Looking at the Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 - 128GB board to use as a NAS\Plex server and also to run a few mini AI projects at hobbyist level. With the M.2 slots taken up with OS & Cache disk for transcoding, that just leaves the PCIE slot to use for adding more storage drives for NAS use. Can someone recommend a good PCIE 8port SATA card for use with this board?
I’ve been doing a lot of research on this and initially arrived on the StarTech 8 Port SATA Card PCIe x4, but there were a number of threads/posts discussing issues with this sort of card and popular NAS platforms like Unraid, etc.
I eventually arrived at using an LSI HBA card like this: LSI SAS2008-based PCIe 3 x8 card. Now this is an x8 card and notably the mainboard has a PCIe x4 slot but it is not “open-ended” (meaning you can’t fit an x8 card in), so you’d have to combine this with either a riser board or cable, e.g. “Cablecc PCI-E Express 4X to 16x Extender”. As you can tell, things are getting ‘hacky’, but in theory this should work just fine. My fairly uninformed but ChatGPT-checked math: PCIe 3.0 operating at ×4 delivers ~4 GB/s of uni-directional bandwidth, and eight 7,200 RPM HDDs, each doing ~140–200 MB/s sustained sequential reads/writes, would total roughly 1–1.6 GB/s, so in theory, plenty of headroom even with an x4 slot. Boy it would be nice if the slot was open-ended and didn’t require a riser/adapter.
I think we should start a thread on using the Framework Desktop mainboard for building the most overpowered NAS out there (say, using a JONSBO N3 Mini-ITX NAS PC Chassis), because thats exactly what I’m trying to do too.
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That is an ancient device, sure mine is still working but at this point newer stuff is a lot more efficient and with current day power prices getting a somewhat newer one pays for itself pretty quickly. There is a significant decrease in power consumption at the LSI 9400 series which are not that expensive anymore.
Also afaik the sas2008 is pcie2 not pcie3.
The fw desktop seems like a massive waste being just a nas though, I hope you have some use in mind for the gpu otherwise maybe look at one of the minisforum boards instead. You get plenty of cores, socketed ram and a full sized pcie slot there for much less.
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Good point on the power consumption, a more modern version of the card will probably work better👌
NAS is probably the wrong concept, what I should really say is homelab server. These mobile chips with great performance and relatively low power consumption work well for running VMs/containers running a variety of worksloads, for both live transcoding and offline re-encoding (Plex/Jellyfin/etc) thanks to a powerful CPU and modern iGPU, for local AI tasks, and doing it all at low power consumption.
Also, you have to let a nerd over spec a machine…
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Which is also what those minisforum ones are, just minus the huge expensive igpu and soldered ram. But if you can/want to afford the extra cost it is going to be a pretty baller little home server
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I like how you think.
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On a 4x card the most you’re going to get is 4i or 4e SAS connections, then you’ll have to move on to a backplane or expander. I haven’t tried cutting down my HBAs to 4 PCIE lanes but I suspect it will disable SAS lanes.
You could get really silly and get NVME riser adapters, do three 4x SAS adapters, and put your OS/Cache on whatever the fastest SAS or SATA SSD is you can get your hands on. Now you’re up to 12 total storage devices (and just run truenas or unraid or whatever off USB)
It will not, it’ll just be bandwidth limited. The beauty of pcies extreme backwards compatibility.
If you can somewhat physically fit it it will “work” however at reduced max bandwidth of course.
Going with a pcie3 capable hba a 4x connection will still get you allmost 4GB/s which you will struggle to saturate with 8 spinning disks, even if you get the fancy dual actuator seagates. SATA SSDs of course could easily exceed that, though not by much.
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