Marvel AOC-SASLP-MV8 - 8 Sata PCI-E 4x non-raid controller card

This card appears to have gone up on Supermicro's site recently as the PDF manual creation date is 2/2/09. I would've expected some chatter about it somewhere by now. A google search of the model only brings up 8 results. One of them is a dutch shop and they seem to be listing it for roughly $125. I could be very wrong about that price though. Is this the card that Unraid, WHS, and software raid community have been waiting years for?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...-SASLP-MV8.cfm

Overview
The AOC-SASLP-MV8 add-on card is a highly efficient, highly compatible and
easy-to-use SAS/SATA Controller that allows the user to connect to up to eight drives
using Marvell's 88SE6480 Serial ATA/SAS Host Controller and a PCI-E x4 interface with
high performance features.

Product Features
The AOC-SASLP-MV8 add-on card offers the following features:
• Low profile Form Factor (w/ the PCB size of 4.75" H x 2.5" W)
• Marvell's 88SE6480 Serial ATA Host Controller supports 8 SAS/SATA ports
• Two mini SAS connectors can connect to 8 internal SAS/SATA drives with iPass
cables
• PCI-E x4
• Flash BIOS Interface
• Presence LED Indicator and Activity Indicator for each connected drive
• JBOD (Simple Volume) support
• Boots from a single drive.

I'm already dreaming of one of these in an upcoming lower power mini-itx chipset. Or maybe two in a micro-atx system...

I'm surprised it took companies this long to come out with a nice, cheap PCIe SATA controller card for those who don't want RAID functionality; I suppose the SFF-8087 ports is a nice added bonus for cable management, though the breakout cables aren't nearly as cheap as SATA cables.

Still, I'd love to see benchmarks on this puppy.

I hope it's a regular PCIe card and not one of their weird backwards form factors.
$120 is not bad, but as mentioned, you have to get the miniSAS breakout cables
which will add $30 to the cost... then again wiring will be a little cleaner this way.

Personally I'm waiting for more information about the new Areca SAS HBA.
Arc-1300ix-16: 16 internal, 8 external ports, PCIe 4x, SAS HBA.

Similarly, a google search only results in some european webshop w/out
any pricing info.

Originally Posted by alamone

I hope it's a regular PCIe card and not one of their weird backwards form factors.
$120 is not bad, but as mentioned, you have to get the miniSAS breakout cables
which will add $30 to the cost... then again wiring will be a little cleaner this way.

Personally I'm waiting for more information about the new Areca SAS HBA.
Arc-1300ix-16: 16 internal, 8 external ports, PCIe 4x, SAS HBA.

Similarly, a google search only results in some european webshop w/out
any pricing info.

It is a regular card, its just missing the pci slot bracket in the picture..

Wow, that is the emptiest google return I've ever seen...

Finally a replacement for the PCI-X version! Took them long enough...

And SAS too.. I probably could have gotten two of these vs an Adaptec 31605 to run my SAS drives

Originally Posted by drgnfang

Wow, that is the emptiest google return I've ever seen...

No kidding, I just checked and it is only one page.

Originally Posted by croakz

And SAS too.. I probably could have gotten two of these vs an Adaptec 31605 to run my SAS drives

Well, you always had the option of the PERC 5/i or PERC 5/e.

I don't know why I spaced on the PERC 5 i/e. Well, I wanted more ports on a single card, but probably should have looked at them. Or this SM card.

Originally Posted by croakz

I don't know why I spaced on the PERC 5 i/e. Well, I wanted more ports on a single card, but probably should have looked at them. Or this SM card.

This was probably just announced. The fact that it only turns up 8 hits on google means that it really isn't available anywhere. As for the PERC 5 cards, well, performance isn't going to be anywhere near the other two RAID cards you have. I would hate to have to rebuild the array with one of the Dell cards with a bunch of drives. My 1280ML is slow as is compared to the 1680ix-24, but those are just way worse.

3 of these in any recent mobo = 24 ports ready to rock.. perfect for a norco 4020 setup

Where can you buy these?

Ockie your dream has come true

Next obvious question, good inexpensive (not cheap, just not more money than needed) socket 775 board with 2-3 PCI-e slots (x4, x8, or x16).

I wish Norco had a case with a shit-ton(20+) of 2.5in hotswaps.

That with an An Asus 17 board, i7 extreme, 12gb of ram, 24 vraptors RAID 0/10 would make for a kick ass encoding box.

Originally Posted by nitrobass24

Where can you buy these?

Ockie your dream has come true

Holy shit, talk about a big "Hell yeah" and "it's about time"


The moment these come on sale, I will replace all of my PCIX units. Sounds like these cards may spur a time for a new build

These + WD 2tb = Galaxy 7.0?

The AOC-USAS-L8i (~$120) has been out for a while, what's the advantage of this new card?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...C-USAS-L8i.cfm

Originally Posted by latenorgreat

The AOC-USAS-L8i (~$120) has been out for a while, what's the advantage of this new card?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...C-USAS-L8i.cfm

That is intended for Supermicro servers. They like to call the expansion slot that it fits in UIO. While it technically is PCIe, the mounting bracket prevents it from fitting in properly in non-Supermicro systems (and even if you get it in, the components are on the wrong side).

on a related note with nonRAID controllers:

I had 8 x Cheetah T10s (300GB 15k rpm SAS) attached to an LSI SAS3080X with software striping in Win2k3 Server. HD Tune max transfer reads of ~600 MB/s. Put the same drives on my Adaptec 31605 in R0 (set up in the card) and I top out at ~450 MB/s.

Anyone able to find out if we can purchase these in the US? I would be highly interested in these for my new storage server build. I sent off an e-mail to Super Micro asking about US availability as I was unable to find any US retailers but I don't really expect to get an answer.