After memory and SSD prices surged due to the AI boom, power supplies and CPU cooling solutions now appear to be next in line for price increases, per the latest news from China.
I can’t say how your firmware will recognize a PCI-e to NVME, but as long as your aren’t chasing boot time records a SATA SSD should be more than sufficient for boot. You could just use the NVME for speed.
Another option would be to set up 6 SATA SSD drives in there with ZFS2. The striping and read-write speeds should significantly fill the SATA buffer of 6gbps. Due to the striping, you might actually avoid filing the read buffer and be about to sustain a longer high write speed.
The drive farm is also super viable. I have a 6-port board and a SAS card installed giving me 10 or 14 ports, I can’t recall. I have a similar strategy as I described, but I’m only using it for a NAS. I looked into getting a 12-port board, but used it was still $350. It makes more sense for me to buy another SAS card instead.
I can’t say how your firmware will recognize a PCI-e to NVME, but as long as your aren’t chasing boot time records a SATA SSD should be more than sufficient for boot. You could just use the NVME for speed.
Another option would be to set up 6 SATA SSD drives in there with ZFS2. The striping and read-write speeds should significantly fill the SATA buffer of 6gbps. Due to the striping, you might actually avoid filing the read buffer and be about to sustain a longer high write speed.
The drive farm is also super viable. I have a 6-port board and a SAS card installed giving me 10 or 14 ports, I can’t recall. I have a similar strategy as I described, but I’m only using it for a NAS. I looked into getting a 12-port board, but used it was still $350. It makes more sense for me to buy another SAS card instead.