There’s also icy dock, this will run 4x drives.
https://global.icydock.com/product_390.html
Highpoint also has another solution →
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/adapter-nvme-switch-product-line
I’m sorry man, I can’t confirm based on photos. I’m not that cracked 
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Unfortunately no. I didn’t find it with quick googling.
Not knowing where you found the devices, no. But the first one looks like a well-known PCIe 3.0 carrier, and the second as a variant of the same design.
Price should be indication: I would not expect a retimer adapter to come under ca. $200, and at the upper end of the scale a switch would come closer to a four figure price tag (not to mention a sizeable heatsink, itself of the active kind).
Hmm. Gotcha. In my original post, the amazon reviews i attached pictures of, most of the people say it is generating errors, so how do i confirm whether the adapter i’m using are generating such errors?
Anyone?
@etorix any ideas please? Will checking sudo dmesg will be enough to see if these cards are reporting errors?
Do you have regular scrubs set up and are you seeing errors on ZFS? I don’t think there is anything else others could tell you on these.
This is NOT a redriver/retimer. This is a PCIe clock driver/buffer für the 100MHz refclock. This is not good enough for PCIe Gen 4.
The recommended way is buying a complete rackmount server with the required amount of U.2 slots. These cases do use redrivers on their backplane, which the official PCIe 4.0 standard mandates. Supermicro is happy to sell you a suitable server. Some of them accept up to 24 U.2 drives.
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No, these are not in truenas yet. But i saw reviews at amazon and people are saying generates error with PCIe 4.0. So, I bought a couple of brands and wanted to test if they all work with errors or some of them are reliable.
I understand but don’t have that huge requirement. That’s why going with these bifurcation cards as my motherboard supports x4 x4 x4 x4 birfurcation. Are there any reliable, tested cards like this?
I haven’t seen any. Any I wouldn’t recommend them either. These U.2 drives are power hungy and get hot. Been there, done it - but only with Gen 3. Remember: 10 degrees more temperature means halving the expected lifetime. These drives are build to be run in rackmount servers with proper airflow.
Many server boards have SlimSAS connecters with PCIe x4 or x8 Gen4 on it. There are cables rated for PCIe4 from SlimSAS SFF-8654-4i to U.2 and from SFF-8654-8i to 2*U.2 which have PCIe redrivers built-in.
Read:
Hmm. Lot of options for Gen3 and Gen4 but i’m not sure how do i check for errors. I do have Startech, Glotrends, LinkReal and DLinker. They all claim to be Gen4 and my drives are D7 which are also Gen4.
I’m using a tower chassis and Airflow isn’t an issue cause there are Noctua industrial FANs which runs at 3000 RPM and the components are quite cool.