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it seems like none of the consumer-level ARM chips expose enough PCIe lanes to do anything interesting, no SATA controllers or 10Gb+ ethernet

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RK3568 / RK3588 have 3 SATA controllers and for example the Rock Pi 3A seems to have the SATA routed to the bottom m.2 connector, as well as the possibility to switch the USB3 port over to SATA

https://linuxgizmos.com/pi-like-rk3568-sbc-grows-sata-out-of...

"The Rock 3 Model A exploits the RK3568’s ability to multiplex SERDES lanes to enable SATA support on the dual USB 3.0 ports (OTG and host) via a SATA breakout cable."

Orange Pi 5 (rk3588 based) has m.2 pcie 2.0. I think maybe only a lane?

Yep, you can get an m2 to SATA breakout board pretty cheap.

If you pickup a Rock 5b (rk3588 as well) you will get 2.5g ethernet too.

There's a lot of different m.2 sockets. This m.2 has a PCIe not a SATA connection. You'd need not a breakout board, but an actual SATA adapter with a PCIe <-> SATA chip on it. Still cheap, not a big barrier, but the terminology of "breakout board" is quite incorrect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/zm3sms/does_the_o...

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