A Good Resource for PCIE, HBA, Network Cards, NVME Cards

[NickF1227]

I’d like to build a directory of sorts for “good” information on various topics.

A lot of folks will join up and ask about specific NVME carrier boards or other such things. Back in ye olden days, we had a few resources about port multipliers, fake network cards, and bad SATA PCIe cards.

Let’s list a few of those “Golden Samples” :
MODS/TRUSTED INVIDUALS ARE FREE TO EDIT THIS

• What’s all the noise about HBAs, and why can’t I use a RAID controller?
• Fake server cards
• Is my Realtek Ethernet really that bad?
• Multiply your problems with SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers
• Hardware Recommendations Guide
• Expanding FreeNAS Beyond a Single Chassis

We should start developing a new one for all of the good parts we are aware of out there. “Good” as in good enough for home lab, probably good enough for SMB (Small Medium Business, not file sharing silly).

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I’m sticking this here as a starting example.
I’ve personally had good luck with this particular AliExpress vendor:

• LINKREAL Official Store - Amazing products with exclusive discounts on AliExpress

I’ve bought several of their product SKUs, including one of these I’ve had in continuous production for about 2 years now:

• Linkreal PCIe 3.0 X16 to Quad M.2 NVMe SSD Switch Adapter Card for Servers-LRNV9547L-4I

Prices are coming down in general, it seems. There must be downward pressure coming from PCIe 5.0 trickling down into the Chinese “Shenzen” type market.

I also follow this Level1Techs thread, which has a lot of good information.

[kingii]

With what motherboard are you using this Linkreal adapter? Do I understand correctly it does not require bifurcation? Is there any thread where you describe your setup/usage?

[etorix]

Any carrier card with a PEX/PLX switch chip does NOT require bifurcation. There’s no setup: The switch runs on its own firmware and has no driver. Uses could be 4 NVMe drives on a x16 slot which cannot bifurcate x4x4x4x4 (Intel Core/Xeon E, I’m looking at you!), or on a electrical x8 or x4 slot.

On the old forum, @NickF1227 also shared some tests showing that all-NVMe arrays could benefit from a switch to offload bifurcation work from the CPU.

[Stux]

Or even more than 4 NVMe drives on a single x16 card.

The major caveat is PEX chips are expensive.