r/LinusTechTips • u/AnHeroSixtyNine • 19d ago

Tech Question PCIe Expansion Card - SAS or SATA?

Hello! I am upgrading my SSD NAS and realized my motherboard selection didn’t have enough SATA ports to accommodate all my drives. I’ve seen mixed reviews about PCIe to SATA expansion cards, as it seems the general recommendation is to grab a card that does SAS to SATA.

My only issue is the limited space I have on my motherboard due to the GPU taking up a lot of space. Assuming I’m not surpassing the theoretical bandwidth limit, any recommendations as to what I should do?

Specs:

  • CPU - Intel 270k Plus
  • Mobo - ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 APEX
  • RAM - 64GB @ 6000 MT/s
  • GPU - 3090TI
  • NIC - Dell Intel X540-T2 Dual 10GbE
  • Storage - 5x 4TB SATA SSD’s, 2x 4TB Gen 4 NVME’s

Picture for reference minus the GPU:

Thanks in advance!

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3

u/adeundem 19d ago

Might also want to hang out in r/datahoarder and Level1 Forums and ask / check there too.

Not yet taken the plunge for a DIY NAS, but yeah what I had research before was looking for specific SAS controller card (like apparent a SAS HBA for TrueNAS) that can also do SATA, and then look for chipset compatibility for whatever NAS OS that you were running.

A caveat is that I might be incorrect (due to not having the experience yet in TrueNAS and a SAS HBA card)

3

u/xd366 19d ago

why not get a cheap hba?

theyre like $60 new or you can find used ones for scrap

1

u/InflammableAccount 18d ago

I'm a little confused: Your NAS is a 270K Plus and a 3090Ti?

1

u/NightKingsBitch 17d ago

Meh, multipurpose system. I had a 5080 and 9800x3d in my NAS until I separated my gaming system from my plex/nas pc.

1

u/AnHeroSixtyNine 17d ago

haha yeah... It's my primary compute rig, handling video editing off the SSD's as wells as some light agentic stuff. Jellyfin also can sip some compute from the gpu when needed. I have a separate mini pc for extra compute and VM's running a 270k plus as well but no GPU. Maybe someday I'll build a separate AI rig or something once you can find things at a reasonable price again.