nVME drives on a U.2 interface. i don't need a raid controller since i don't want to use conventional raid anyway. i just need a way to wire 4 drives to every PCI-E 16x slot. 

 

my solution right now is to buy Asus Hyper M.2 x16 cards and plug 4x StarTech U.2 to M.2 adapters into each card. it's not elegant, but it's cheap. comes out to $115 for every four U.2 drives. but if possible i'd like to just get a single, ready to go x16 card with 4 U.2 ports already on it. i've been googling for 2 days, can't find anything like that. there has to be something out there. i can't possibly be the only person to want to try this. anyone know of any. 

 

i don't want to buy an actual server as this will be in my living room. my only choice right seems to be DIY. 

 

anyone know of anything like that? thanks 

I'm not sure what you're really trying to accomplish here. The U.2 is intended for SSD's in a hot-pluggable backplane. You're not going to find it on consumer motherboards or expansion cards, or at least not in a way that doesn't turn it into a cable-hell. All M.2 and U.2 is translating the PCIe lanes electro-mechanically from the motherboard, there's no logic chips or anything like that on the card.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-SFF-8639-PCIE-SATA-Support/dp/B07GPHB44F

 

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, terroralpha said:

if i understand correctly, that broadcom card has its' own controller that communicate with the drives. it's only an 8x card, so plugging in 4 drives into that will create a bottleneck

Ah, the LSI card I was thinking of is off the table then. x8 & it uses a controller. Sorry.

 

I can definitely see ways of rigging this using one of the cards ASUS sells with M.2 to SFF-8643 adapters then enabling x4x4x4x4 bifurcation on the slot. Don't see why it shouldn't work.

[Dutch_Master]

If it's weird tech, you'll probably find it on Aliexpress

 

edit: here's a possible solution (although it's M.2, not U.2)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000484250372.html

 

(NOTE: never bought from this seller, so all usual disclaimers apply!)