SA3026

I rebuilt an old Gigabyte Series S based computer into an Ubuntu server with a level 6 raid array. I needed a card that could drive all six of my 4TB drives and this one is working as hoped. It was plug and play, no issues, no special driver installs. The only caution is that the old BIOS does not recognize the card, but Linux does, so not a problem for me.

I needed to replace my old SATA controller. This one works great with my 4 20 TB drives.

works great, just plug and play.

I just needed more SATA ports for a homebuilt NAS where performance was not critical. It works well, and is distinguished from other 4-port SATA cards I found, by two main features: (1) It comes with a power splitter cable, which can be very handy depending on your power supply; and (2) It has a PCIe x4 interface instead of a x1 interface. However, if you read the fine print, they say there are actually only two PCIe lanes in use, despite the physical x4 form factor. This means it is still impossible to saturate the bandwidth of all four SATA lanes, e.g. if you install fast SSDs, they will not get their advertised performance all at the same time. For a performance-critical application, I would instead suggest a SAS HBA, e.g. an LSI card flashed to IT mode. They are not too much difference in price, and they usually have one PCIe lane per drive (with the right adapter cable). If you get it from a reliable source (e.g. the Art of Server) or know how to flash to the newest firmware, it should have no problems with SATA drives as well as SAS. They also have great option ROMs available for booting BIOS or UEFI.

Works out of the box on an x870e Aorus Pro (bottom x16 pcie4). No drivers, just worked on first boot. Performance indistinguishable from onboard SATA. Not booting from it so can’t speak to that- only using JBOD.

Worked perfectly for my storage computer. I had a bunch of old drives I wanted to use as temporary storage. This allowed all of them to work without any issues.

Currently installed on my PC for extra SATA ports. All are working

Install was easy just snap it in and tighten the screw to your pci slot. All of my connected drives were detected immediately using a mix of my own sata cables and the provided blue SATA cables. I will mention that the supplied SATA cables are fairly short so be prepared to have your own 18" or longer cables to reach further drives or just accept that cable routing will be very gaudy and out in the open to make use of the shortest distance. However they are good quality cables and still useful. I was worried about heat buildup on the card but even with 5 of the 6 ports in use the card was not even warm to the touch with a 120mm fan running around 1300rpm beneath it mounted with a pci bracket.