I’m currently using the Asus PCI-E bifurcator. I’ve not had any issues, but then most of this stuff goes over my head. I went ahead with it following this post in the above linked Neverending story thread.
I thought 6 NVMe drives would be enough until I started thinking about special vdev for my main audio-visual media storage pool
Can I be your brother too? 
Make him buy you dinner.
I’m not an expert and when I need help, I research and when that fails, I’m here as well asking questions. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people here. Not sure if you noticed the two AI’s we have here @Stux and @etorix. How else can you explain them being online all the time and rapid firing back advice. Those AI’s are better than ChatGPT.
Best of luck on that next build.
Ahem… 
Because PCIe 4.0 has tighter timings than 3.0.
The 4xU.2 in x16 cards you’ve linked above, and the alternatives I know of, are offcially PCIe 3.0 designs. But the traces from the slot are about as short as technically possible, so it’s possible (not guaranteed) they might work at 4.0. If you see issues and errors in the logs you’ll know you need to force PCIe 3.0 speed, or move to something else.
Now, i got to know a lot of things and what the shit i read about Broadcom. Seems like my LSI 9400-16i is behaving the same. No controller info. Will try to remove the driver and then check if i can make it work!
I would try reflashing the firmware as well.
That’s a nice idea!
Had a read but seems like i will have to do one more time.
Yay!
The driver updating procedure is too hectic for these newer cards. I mean i cannot use a MegaRAID dashboard to identify the hardware and the STORCLI does not show any controller info. Is the card faulty? I’ve not tested the HBA with any drives yet. The card was a factory sealed unit and seems to be a genuine one though and there was literally no sign of usage.
I plan to use the ASUS Gen4 PCI X16 Card (M.2) and i have a couple of them lying. I tested it with a single drive performance installed in the X16 CPU lanes and the performance was nearly close to the direct M.2 slot from the CPU lanes.
Was the performance not good with the 6 NVMe drives?
Hehehehe
Oh, he helps me with some of my projects and yeah, he made dinner at home 
Yes, indeed mate.
Oh, how could i forget @dan and @Davvo . These people are so knowledgeable and its like no matter what you ask, they’ve answer to your questions. Isn’t that amazing?
Hehehe. These guys are active most of the times and i’m not sure what they do in real life as they are the ones answering most of the forum’s questions!
Yeah, not a ChatGPT fan boi here. I tried a couple of questions and the answers are outdated or irrelevant. Sometimes, the bot does not even know what the user is asking even when the question is clear and people get hyped that ChatGPT is taking over, AI, AI. xD
Oh, i think you are right friend. I was searching for the U.2 Cards and here is what i see:
The manufacturer claims it to be a PCIe 3.0 but the user has 4.0 speeds. But is it really a PCIe 4.0 design in terms of PCB ?
Do you have any guide friend? The new one is so much hard for me ;(
Again, this is probably a PCIe 3.0 design, but the traces are short so if it is well made it might happen to work at PCIe 4.0 speeds (depending also on the quality of what is delivered at the slot).
How lucky do you feel? (Anyway, this single drive holder is too small for your Scalable motherboard and its x8 or x16 slots.)
Got it!
Well, if it works at PCIe 4.0 with no errors, i would feel very lucky!
Yes, i know i know. I got this when searching for 4 port U.2 Adapter on Amazon. I’ve got a couple of X4 (single port) and some 4 port to test them out.
Dude, i did it! Now its running the latest firmware, no errors in the logs and seems to work well
So, the newer series like 9500 (12Gb/s) and 9600 (24Gb/s), they should not be used with SAS/SATA devices (HDD/SSD)?
The driver stack is new, and not as well tested as the 9200/9300/9400, so 9500+ would not be a first choice of HBA. Not to mention price…
Especially since previous version HBAs can be found for 20-60 USD.
Makes sense. I picked up LSI 9400-16i. All cards are flashed to the P24 and is working good so far
How can i check if the HBA is performing normally and no errors are generated?
BTW, one my old Motherboard (Supermicro X11SSL-CF) has LSI3008 (as per the spec sheet) but in the MSM, it says 1GB cache. So, is not a really a true HBA? But RAID instead? It runs IT firmware though and haven’t had any errors but still curious.
Should be good then.
Okay, but why does it have 1GB Cache? Any idea about that?
Post what you are seeing. The entire output.
