PCI-E controller card recommendations

philjayj · 4 Nov 2008 at 11:21

Hi. I was hoping someone would be able to recommend a PCI-E x1 controller card with four ports (or more). It has to be x1 because theyre the only PCI-E slots I have left.

Many thanks

rpstewart · 4 Nov 2008 at 11:34

4 port PCIe 1x cards are pretty rare, there are some up for auction but they seem to be 2 internal & 2 external at a quick glance.

The Highpoint RocketRaid 2300 fits the bill but they're not all that cheap.

doc · 4 Nov 2008 at 12:03

Unless you have run out of ports on the motherboard, I would not bother with buying a seperate controller for PCIe x1 because the only real benefit is more ports.

What are you trying to do?

Zarf · 4 Nov 2008 at 16:15

Unless you plan on RAID5, just use your onboard or software raid. If you must have RAID5, you will want a proper controller, and your best bet will likely be to buy a new motherboard with an extra x8 slot and a pick up a Dell PERC 5/i on ebay.

Like they said above, what are your intentions and budget?

philjayj · 4 Nov 2008 at 17:21

Thanks for all your replies. I have ran out of SATA ports on the motherboard, and I don't need RAID at all, just a way of adding more drives to the machine. I suppose my budget for the card would be ~£100.

Thanks

rpstewart · 4 Nov 2008 at 17:32

The generic two internal , two external port cards I saw this morning were going for ~£10-15 all in. If all you want are more ports then there's no point in spending more than that.

Pandobear · 4 Nov 2008 at 17:34

there are a fair few two post cards, but not many four ports, I got around this on my server by using a port multiplier. These work extremely well particularly if you are not reading and writing from multiple drives at the same time. May be worth looking into, most of the intel controllers support port multipliers, so you can have five ports for every one that you have currently.