08-02-2019, 06:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-02-2019, 06:57 PM by stuartiannaylor.)
(08-02-2019, 07:12 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: As an update, I found out that the ROCKPro64 seems to be working with LSI HBA controller cards: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6763
And such controllers with 16 ports can be found on eBay (with P20 firmware IT mode, meaning no RAID and no BIOS) for about 45€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/LSI-9201-16e-6Gb...3291384883 for example.
With 4x SF-8088 to SATA at 37€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/4pcs-Mini-SAS-26...2683726119
Total 82€ for the controller and SATA cables.
Only question I have is, how does it works when you only have x4 PCI-E and the card has x8 PCI-E?
You can do that with most cards as they just use the pcie lanes available as you see in miner setups where gpus run on single shared pciex1 lane.
If you need a x8 to x4 riser cable or because the pcie slot is open ended just let it overhang as can not say but if they say its works.
It will just be bottlenecked with half the bandwidth of the original.
Also some use x16 to x4 m.2 with external GPUs and only get about 10-20% less than FPS than the original x16 benchmarks.
The original is
PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates Half Duplex
x8, PCIe, 4000 MB/s
it will just become
PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates Half Duplex x4, PCIe, 2000 MB/s
Only question and I am interested is at what level does the rk3399 bottleneck?
We have seen just over 1000 MB/s with an EVO 970 and it will be interesting to see if that was the EVO using all x4 lanes.