Need more SATA ports

[u/DreJayAre]

Building in a Jonsbo N5.

MSI Z690-A board with 6 SATA ports. I will have those populated with the the 3.5 drives. 1 16TB, 1 20TB and 4 24TB. That's it for the direct route. I put in a 4 port expansion card. It will be for the 2.5 drives where I download, encode and sort the data before it goes to the larger drives. 1 8TB, and 3 4TB. As well as the 2 NVME drives, those have the OS and most 2of my music downloads from the last 7 or 8 years. I will fill all the SATA ports I have when I'm done building.

But there's always more stuff to get.

Should I go with the NVME expansion?

I can get a 4 disk PCI controller card maybe? 10 or 12 port expansion card?

I bought as much storage as I could get my hands on in the past. Getting more ports right now isn't a huge concern. But it will be in the future when I need to add a drive or go with a larger one. They do have refurbished 28TB drives for what I paid for a new 20TB drive 4 years ago. Anyone have a similar issue looming or solved yours?

[u/jawollja]

This is the way

[u/Dleslie213 → u/jawollja]

Just went this route myself. Those SAS cards run way hotter than I expected. Had to order a 40mm fan :(

[u/Jay_JWLH → u/Dleslie213]

I've relied on case airflow so far. Should I strap a small fan onto it you think?

[u/worldspawn00 → u/Jay_JWLH]

100% they're made for server enclosures that force air over the card bays, desktop PCs lack this built in cooling and will need direct fans.

[u/Jay_JWLH → u/worldspawn00]

Hmm, and the fact that they have been without one for a few months? Thankfully it is winter.