Hi Homelab community,
After spending lot of time on unraid and homelab subreddits, I finally decided to host a NAS and started purchasing hardware. I bought 8 x 8tb drives(6+2parity drive+ 2 spares) but having trouble finding a motherboards which support 2 pcie x8 cards. All the boards I am checking on Newegg have 1 x16, 1 x4(mechanically x16), couple of x1(some boards have mechanically x16 slots but electrically 3+ slots are x1)
Seems like I am missing something as I couldn’t be the first person who is looking to use 2 pcie slots. I want to use an HBA card (requires one x8 slot) and dual 10gbps nic (requires one x8 slot)
I am open to AMD/Intel though leaning more on Intel due to qsv
i5-12600k + LGA 1700 motherboard
Or
7600 + AM5 motherboard
Any help would be appreciated
have you checked out the ASUS Hyper M.2 Card? It might be what you're looking for to split the PCIe slot into two x8 lanes. There are also some helpful YouTube videos from Asus on how bifurcation works. Good luck with your build!
this was suggested in another comment as well. Will check if the bifurcation works only on the hyper card or if other slot can be put in x8 mode.