My̶P̶i̶NAS (RockNAS?) project, part -36, "It's still an ARM SBC, so it still counts!"

You may ask, how is it a PiNAS without a Pi? And that's a good question...

PCIe switch woes:
I originally set out to upgrade a Pi4 based NAS that used USB SATA and USB 2.5GbE, to a full fledged SAS NAS with 10GbE connectivity, using the Pi5.
The biggest hurdle? The pi5 only has a single x1 PCIe gen3 port.
The solution was /supposed/ to be a PCIe gen3 switch, and I /HAD/ a working switch until a power failure/fault blew up my Pi and the switch. The replacement switch -the exact same model- refuses to show up and many attempts with other switch cards had the same results. I'm sure it's the x1 host bus.
The switch needs to be configured to allow an x1 upstream port, and that first switch was likely configured as such, but every replacement has not been.
These all come from china, so going back and forth with them to solve that issue has not been easy...
I tried to contact the switch chip mfgs for the switch cards directly, Microchip is the only one that got back to me in regard to reconfiguring an existing switch card to accept the x1 port.
Their response "We can't help you re-engineer our partner's product" fair ig lol

Maybe USB???:
Getting desperate, I re-explored USB options for the NIC, eliminating the switch and only having the SAS controller on the x1 port.
Well as luck would have it, Realtek /very/ recently released a 5GbE USB chip.
I found a listing on amz for $40 and gave it a try... It's not great.
1. It doesn't support jumbo frames (despite docs saying it does), which for large file transfers on a system with limited CPU resources, is a very big deal.
2. USB has a lot more overhead vs PCIe in general.
3. I get 900Mb/s up, 2.3 Gb/s down. I was getting 7Gb/s both ways with the PCIe NIC.

I'll make my own PCIe switch HAT with jack black and hookers!:
There exists a single gen3 switch IC that doesn't hide the datasheet behind NDAs. I've put together a schematic for it, but layout and routing for a 8GHz circuit is a bit outside my comfort zone, so that's very much on a back burner.

Is this defeat?:
There are a few goals with this project, and one of them /was/ to use the RPi5.
I /did/ have a working switch, so the concept is more than theoretical, but my quest for another working switch has been a hit to both morale and my wallet.
Well... What if there was an ARM based SBC with... 2 PCIe ports?!?!
Enter the Radxa ROCK 5B+.
It has the same 4 A76 cores as the RPi5, /PLUS/ an additional 4 A55 cores., and the most important part, 2(two) gen3 x2 PCIe ports. No switch needed.
Oh, and it costs $15 more than a 8GB RPi5. gru.jpeg

To all those shouting "just go x86" No! This was a Pi project and if we aren't having Pi we're still having ARM and/or an SBC! So at least the spirit of the project lives on.

I still want to get it working with the pi5, but at this point I just want my NAS up and running, so I must accept defeat... for now.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
@StackMySwitchUp

Cat Tax