Recommendations for SATA expansion?

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AFAICT, the NVMe expander should have a higher theoretical max throughput.  It is PCIe 2x vs 1x.  The example NVMe expander I linked is also using an ASMedia chipset so it should be fine in terms of reliability.  And the same vendor, 10GTek, as the 1x card I got.

I did a NVMe to ZFS transfer (3 hard drive RAIDZ1) and sustained a 1GB/s transfer with bursts to 1.3GB/s.  That's bytes not bits.  So definitely hitting the 8Gbps PCIe 1x limit with three 6TB hard drives.

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Also, what case did you get?  I also had to upgrade my case to fit the additional hard drives.  Went with another Fractal Meshify 2, which I am also using with my gaming desktop.

Hahaha, literally the same case! It just got here yesterday. Everything is currently in a Focus G Mini, which was kind of a bastard to fit everything into, so I'm excited for a) a bit more room and b) WAY more bays. I'm gonna have to budget for some more drives in the future...