http://www.xien16.com/html/pcie-ssd-platinen.html
I know Xien form over at the MDPC, but if you don't know him, he is an amazing engineer, case modder, builder, and a great guy. Fantastic photographer, as well.
Regardless, he makes, among many other things, these PCIe x1 cards, amazing build quality and attention to detail, for plugging your standard SATA SSD up to the PCIe bus, without being "bottlenecked" by the SATA bus, so that when SSDs begin to really be pressed by the performance of SATA III, you have an easy way, and a stylish way to switch out SSDs quickly, and let them perform at their full potential.
They are great, I will be ordering a few for my personal rigs, soon.
One of those parts to add on later, or at least consider :)
Wow, that actually looks amazing.
Where do I buy them?
Only place I know is directly from Xien through MDPC.
Try emailing him: http://www.xien16.com/html/impressum.html
Guys this isn't actually connected to the PCI-e data lanes. It's pretty evident to me that it's meant to be used to power an SSD from an expansion slot where you do not have anymore Power supply connections left over in your system. The SATA data connections are daisy chained between the two connectors and you are meant to hook up the SATA connector to your motherboard directly. I see no PCB traces that would indicate that the SSD data pins are being routed to the PCI-e data pins.
Still from a Data server perspective this would allow you to connect 2 or 3 SSDs to an HDD array for high speed SSD caching. Where all of your SATA power connections from the PSU are being used up by HDDs.
Im not entirely sure about this, But I don't think that daisy chaining Sata connections is possible.
The data connection is just jumped over between the two connections, It's a data pass-through. There are no PCB traces going to the PCI-e pins.
Yes, after looking at the product that makes sense.
Batojiri appears correct here. Too bad, but I imagine it would be a LOT of work to produce a board that functions in this way?
Hmm, could be the fact that he doesn't speak fluent English, but Xien told me it was for connecting the SSD to the PCIe bus. Hmm...
Yes I like the idea very much. Helps out with smaller form factor data servers where you can't afford to jam a second power supply into the system.
Still cool, and this is even cooler!
From my understanding it seemed to only be providing power to the drive