this contraception looks very interesting. looks like it's just plug and play?That is true - you can physically jam more m.2's into a slot; however, you could conceivably get one of these ridiculous things to run enterprise drives:
M.2 Expansion Card Portable Expansion Mini Nvme Adapter Card Dual U.2 SFF8639 bl | eBay
Expansion: Dual U.2 SFF‑8639 interface to PCIE 3.0 X16 SFF‑8639 desktop drive expansion card. In order to read the two hard drives normally. Drive Free: You can install the fixing screws directly after inserting the interface, no drive and no data cable.www.ebay.com
It only does PCI-E 3.x but that's what most of the cheaper enterprise SSD's are anyway.
I'd had also wondered if the slot can provide enough power to run four drives at once under max load but it looks like there is a SATA power port on the back of the card.
Amazon Prime deal - 8TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD for $320
- Thread starter adman_c
- Start date
Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
2 TB 870 EVO version on sale now for $79.99. https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Inch-Internal-MZ-77E2T0B-AM/dp/B08QB93S6R/
at this rate by Christmas all homelabs will be swimming in SSDs.
at this rate by Christmas all homelabs will be swimming in SSDs.
The economy is rolling over HARD - expect prices for all kinds of things to crater.
unable to visualize the dimensions but are you able to mount all 4 u2 drives on the card itself or do you need to cable them somewhere else?
The linked card mounts 4 u.2 drives directly on the card itself, and so needs about the same amount of length as a good size gpu.
There are also inexpensive adapter cards that breakout pcie slots to SFF-8643 connections. Then you use SFF-8643 to u.2 cables, which aren't quite as inexpensive.
My concern would be more about where the drives have to sit in the case if breakout cabling was necessary. But the good size GPU might be a problem.
Back of the envelope math is that thing is a bit less than a foot long and would be about 1 slot wide, so it's not THAT big. My bigger concern would be heat. Given how much juice these things typically take when they're writing, you'd definitely need some decent airflow over the PCIE slots to keep 4 of them from burning up.
The heat was more what I was thinking about too, especially if you used more than one of these.
Yeah, from testing the two Kingston U.2 drives I picked up I may need to consider stronger front fans in my case to keep them from throttling under sustained writes. Reads no problem, but these things get toasty under sustained write loads.
Or you could put smaller fans directly on them as that can serve the same purpose and be more quiet at the same time.
One of the many reason Fractal's Define R5 (still available!) is a great home server chassis is that it lets you put a 140mm fan right over top of the PCIe slots. It's great for cooling 4x and 4x4 U.2 adapter cards, but I imagine it might struggle a bit with the 4x4x4x4 versions. I had a couple of HGST SN100 drives and it was able to keep those under control even under load.