The 8 Best 16 Port Sata Controllers (2023 reviews)

The beyimei 16 port sata controller is the best feature-rich controller on the market today. This device works for it's intended function. It leverages 4 lanes. The stability is very good. The fact the card has six SATA-III 6Gbps outputs gives plenty of capacity to run additional hardware. It comes with a device that works well. It has drives on it, which should be what is detected in the os. There is no safe eject option, and the power-on self-check is very fast. They work 1000% better and no longer suffer random disconnects.

Why We Like This:

Works with z690 motherboards and windows
An affordable, ubuntu compatible, sata card
One of the new comers and featured product

Best With open media vault: MZHOU 16 Port Sata Controller

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Not everyone likes to purchase controller for their daily usage, but the mzhou 16 port sata controller would be an anomoly. It is a standard pcie sata controller. It does work on a pci-e 4x slot. The 6 SATA cables are the type with metal retention clip. It is perfectly in an unraid server running multiple vms and plex. The card can only handle 1.6GB/s transfer split between all drives. They use completely different interface protocols. This product comes with all the extra cables (not power, but that is understandable) and accessories. They are very reliable and sturdy.

Why We Like This:

Simple to install and worked great
Works with unraid in a plex server
Lot of satisfied buyers

Best For Hot swap: Startech 16 Port Sata Controller

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The startech 16 port sata controller's high-end materials makes sure that it ages well with use. The Port sata iii (6gbps) controller enables you to add 10 sata 6gbps hard drives (hdds) or solid state drives (ssds) to your computer system or server via an available PCI Express slot. It can only handle two drives at a time. The SATA connectors have seven pins and the connectors on this board have 36 connections, more than enough to support four SATA devices each. It should work on any motherboard with a Sata III cannel and an open PCI Express slot.

Why We Like This:

Treats drives attached as removable, not internals
Connection drops and the transfer speed is good
Worked plug and play with windows 8 and did not require any additional drivers

Best With Sata Port: ACTIMED 16 Port Sata Controller

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention actimed 16 port sata controller for daily purpose. While possibly not as fast as the first card (PCIEX1 vs PCIEX4), this one is certainly more stable. It works flawlessly in Windows 10 64 and the Xtra M2 card stays nice and cool with the large heat sync that comes with the card. It also comes with a thermal pad and a very nice heat sink. It's technically "better" as each lane (x1 1 lane) is capable of.

The Port adapter opens the possibility to connect multiple hdd/ssd to your computer at peak performance. It is a great adapter for gen 3 nvme drives.

Why We Like This:

Reliable controller for linux mdadm array of 4kn drives
Best possible speed that can be achieved is 500mb/s
Works with raspi cm4 io board and omv
Works flawlessly windows 11 plug & play

Best With Sata Hard Drives: IO Crest 16 Port Sata Controller

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention io crest 16 port sata controller for regular usage. This M2 based sata expander ( specifically the 5 port version with jmb585 chipset) works with openmediavault 6 ( omv 6 as a plug n. This controller card tells you to not boot your os on it. It can support a port multiplier that is not in a raid configuration. This uses the M.2 slot to add 4 SATA slots so that you can add 4 additional SATA drives to your system. It includes a fan ontop and takes two pcie lanes. This controller card tells you to not boot your os on it. It handles lots of smaller files very well.

This is just the drive controller, you will need power from the power supply.

Why We Like This:

Plug and play, uses standard windows 10 drivers
Has good/decent read/write speeds with multiple disks (zfs) attached and heavy data transfers
Lot of satisfied buyers

Best For NAS: Syba 16 Port Sata Controller

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Next on the list, we've got yet another controller that manages to win our hearts. It's the syba 16 port sata controller and it's widely considered as controller that has the most suitable features. This card is using Marvell 9215 chipset which is compliant with Windows. It is used for embedded platform applications such as home nas/media servers, dvr/nvr and set-top boxes, or vendors can develop their own software raid boxes with freenas. It comes with 2 cables each able to connect to 4 sata ports. It is super simple to install, and cabling is great for a NAS as there are two cables branching out into 8 "ends", simplifies cable management.

It works well out of the box with freenas / truenas servers.

Why We Like This:

Intended for use in a home server
Works great with truenas core and scale
You can even add drives without powering down

Best For freenas: Orico 16 Port Sata Controller

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For quick reference this board uses an ASMedia SATA controller that supports PCI passthrough so you can hand it from a hypervisor to a VM. It is compatible with sata interface mechanical hard drives/ssd solid state hard drives/optical drives, etc. The disks are setup as 4 mirrored pairs with one pair on the motherboard's SATA controller and its mirror on the m.2 adapter card. The speed of this adapter is 6Gbps. It can be used used singularly or raid.

The 7th image for this item gives the impression that there's a built-in configuration menu which can be used for raid configuration and free drive. The controller runs hot when in use, even if you have good airflow over the area the card is installed in, a heatsink on the controller chip does wonders. It is compatible with ASMedia SATA controller that supports PCI passthrough so you can hand it from a hypervisor to a VM.

Why We Like This:

Led indicator monitoring, monitoring the working status of the hard disk at any time
Built-in raid tools or any configuration tools
One of the new comers and featured product

Best With All modern Operating Systems: Highpoint technologies 16 Port Sata Controller

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate controller. The highpoint technologies 16 port sata controller is exactly that - it's a simple controller that hits all the right notes. Hard disks hosted by Rocket 700A series HBAs will be recognized as independent, stand-alone drives, which can be formatted, partitioned and configured into software RAID arrays or JBOD/span configurations using the default Windows and Linux storage management interfaces. The Rocket 700A HBAs utilize robust, self-locking SFF. It allows administrators to instantly check the operating status of storage devices in real-time.

The Compact half-height PCIe 3.0 x8 HBAs can be easily integrated into any industry standard PCIe Gen3 or Gen4 platform, and are available with 8 or 16 dedicated device channels. The Rocket 700 series controllers are also available with a legacy BIOS interface, UEFI RAID creation tool, and UEFH HII BIOS tool, which can be injected into the platform’s standard BIOS menu if the motherboard supports the IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) specification.

Why We Like This: