Used enterprise NVMe drives are my current obsession, while the ever-shrinking number of PCI-Express lanes we see on consumer CPUs and motherboards is my bane.
This PCI-Express card solves many of my problems at once. The M.2 slots on this card are connected by a PLX8747 chip, a 48-lane, 5-port PCI Express Gen 3 switch chip used to expand and redistribute PCIe connectivity. This removes the need for a motherboard to support bifurcation (splitting a single physical PCIe slot into multiple smaller logical pathways), or the need to configure bifurcation on a motherboard that does support it. Four additional M.2 drives can be added to a motherboard that may not have otherwise supported them.
The drives are, of course, still restricted by the Gen 3 speeds the PLX8747 chip supports. I’m not convinced that’s an issue given how fast that is compared to SAS and SATA.
Most other cards I’ve found that fit this bill only support 2280 (80mm) M.2 drives, which are typically normal consumer drives. This card supports 22110 (110mm) cards, which are almost exclusively enterprise-grade drives, meaning they typically support significantly more read/write cycles and have Power Loss Protection (PLP), protecting your data if your computer loses power unexpectedly. PLP is missing from consumer drives.
Hopefully someone else enjoys this card as much as I am. Head over to Amazon to grab your own.