Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 Add-on Card, 8-Channel SAS/SATA Adapter with 600MB/s per Channel

I use this to run 8 hard drives used in a Windows 10 storage spaces pool on a security camera server with 30 TB of storage & 24/7 writing and it has been running with zero problems for years. I tried to add another drive using a motherboard SATA port and I’ve had system freeze ups and stability issues all related to the one drive on the motherboard. So even though I don’t need more than one or two more drives, I’m tempted to buy another one of these controllers since it simply works with no issues. I am using a super micro motherboard and figured that a super micro jbod card would be the best bet and so far that has paid off. I can’t speak to other configurations, but in my experience, this has been an extremely reliable storage controller.

Pros:Low cost 8 port HBA card.Has worked with every SATA or SSD drive I have used on it so far.Standard 40mm heat-sink design.Cons:It does get quite hot, therefore you really do need near server level airflow for its long term survival. It is a SuperMicro card and they did design it for use in servers. However thank's to its fairly standard 40mm heat-sink design it is easy to fix.Other Thoughts:I use this in my file server using what the marketers now call "Software Defined Storage". It works great for this and I have had zero issues with its function.My file server is a quiet PC with minimal airflow unless under load (all fans are tied to the water cooler's PWM signal and it's software will spin up the fans as the CPU works) so I was not meeting the required amount of airflow the stock heat-sink would require to effectively cool this card for long term use. This was easily solved using a Swiftech MCX159-CU I had lying around. With this chipset cooler attached, the card is now cooled passively by the air flowing out the PSU and is only warm to the touch.This card uses the pretty standard 40mm heat-sink design that has been around since at least the Intel 440BX Chipset days, so a 40mm heat-sink upgrade was pretty easy to source for it.

I've been using this Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 Add-on Card for almost a year, as of this writing.Originally I was running windows 10 and had to install the driver from the mfg website. After MS corrupted all my movies with yet another of their messed up updates, I switched over to Linux Mint 20. This Supermicro card worked right out of the box with Linux.The only complaint I could have is that it ran very hot. I added a copper heat sync with a fan, that tamed the heat issue.I would buy another one of these cards without hesitation.

I bought two of these for my HTPC server and am impressed with the over all performance and the lack of high temperatures. The only true complaint I have is that it simply does not mount in a system that well. It was such a tough fit in my cooler master that I finally removed the mounting bracket.For the price you just cannot beat the performance. I would like to see an external bracket offered for this as well so you could use a mini sas cable to hook to an external drive cage. You see external brackets with raid cards and sub controllers all the time so not sure why this would not be possible.

I have had one for years. I have 8x 4TB WD RED SATA dirives in a btrfs RAID0 pool. File copy on and off the NAS over my 10Gb Intel 10GB SFP+ nets net me 500MB+ each way. This uncashed speeds. I an using 64GB of RAM in this NAS and when the data is in in memory i get 1.2GB. Thats maxing out my 10GB network. phase2 im getting 10000 rpm drives and either a faster controller or a second one and add more drive. I have this also attached to my ESXi server over 10GB D10GB SFP+, mounted with NFS.The card is awseone for the money. I have had zero problems with it.

Tried everything to get these to function reliably. Flashed the latest firmware to the controllers, installed a custom kernel module, even tried a bleeding edge kernel (3.19) and it was still extremely flaky.A lot of the reviews on line mention not being able to even see the drives in the system because the card isn't recognized. For me though, I didn't need to do anything special to get the drives recognized , but after I started a sync (I use snapraid), I began to get input/output errors and dmesg reported ata link downgrades and resets and eventually one of the drives went totally offline.After I flashed the latest firmware things actually seemed to go even further downhill. I couldn't even get all the drives to come up properly upon reboot (same sort of ATA errors) aI don't know what it is exactly, but I think Marvell controllers and Linux are a bad combo. This is now the second Marvell device I've tried in order to add 12 sata 6gb ports to the system and both have failed similarly.Also, the first boot everything seemed perfect. My speeds were great (snapraid was syncing at about 600MB/s which is about 3x what my old x1 card was capable of), everything seemed fine. Then I started getting errors and it all went downhill. So if you do elect to give these a shot, make sure you give them a thorough testing before deciding they are fine.

I love Supermicro hardware. I've had two Supermicro servers, and both performed flawlessly. So when I built my new server around the A1SAi-2750F motherboard, I also bought this add-on card to give me more SATA3 ports.But, as other reviewers have indicated, the Marvell chips simply don't perform. I'd hoped that Supermicro may have found a design approach to mitigate the problems, but apparently not. My server, running Windows Server 2012 r2 Essentials, worked great... for a few days. Then the OS could no longer see the drives connected through this AOC-SASLP-MV8. They simply weren't there. There were no such issues with those connected to the SATA ports on the motherboard. So I'd reboot, and they'd reappear, and everything was great. For another 3-5 days, when it would happen again.I finally gave up fighting this problem and bought an LSI 9211-8i. It works. I wish I could get SMART data through it, but at least I don't have to reboot my server every few days.I won't buy another board with a Marvell chip.

I got this to improve my Windows Storage Spaces performance. For the price it's the best I could find in Canada. I'll probably still replace it with a pci-e 3.0 card when I can get one at a reasonable price but for right now it's perfect for me.Thank you to other reviewers who commented about the heat. I picked up a fan bracket to keep active airflow over the card. No issues at all with my 6 HDD's and 2 SSD's

the unit is very hot, i need to put an external fan to cool it down

worked great. no issues.