ZFS: Metadata Special Device - Real World Perf Demo

Hi all!

I replied elsewhere, sorry, meant to find this thread.
I’ve got this board:
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/a2sdi-8c-hln4f
I have all 12 SATA ports in use, the board only has PCIe 3.0 4x slot.

Wendell is selling me hard on low latency 118GB discount Optane drives.

I do not see a PCIe bifurcation option for the board, despite Anandtech saying the processor is capable.

“the Atom C3000 features a PCIe 3.0 x16 controller (with x2, x4 and x8 bifurcation), 16 SATA 3.0 ports, four 10 GbE controllers, and four USB 3.0 ports.”


This helpful poster @jode has replied here basically telling me I’m boned if I want 4x M.2

So to my question(s)

PCIe 3.0 x4 can do 4GB/s, if I’m comfortable losing bandwidth, can I purchase a PCIe switching 4x M.2 slot card? (I’ll still get the great latency, right?)

Unfortunately finding a slot which is only x4 with 4 slots is very difficult:
PCIe 3.0 x4 to 4x M.2 NVMe Adapter Card,IO-PCE2806-4M2 - PCIe - Storage Products - My web (I think that one won’t work?)

Is this simply not possible? The 118GB drives are reasonably priced and I have no other use for the PCIe slot. The NAS has been particulatly slow in accessing drives with lots of files of late, highly suspect Wendells Metadata ‘trick’ is right up my alley.