I'm building a homelab which will run Proxmox. It will have a couple of VMs: TrueNAS and a plain Linux host with some Docker containers including a media server. I plan to use an i5-12400 for this for its QSV capability but I'm having issues understanding PCIe lanes and potential expansion for the future.
I've bought a NAS case with 8 bays. This motherboard (any better suggestions?) has:
If I want to fill my 8 bays, I need more SATA connections. So say I'm using the 2x M.2 slots for whatever and I use 2x SATA SSDs as a Proxmox/VM boot drive in RAID1, that leaves only 2 SATA ports so I'd need a SATA PCIe card for the 6 extra SATA ports I'd need. Say I get this card.. that's 6 ports @ PCIe 3.0 x4 which provides bandwidth up to 4GB/s. That is equal to 666MB/s per SATA port which is MORE than the claimed sequential write speed of the IronWolf Pro HDDs (250MB/s), so in this case I'd be ok, right? Are my calculations correct?
2x PCIe 4.0 x16 (one slot supports x4 mode, whatever that means) https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/...M-E_D4_UM_WEB.pdf?model=TUF GAMING B760M-E D4
It means that out of the 2x PCIe expansion slots, one of them is wired to the chipset, not the CPU which is the lowest PCIe slot and that is wired to 4 lanes, meaning if you decide to drop a card on PCIEX16(G4)_2, it'll only operate at x4 speeds. So the drive expansion card you've linked above would drop into PCIEX16(G4)_2 without a hitch.
I would however, always make sure you're on the latest BIOS version before you drop in any new hardware.
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