I’ve got an older system I use for disk ripping, and it should technically be slow but working, but I’ve been eyeing trying to make full use of the one x16 3.0 slot it has; since it has multiple disk drives that I might be putting on multiple controllers using it’s x1 slot, I do need decently fast storage to handle simultaneous ripping to disk, transcoding, and sending it back over the network when it’s done. I’d really like to get a cheap GPU in there for the transcoding (since I can’t seem to get the integrated GPU acceleration to be detected, and I’d really like to get full AV1 4k+dolby accelerated in handbrake), but right now I have the whole slot consumed with a single NVMe drive, which is… not ideal.
So I was looking for a way to split it up even though my motherboard doesn’t support bifurcation, and stumbled upon some stuff shopping around and am curious if any of these might get me to the result I’m hoping for?
So I can find redriver cards just fine, but since I don’t have bifurcation I’m assuming I need PCIe switching.
I’ve found this PCIe switching card Linkreal PCIe 3.0 x16 to 4 Port M.2 NVMe SSD Swtich Adapter Card - Newegg.com for a budget-ish price that gives 4 m.2 ports, and I can find M.2 NVMe to PCIe SFF-8654 like this NVME to SFF-8654 Slimline SAS PCIe SSD Adapter and then a riser for the graphics card that will take SFF-8654 ( 2-Port SlimSAS x8 to PCIe4.0 x16 Slot Riser).
But then that only gives me x4 lanes to my graphics card if I can run just 1. I assume it’s not going to line up right if I run two SFF-8654 cables from separate adapters, since the cables would usually carry x8 and intuition tells me running 2x4 electrically is weird enough I might break something.
Maybe x4 would be enough for a GPU for encoding? Or maybe there’s a better way, or 2xM.2->SFF-8654 adapters exist that I just can’t find? Anyone have thoughts or suggestions?
