It's the one at the size of m.2 2280 with 9 SATA ports on it in a 3x3 grid. I have seen them around $30-$40 on Chinese site and Amazon. One FB user says it's using RTL9101 chip. The PCB have a marking PHDK PH519 on it. As far as I can tell, there seem to be only one chip under the heatsink, so it's likely not using port multiplier. And thus it's likely true that the chip maybe Realtek RTL9101. While there is no info on this chip, we also know that JMB and ASM HBA chip do not goes up to 9 SATA ports.
M.2 HBA card with 9 SATA ports, anyone play with this yet?
- Thread starter TechUnsupport
- Start date
Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
All the ones I see on Ali Express that look similar say they are PCI 3.0x2 lanes. That means you have a max throughput of 1.8-2.0 GB/second throughput. Nine SATA drives operating at full speed could theoretically reach approximately 5.0-5.4 GB/second of bandwidth, meaning you would be bandwidth constrained with this card. However, since most spinning disks seem to top out at 200-250MB/sec in real life transfer speeds, you might be OK in real life use. The card will likely saturate in heavy sequential tasks (large copies, rebuilds) if many drives are active. But for more moderate or mixed loads (small files, random I/O, fewer drives actively streaming), you’ll see less limitation. Either way this is not a card I would choose, except maybe for a backup array.
That assumes this card doesn't have heat issues and doesn't thermally throttle.
That assumes this card doesn't have heat issues and doesn't thermally throttle.
I tried PHDK PH519. Connected 8 SATA HDDs. Unfortunately, running `fdisk -l` couldn't even detect the file systems without ATA read errors. Several minutes later whole controller fell of the PCIe bus and could no longer be visible. The controller exposes something like 30 SATA endpoints even though max 9 are physically connected. With that amount of attention to detail it's not surprising that the device does not work properly.
I however had good experience with PH516 that has 6 ports and ASM1166 controller. Tens of TBs written and read without issues. My server case has very little airflow when CPU is not under load and the heatsink on the controller managed extended disk activity without problems. In my personal experience PH516 is perfect for home lab use case - acceptable bandwidth, low power usage, scalable - PCIe x16 can support SATA 24 disks with 4 x4 bifurcation.
It's worth mentioning that PH516 was designed with a backplate to reduce bending while inserting and removing SATA cables. PH519, at least the one I bought, didn't. The PCB on PH519 is flimsy, so even though I was careful inserting the cables into the card, I could have broken something. The card was not attached to the motherboard during the manipulation, I would have definitely broken the card in half during cable insertion.
Last edited:
Very interesting indeed, as the Chipset is mentioned to be "RTL9101", but neither does Realtek list any data, nor is there any entry for Linux, mentioning support for it. So my guess is, that the ACHI driver under Linux picks up on it, but would probably need some workarounds for it to work correctly. And as there are none, this would explain what p1415 saw. Maybe sometime in the future, this will be supported sufficiently. Currenly, as an avid Linux user, I would not try it.