I can't say for sure- but, there is a good chance I might have a problem.
The main picture attached to this post, is a pair of dual bifurcation cards, each with a pair of Samsung PM963 1T enterprise NVMes.
It is going into my r730XD. Which... is getting pretty full. This will fill up the last empty PCIe slots.
But, knock on wood, My r730XD supports bifurcation! LOTS of Bifurcation.
As a result, it now has more HDDs, and NVMes then I can count.
What's the problem you ask? Well. That is just one of the many servers I have laying around here, all completely filled with NVMe and SATA SSDs....
Figured I would share. Seeing a bunch of SSDs is always a pretty sight.
And- as of two hours ago, my particular lemmy instance was migrated to these new NVMes completely transparently too.
I'm confused. Why do those cards have a heatsink? I needed a card like that because my motherboard did not support bifurcation. So had to use a splitting card. The cards I know that require bifurcation do not even need a controller or heatsink. They are just wired pretty much directly to the pci-e bus.
I actually looked up the chip numbers, and its a "splitter".
I, don't know WHY there is a splitter, as a splitter isn't needed, and these cards are advertised to only work on motherboards supporting bifurcation. However, there is indeed, a splitter.
The documentation is also, REALLY horribly translated.
Here is the documentation for the chip itself: https://www.asmedia.com.tw/product/213yQcasx8gNAzS4/b7FyQBCxz2URbzg0
I, am not 100% certain how, where, or why it fits in there. Perhaps, its for link power management? Or something.
But, I can confirm, these cards DO require bifurcation to be enabled. Without bifurcation, you only see the first drive.
Wierd, but thanks for the info. The card i've used before pretty much only has 2 slots and a few random components on it l, like capacitors and such. So I assumed it was never needed. My motherboard didn't support bifurcation, so I never got that to work though, so maybe it couldn't work at all.. only found that out after installing it.
If your motherboard doesn't support bifurcation, you can always use these cards: https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2022/r720xd-bifurcation/
I have had good experiences with them.
Oh yeah I fixed that issue already. Got a different card for it that uses a controllerchip. Its working great, without bifurcation requirement.