StarTech.com SATA PCIe Card - 6 Port PCIe SATA Expansion Card - 6Gbps - Low/Full Profile - Stacked SATA Connectors - ASM1166 Non-Raid - PCI Express to SATA Converter

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

For £56.27 ex-VAT, this StarTech PCIe-to-SATA card is a decent “plug in a few more drives” solution, and that’s really what it’s for. If you’ve got a server/workstation that’s running out of SATA ports and you don’t need anything fancy (no RAID, no hot-swap backplane drama), it’ll do the job reliably for basic storage expansion. The ASM1166 controller is usually straightforward in Windows/Linux environments, and the low/full profile support is handy in mixed hardware setups—especially in small form-factor boxes where every millimetre matters.

Why you might *not* buy it: if you’re trying to hang spinning HDDs/SSDs off it for performance-critical workloads, or you expect enterprise-style features (or clean, predictable behavior with odd BIOS/driver setups), this is not the card I’d bet on over higher-end storage controllers. Also, avoid it if your system already feels unstable or underpowered—these add-in cards can make marginal PCIe/PSU issues more obvious. Bottom line: buy it if you need cheap, simple SATA expansion and you’re comfortable with “it’s just disks” behaviour; skip it if you need RAID/controller intelligence, robust hot-swap integration, or maximum throughput consistency.