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Need advice on purchasing PCIe to SATA 3 adapter card
Hey all,
I'm upgrading my SSD from an Intel SATA II 320 120GB - which has worked very well for me - to a Samsung SATA III 840 EVO 250GB. My computer doesn't have any native SATA III hookups, but I do have several PCIe 2.0 slots that are open and ready to be used. As such, I've decided to purchase a PCIe to SATA III adapter so that I can run the drive through the adapter, and hopefully get better performance than using SATA II.
My first question is, is there a recommended controller or card that anyone here has used? I've heard that while sub $100 cards can work, most use Marvell controllers which have mixed performance. However I'm still unsure. For example, here's an affordable SATA 3 card, and the reviews are mostly positive, but it is a Marvell controller. I've read that LSI is a reliable brand that makes excellent controllers, but the cost is prohibitive for most upgraders.
I know that if I get any PCIe card, the first thing I should do is get at least a dual lane x2 or x4 card. Anything higher than that will be overkill, but x1 will probably be too little bandwidth.
To clarify, I'm not going to be running RAID with any of my drives. I have a standard 500GB HDD that I'm going to leave on the SATA II port on the mobo. I'm not sure if I should use HyperDuo mode or not if I get a card that sports such a feature. I've read that while HyperDuo is a convenient feature, SSD performance does take a dive, as opposed to a manual SSD+HDD setup.
I've also checked other similar threads in this forum, and other contributors have suggested to simply remain with the SATA II ports, as the SATA III card just won't deliver any worthy or noticeable speed improvements or performance gains. Still, I just feel like the Samsung EVO wouldn't reach its full potential with just the SATA II port, but I'm not ready to upgrade my mobo just yet.