SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express Low Profile Ready SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Software RAID Controller Card

Pros: 4 Ports.
Compatible with my Biostar TPower I55 PEX4-1 slot.
Supports Win7 x64.
Can feed an eSATA drive (or more, presumably) with the appropriate case bracket (not included).

Cons: Manual in error.

Other Thoughts: Manual says to go to D:/Silicon_Image/SIL3124 (etc.).
Tech support says that's wrong. In Device Manager right click and choose Update Driver, then manually tell Windows where to look.

With the driver disc in your optical drive, show the location as D: (or whatever) only and let Windows decide what to pick and in what subfolders.

Btw, running in JBOD, so can't comment on any RAID behavior. But, the card sees my drives just fine, and so does Winders, so I'm happy. :-)

Pros: -Downloaded drivers and had them waiting
-Got card promptly from Newegg
-Installed card, added 2 separate RAID paired drives
-Booted up and pointed card to drivers, installed RAID software, rebooted
-logged on, created 2 sets of striped arrays with the software
-NEVER LOOKED BACK!!!

Been "Perfect!" ever since...

Cons: someone stupid idiot will try this card and will have some 'nightmare from hell' install experience and will bash the card, the manufacturer, and Newegg because they couldn't take a moment and ReadTheFManual!!!

Other Thoughts: 'nuff said

Pros: I purchased this card only in order to add 4 SATA ports to my system, not for RAID functionality. For that purpose, it's working well. Its Silicon Image controller causes much less delay in boot-up time than the Marvell controller used by an add-on card that I have in a similar system.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: It would be nice if Syba offered this 4-port card in an SATA III PCIE-x4 version with 3.0Gb/s speed.

Pros: None

Cons: Bought this after reading that it would work with Home Server 2011 with the lasted drivers, hoping to RIAD my new HDs. Updated the drivers system recognized the card and then my problems began. I rebooted and entered the RAID setup and setting up RAID it proceeded to freeze my system. Rebooted and made it to the windows logo screen and it froze there every time. Attempted to run a Windows system repair and the system froze, finally frustrated I removed the card and was able to boot with no problems. So I decide to let my friend try the card with his Windows 7 system and he experienced the same issues. Now I sitting with a useless card and if I return it I will only get about half of my money returned.

Other Thoughts: Requested an RMA from Newegg and for the first time ever I was disappointed by Newegg. They are going to charge me a fee and I had to pay return postage. Maybe I didn't selcet the right reason for RMA.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We do apologize, but this card does not support Home Server 2011 as it is not listed as one of the supported OS in the user manual.

If you read somewhere else saying this card supports Home Server 2011, please contact us and share the information with us. We would love to verify the new (listed driver) for you, and correct false information if any.

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours at support@sybausa.com

SYBA offers an on-line RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback. We value all positive and negative feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 11132012

Pros: Bought this card open box from newegg for $21. Came with all the stuff.

Got this card to expand my SATA ports and it did just that. Plugged into pci-e x1 slot. Installed drivers in Windows 7 64 and did not even have to reboot - though I did anyway.

I do not have any hard drives plugged up to this thing. I bought it to offload my 3 blu-ray drives from taking up my precious on-board 6gb/s ports so they could be used for hdds and ssds. However, I do have one hot swap bay plugged into it. All my blu-ray drives are working great. If you are wondering why I have three blu-ray burners, I am an editor so I make many dvds and blu-ray discs for clients and this gives me the ability to burn up to three discs at once.

Optical Drives are and always will be slow so to me there was no point in them using 6gb/s ports when the most they could ever use is 1.5gb/s.

The bios has a nice interface. The card itself looks nice.
Chip has a heatsink.

Cons: No achi support with current bios. No clear options to flash bios. This means that I cannot use the cd drives on this card to load windows. I would have to go into my computer and manually plug the drive into on-board sata and switch them to ide or achi to install windows. This sounds bad, but how often do I install windows? Once every three years? To me, this is a small price to pay for having 3 on-board sata ports open now.

I do not like the layout of the ports themselves on the card. I wish the ports were aligned along the rear as it makes cable management neater. Not worth an egg though.

Other Thoughts: In my opinion, it would not be smart to use this card for your boot drive or for a raid configuration. You are asking for pain. If you want to do REAL raid, then start in the $100 and up range. I have a raid 0 configuration with velociraptors using the onboard controller, but in the age of ssd, though my config is still fast by many standards, 175 mb/s sustained read and write, it just cannot compete with even a single low end ssd now in iops and latency. Gonna move into the ssd world soon and this card was my first step.
Keep your configurations simple on this card and I cant see you having any problems, but for all you super raid guys with mega complicated 0+1+5 configs - why are you being soooo cheap? What you are doing requires a $150 card. Go and get that.

asus sabertooth
amd 1090t
western digital blacks 1tb x 2
raptors x 2 in raid 0
3 lg blu ray drives
470 gtx
x-fi sound
8gb ram
corsair h100

Pros: Fast, easy to use card.

