Yep, the chipset should be supported and work fine. While an HBA isn't expensive, the more valuable thing here is that it saves you the PCIe slot since there's only three available.
What's the intended use for the system? Eight drives lends itself fairly nicely to either a 4x2-way mirror or a single 8-drive RAIDZ2, but the right configuration depends on what kind of data you'll be throwing on it and what your performance needs are.
It is just for the TB's of data I have collected over the years, movies, books, music, personal data..etc. and Well I'm trying to make a "better" decision. 2014 I built my first NAS with a u-nas 800 chassis, Adaptec 7805 Raid w/AFM module, 7 HGST 4TB hardrives. I configd a Raid-5. I gambled that all of my top-end components would not fail. And they have not. However all good things come to an end.
So I am building a "second" NAS and making better decisions hence ZFS. First I need to backup approx 20TB of data from the first NAS to this new one. It is disappointing that HD's cost sooo much. I want to use 10/12TB but cannot afford to purchase all 8 at once. I can purchase 2/month. I was thinking purchasing 2 10TB drives, create a vdev. Each month do the same thing until full.
But a 8-drive "8TB" Raidz2 would leave with 48TB right?? I might be able to purchase all 8 at once.
