NVME expansion cards

[nugglet]

Anyone here have experience using pcie cards for m.2 expansion that doesn’t require mobo bifurcation?

 

I currently have a card using an asmedia asm 2824 chip that is preventing deeper sleep/idle c states and was just wondering if anyone else has had luck with a similar setup. I am debating trying a different card and returning this one

 

Ideally I am looking for a low profile card but just wanted to get some feedback from anyone who may know of a different chip that is suitable

[Thorgrim]

So, this is in my TrueNAS Scale box that never sleeps...

I'm using a Supermicro AOC-SHG3-4M2P (3.0 x8 but full height since 4 M.2 slots) specifically because my motherboard does NOT bifurcate.  It's used, was cheap and just works.

[nugglet]

1 hour ago, Thorgrim said:

So, this is in my TrueNAS Scale box that never sleeps...

I'm using a Supermicro AOC-SHG3-4M2P (3.0 x8 but full height since 4 M.2 slots) specifically because my motherboard does NOT bifurcate.  It's used, was cheap and just works.

Mine is 3.0 x 8 with a 4 slot expansion and low profile (Glotrends PA40 but there are likely other brands using the same card since it appears to be a Chinese company)

Have you checked c states in with powertop? I can’t get pkg hw past c2 so I am wanting to try and optimize further for lower idle power consumption

[Thorgrim]

I'm not familiar with powertop.  Is there something specific I could look for?

[nugglet]

13 hours ago, Thorgrim said:

I'm not familiar with powertop.  Is there something specific I could look for?

In the shell you would just run sudo powertop and use the tab button to navigate. This is the idle stats page

[Thorgrim]

Here's what I'm seeing for idle (of the first few cores).  My machine is not known for saving power...

I wanted lots of cores for running VM's & containers.  Im running an ancient Intel Xeon E5-2697V2 but it does have a ton of threads (if a bit slow by modern standards).