Cons: died on me after 4 months

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We are sorry to hear that this card has stopped working. Please try the card in a different PCIe slot on your motherboard. Sometimes PCIe slots can go bad or experience I/O conflicts. If the card still does not work, you can rest assured we will replace it. This card is backed by a hassle free warranty which will ensure a prompt replacement. You can fill out our convenient online RMA form, or you can contact us directly for live customer service. We offer same day shipping on all of our RMA replacements as long as we have available inventory.

We are more than willing to provide all of our customers with prompt exchanges whenever a product becomes defective.

Pros: It works, if you NEVER need to flash the on board BIOS

Cons: The flashing utilities for similar cards WILL NOT work with this card due to the memory type that the bios is stored on. I contacted the manufacturer and they told me "We do not recommend flashing or modifying any of our cards. This voids the warranty, and it is not recommended." If you ever need to change from a RAID to a base configuration, you cannot do it with this card. This is unacceptable and is not industry standard.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We do strongly suggest that our customers do not flash BIOS unless it is recommended specifically by a SYBA technician. Unauthorized BIOS flashing will void the warranty.

Our technical support team is available to help 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us during those business hours at support@sybausa.com

We are more than happy to provide all of our customers with a prompt exchange whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an on-line RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valuable feedback. We value all positive and negative feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 10162012

Pros: It works out of box in most OS's -- Was recognized in Windows 7 and in FreeBSD

Cons: New cards seems to have a Winbond W39F010 BIOS chipset which is not supported by Silicon Image or Syba -- which means you can *NOT* upgrade this card. The card will more than likely come with a BIOS from 2006, the latest is from 2010 and even then if you want to remove the "RAID" functionality (I use these in a ZFS system so pseudo-hardware raid is useless to me and slows down boot time) you cannot.

I also took a look at the hardware specs for this WinBond chipset and it organizes data differently than the WinBonds that are supported so you can't just force a bios update using the utility ...

Other Thoughts: Syba does not produce or support the BIOS's on their cards, they rely on the original manufacturers to do so (in this case Sil). Here's the response I got when inquiring with Syba as to the bios on this card:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting us, and for your inquiry.

I am afraid we do not have a BIOS update for this card. Since we do not engineer the chips, the only additional driver / updates would be offered from Silicon Images.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,

This item is one of our top sellers. Not sure how did you get hold of a new card with an old chipset version?

SYBA only uses the newest chipset avaiable for this card. And there is no old chip on the markt anymore.

If possible, please contact us directly and provide us with the chipset stamp date on the chip. We would like to find out more about why an old card was sold as new card.

Our technical support team is available 9am-5pm M-F. Feel free to contact us anytime @ support@sybausa.com

We are more than willing to provide all of our customers with prompt exchanges whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an on-line RMA form, the user can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your valueable feedback. We value all positive and negative feedback.

Regards, SYBA CST 10082012

Pros: Good price/performance ratio, Newegg delivered quickly

Cons: Bought this same card in July 2012 - worked well with the latest BIOS/drivers from Silicon Image. Decided to buy two more cards in September 2012 - guess what: received the same part number with the same UPC code - but the manufacturer used a different flash chip (Winbond W39......)!!! No longer able to update the BIOS with Silicon Image tools - not a supported flash type. Can't find any BIOS/update tools from Syba/IOcrest. Very dissapointed. The card should have been marked as a different hardware revision, at least...

Other Thoughts: First review in several years - had no problems with any Newegg orders previously...

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We regret to hear of your experience with this card. Please contact our support team, they may be able to further assist you with updating the BIOS for this card. We can provide you with updated drivers and software.

Thank you for purchasing one of our products, and for leaving us your feedback. We value all positive and negative feedback.

Feel free to contact us anytime @ support@sybausa.com

Regards, SYBA CST 09112012

Pros: Unsure

Cons: Computer can't post with this plugged in. Does one of a few things:

1. Hangs at Windows logo screen
2. Hangs at Raid Bio prompt screen
3. Freezes at Desktop
4. Freezes during Windows System Repair
5. BSOD at Windows System Repair

Also, for the brief few minutes I MIGHT be able to get to desktop, the RAID 5 drops from My Computer and is "found" again which opens a prompt window like when you plug in a flash drive.

I've google searched around. I've read through the manufacture's site including forums. I've updated drivers. Nothing is working.

I've built a number of computers before and have never had issues like this before.

Other Thoughts: I've isolated the problem to the raid card by testing each component one by one. System is Windows 7 with all current updates.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Since you have already performed the basic steps to ensure this card is installed correctly, and its behaving as you have stated, it appears it is defective. We do apologize for this inconvenience. Please contact us for a replacement.

We are more than willing to provide all of our customers with prompt exchanges whenever a product becomes defective.

SYBA offers an on-line RMA form. Users can easily fill out the form and submit it for a quick RMA return and exchange. It is SYBA's policy to answer all customer inquiries within 24 hours (M-F)

Regards, SYBA CST 08272012