Couple thread notes:
- Realtek has an RTL9101 PCIe 3.0 x2 to 9-port SATA controller pending. I get no search hits on the RTL9101 at the moment but presumably something will turn up in the next year or so.
- I have Jeyi’s Wareship Pro armored JMB585 M.2 5-port SATA in test. Runs warm, increasing to hot as fewer drives are plugged in, but is mechanically preferable to ASM1166 equivalents.
I’ve benched the JMB585 out to five JBOD drives and where it seems to saturate at ~1.5 GB/s. Looks fine for 3.5 performance and passthrough but can’t recommend the 60+ °C heatsink temperatures. Voids packed with thermal putty I think the JMB585 on the Jeyi might be ok with five drives plugged in. But even then the no-name ASM1166 card I’m also evaluating is a good bit cooler. Absent an armored ASM1166 (or ASM1164), M.2 my preference would be to load balance drives across ASM1166 cards in x1, x2, and x4 slots plus chipset SATA ports.