Short Review: Edging ASMedia 1166 PCIe Gen3 x2 M.2 to 6 x SATA HBA Chipset. It doesn't suck đź‘Ť

x6. A quick look through ASMedia’s PCIe to SATA and JMicron’s SATA to SATA product lines’ll probably be helpful context. The general guidance to avoid port multipliers I suspect is mostly based on the JMB575 and, previously, JMB394 and 393. However, attribution back to the actual port multiplier used is rare. I believe it’s plausible the ASM1092 (and conceivably JMB572) could be better behaved but I don’t know of anything that uses it.

Reliability issues and drive drops aside, even 2x SATA multiplication is marginal for current 3.5s as 550 MB/s split two ways is maybe 250 MB/s per drive after multiplier overhead. Even just on bandwidth it’s probably preferable to put in a second ASM1166 card as just an x1 slot still gives ~300MB/s to three drives concurrently.

Depends on what the motherboard has for slots but a common way to ladder it out would be

  • Chipset: 2-8 SATA ports for first 2-8 drives
  • ASM1166 3.0 x2 in x4 electrical slot (often x16 mechanical): next 6 3.5s or 3 SSDs
  • ASM1166 3.0 x1: another 3 3.5s or 1-2 SSDs each

This is synchronized spin up, so watch the PSU’s minor rails as well as +12 with 3.5s. Some drives’ll peak at 1.5 A each from +5 and plenty of PSUs are 20 A max on 5 V, so even eight drives potentially gets pretty iffy after allowing for other motherboard demands and USB +5 delivery.

Be careful of confusing the JMB585 and 575. I’m unsure its apparent lack of ASPM is the JMB585’s biggest problem but very likely it doesn’t help.

Sure not looking like it, though I agree a 4.0 x1 version of the ASM1166 would be useful. 4.0 x4 I suspect’s too niche as that’s 12+ SSDs.