Looking to add 2x internal SATA II ports via. PCI/-E - which product?


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I have ran out of SATA II/III ports on my motherboard but I have a spare PCI-E slot.
 
I am looking to add 2x internal SATA II/III ports.
 
I searched Amazon for "PCI SATA card" but there are simply too many options!
 
I've noticed most mention "SIL3114" and "32-bit 33/66Mhz host interface". From what I can gather, these mean they're SATA (1.5 Gbit/s/150 MB/s) and not SATA II (3 Gbit/s/300 MB/s) or SATA III (6 Gbit/s/600 MB/s) - but I could be wrong.
 
Also, I know about the ASUS U3S6 card but that's ?30 and I was hoping to get a card for around ?10-?20 if possible since I'll only be using it to power a standard optical drive and possibly a hard drive (for music storage) in the future.

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So far, my options seem to be:

  • Syba SY-PEX40039
    2x SATA III (6 Gbit/s)
    ?17.65 (Amazon UK)
  • Lycom PE-115
    2x SATA III (6 Gbit/s)
    ?24.28 (Lambdatek)
  • Lycom PE-115H
    2x SATA III (6 Gbit/s), hardware RAID
    ?24.51 (Scan)
  • Lycom PE-115M
    2x SATA III (6 Gbit/s), hardware RAID
    1x mSATA external port
    ?24.51 (Scan)
  • Asus U3S6
    2x SATA III (6 Gbit/s)
    2x USB 3.0 external ports
    ?29.44 (Amazon UK)
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I always used Syba for my RAID cards. Never had an issue. But, whatever you want, as Ambroos said.

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I looked through all the items you listed and I would advised against those. Those are based on the Marvell 91xx chipsets and although they will work just fine, you won't get the best throughput from then since it's limited to only 1x PCIe lane. The Marvell 92xx chipsets (which I'm using with my SSDs) doesn't have that bottleneck since it uses a 2x PCIe lane.

Depending on your needs go with either of these:
 

I believe SYBA also goes under the name IOCREST which might be easier to come across in the EU. If you go with the two I suggested and if it's possible on your motherboard, remember to change your bios settings to run the PCIe slot faster than 1x. Usually you can configure it to either 16x, 8x or maybe even 4x.

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I looked through all the items you listed and I would advised against those. Those are based on the Marvell 91xx chipsets and although they will work just fine, you won't get the best throughput from then since it's limited to only 1x PCIe lane. The Marvell 92xx chipsets (which I'm using with my SSDs) doesn't have that bottleneck since it uses a 2x PCIe lane.

Depending on your needs go with either of these:

 

I believe SYBA also goes under the name IOCREST which might be easier to come across in the EU. If you go with the two I suggested and if it's possible on your motherboard, remember to change your bios settings to run the PCIe slot faster than 1x. Usually you can configure it to either 16x, 8x or maybe even 4x.

SI-PEX40057 (RAID) - ?29.77 from Amazon UK.

SI-PEX40062 (no-RAID) - ?30.52 from Amazon UK.

 

Bought the SI-PEX40057 (y)

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SI-PEX40057 (RAID) - ?29.77 from Amazon UK.

SI-PEX40062 (no-RAID) - ?30.52 from Amazon UK.

Bought the SI-PEX40057 (y)

Careful installing the Marvel HyperDuo software. It is awful.
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Careful installing the Marvel HyperDuo software. It is awful.

Do I need if it I'm just plugging one standard optical drive into it?

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Do I need if it I'm just plugging one standard optical drive into it?

You don't need it at all unless you are using the RAID features.
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You don't need it at all unless you are using the RAID features.

I won't be.

 

That's good, then :)

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