AM4 Motherboard with Port multiplier support?

[HeartOfGermany]

Hey guys,

 

I have a big problem. I need to upgrade my mainboard fron a320m to something like 350, 450 or something with gen3 support + slight overclocking. I need at least 2 PCIe slots - 3 is better (2x x1 is okay, if accessible with gpu installed). The most important feature however is, that it needs to support Sata Port Multipliers. However I am not searching for something server-grade with 200 $ or so. I am searching for something available on the used market. A good sign would be something with a big bios.

 

Any suggestions for that requirement?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Why do you need sata multipliers? There not officially supported and are known for causing issues. All boards should be about the same as most boards are just using the amd chipset for sata, so its upto amd to support it, not the boards.

 

Id personally just get get a cheap sas card, then you have offical multiplier support as part of the standard.

[HeartOfGermany]

So the only thing I need to do, is to get a Sata controller, that does not run over the BIOS and the PC will see the drives? If that works, I could just buy a cheap PCIe card and that works for my purpouse. (no high iops or something like that)

 

Can you confirm this theory? I mean, for Windows it should be like a USB device or PCIe device. It usually does not care at all - just support of many so called "standards" is not great.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, HeartOfGermany said:

So the only thing I need to do, is to get a Sata controller, that does not run over the BIOS and the PC will see the drives? If that works, I could just buy a cheap PCIe card and that works for my purpouse. (no high iops or something like that)

 

Can you confirm this theory? I mean, for Windows it should be like a USB device or PCIe device. It usually does not care at all - just support of many so called "standards" is not great.

yea a cheap pcie to sata card will work fine here.

 

What drives are you connection gto this?

[HeartOfGermany]

Just some 2TB WD Reds. Thank you for your help. You saved my ass and crazy ammount of headache!

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, HeartOfGermany said:

Just some 2TB WD Reds. Thank you for your help. You saved my ass and crazy ammount of headache!

Why do you want a sata multipler anyways? Thats 2 drives, almost all boards support that with no extra multipliers.

[HeartOfGermany]

???? Lol. Who said 2 drives? I said 2TB drives. Will be MDADM RAID 6. Does not work with just 2 drives.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, HeartOfGermany said:

???? Lol. Who said 2 drives? I said 2TB drives. Will be MDADM RAID 6. Does not work with just 2 drives.

oops, read it wrong.

 

Then id really try to get bigger drives then personally, much easier and cheaper to have fewer 8tb drives.

 

Also look at zfs, great way to do raid on linux.

[HeartOfGermany]

Well, best thing would be a RAID 6 with additional intelligent SSD cache, (Gets saved to HDD anyway for redundancy) and support for KVM PCIe Passthrough to Windows 10 host. That is the plan. The Raid is just a bit nerdy. Absolutely dumb in my opinion. Just want it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, HeartOfGermany said:

Well, best thing would be a RAID 6 with additional intelligent SSD cache, (Gets saved to HDD anyway for redundancy) and support for KVM PCIe Passthrough to Windows 10 host. That is the plan. The Raid is just a bit nerdy. Absolutely dumb in my opinion. Just want it.

Well zfs supports ssd caches, but id run vms on ssd only volumes if possible.

 

Why do pcie patthrough to windows? id just run windows with hyper-v as the host and run hyper-v vms and use storage spaces for raid.

[HeartOfGermany]

MDADM is open source - just inside linux kernel. Also, linux is the system, I want to use more. Windows 10 only is required for UWP games and some nonsupported games through wine. Many switch to native linux support also. I hate propietary sh!t.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, HeartOfGermany said:

MDADM is open source - just inside linux kernel. Also, linux is the system, I want to use more. Windows 10 only is required for UWP games and some nonsupported games through wine. Many switch to native linux support also. I hate propietary sh!t.

zfs is also opensource and a kernel module. Id give it a show, much more features and much better at keeping data safe than mdadm.

[HeartOfGermany]

Okay, will look into it. Thanks for recommendation.

[HeartOfGermany]

Actually ZFS is not the right thing for me. It gives no option to grow the RAID like in MDADM. So after reading, why ZFS is so special, it is sad, that this feature does not work at all.

[Twilliamswsm]

On 7/16/2019 at 1:35 AM, HeartOfGermany said:

So the only thing I need to do, is to get a Sata controller, that does not run over the BIOS and the PC will see the drives? If that works, I could just buy a cheap PCIe card and that works for my purpouse. (no high iops or something like that)

 

Can you confirm this theory? I mean, for Windows it should be like a USB device or PCIe device. It usually does not care at all - just support of many so called "standards" is not great.

That's pretty much what I've done with mine. One 8 port PCIe Sata card with FIS compatability allowing it to connect to port multiplier. Works okay for Windows, works great with Unraid and another NAS software I tried.

[HeartOfGermany]

Oh Fawk...  Wish me luck. I just bought a cheap chinese PCI gen ??? x1 to 4 Port SATA adapter/card.

 

Somehow I think, this might work with 80-90% chance.

[Electronics Wizardy]

15 hours ago, HeartOfGermany said:

Actually ZFS is not the right thing for me. It gives no option to grow the RAID like in MDADM. So after reading, why ZFS is so special, it is sad, that this feature does not work at all.

You can add more vdevs to the pool to expand the array. And support for parity raid expansion is comming soon.

 

29 minutes ago, HeartOfGermany said:

Oh Fawk...  Wish me luck. I just bought a cheap chinese PCI gen ??? x1 to 4 Port SATA adapter/card.

 

Somehow I think, this might work with 80-90% chance.

Id get a used lsi card on ebay like the dell h200.

 

And just get bigger drives, something like 8 or 10tb drives

[HeartOfGermany]

Well, of course big drives make a ton of sense, but I do not need THAT much space. And also it is sort of a hobby. It is just like the game... You call it... Just Cause!

 

Yes.

[HeartOfGermany]

Okay, have to report back!

The PCIe x1 to 4 Port SATA 3 Expansion card from China works perfectly fine. It consists of a PCIe x1 to SATA chip and a 1x SATA to 4x SATA multiplier. The nice thing is: It works plug and play with the good old JMB321 IC, which is a SATA 1 Port to 5 Port multiplier. Just like a cheap USB Hub. Works and flawlessly saturates a 2TB WD RED, which only gives me like 120MB read or write at max. So works perfect for me. Can absolutely recommend it, since it is dirt cheap AND works!

Edit: Nope, it actually does not work. I cannot find a reason, why. The ASM1061 supports PM, but does not state if CBS or FBS. Also it does not list any compatible hardware. It works with ASM1093 at least - which the card uses. I also tested, to hook the JMB321 to the one SATA Port, which does not go through the ASM1093 Port Multiplier. It yet does not work at all. I do not know, how to fix this issue. It seems, that the PM market ist crappy as hell. Very limited and totally unpredictable compatibility over all hardware...

If this helps someone: The JMB321 does not ust FIS/FBS, it uses CBS only. So it is not great for high I/O NAS/RAID usecases.