Inexpensive used SAS controller for Windows desktop?

[simion_levi]

I have a few SAS drives lying around that I'd like to test at home - but only if I can do so for minimal cost. I see plenty of ex-server SAS controller cards are available on ebay, in the £10-20 budget range, but have no idea what, if anything, would actually work for me. I have no need for RAID, don't really care about the speed - this is literally to plug in one SAS drive at a time to run diagnostics.

So is there a particular manufacturer/chipset that will play nicely, and have drivers available, with a Windows 7 x64 desktop? I have a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot free - Z97P-D3 LGA1150 motherboard.

Random example, but there are plenty of other options;
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-E2K-UCS-51-B-5-iR-S...

[TurricanII]

Connect them to SATA for about £9 with one of these:

StarTech.com 18in SAS 29 Pin to SATA Cable with LP4 Power by StarTech
Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000V72AQ4

[droopsnoot]

TurricanII said:

Connect them to SATA for about £9 with one of these:

StarTech.com 18in SAS 29 Pin to SATA Cable with LP4 Power by StarTech
Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000V72AQ4

Check this bit as well though: "*Please note that the SATA controller must support SAS drives"

Startech used to be quite good stuff, used a lot of their cables where I used to work.

[simion_levi]

Yes, I've seen SATA to SAS cables but you do need an onboard controller that will support SAS. I'm not confident that mine offers that (Intel Z97), though cannot find a definitive answer either way.