HighPoint Rocket 1608A PCIe Gen5 x16 to 8-M.2 NVMe Switch Adapter Card

Storage professionals assembling high-density NVMe arrays in workstations, media servers, or compact all-flash NAS systems will find the HighPoint Rocket 1608A an essential component. This adapter card converts a single PCIe x16 slot into eight independent M.2 NVMe ports, unlocking the full potential of PCIe Gen5 bandwidth for massive storage pools in a single full-height, half-length card.

Key specifications

• Host Interface: PCIe 5.0 x16 (up to 128 GB/s theoretical bandwidth)
• Drive Interface: 8x M.2 NVMe (PCIe 5.0 x4 per port)
• Supported M.2 Form Factors: 2242, 2260, 2280, 22110
• NVMe Standard: NVMe 1.4
• PCIe Switch Chipset: Broadcom PEX88080
• RAID Modes: RAID 0, 1, 10, Single, JBOD
• Bootable NVMe: Yes
• Cooling: Active (heatsink with fan)
• Auxiliary Power: 1x 8-pin PCIe power connector
• Max Storage Capacity: Up to 128TB (8x 16TB NVMe SSDs)
• Management: HighPoint Storage Manager (WebGUI, CLI)
• LED Indicators: Yes (per M.2 slot)
• Form Factor: Full-height, half-length PCIe add-in card

Why choose it

The Rocket 1608A eliminates the bottleneck of traditional HBA or RAID cards by leveraging PCIe Gen5. With eight dedicated M.2 slots, you can build a high-speed, high-capacity storage solution that outperforms many enterprise arrays. Its active cooling ensures sustained performance even under heavy load, while the included management software simplifies RAID setup and monitoring.

Ideal use cases

• High-performance workstations for content creation, data analysis, and scientific computing
• Media servers requiring high throughput for 4K/8K video editing and streaming
• Compact all-flash NAS systems for small businesses and home labs
• Virtualization environments needing fast local NVMe storage

Good to know

The card supports bootable NVMe drives, allowing you to boot your operating system directly from an M.2 SSD attached to the Rocket 1608A. It is compatible with Windows 10/11, Windows Server 2019/2022, Linux Kernel 5.x/6.x, and VMware ESXi 7.0/8.0. The Broadcom PEX88080 switch chip provides 80 internal PCIe lanes, ensuring each M.2 slot gets full PCIe 5.0 x4 bandwidth. A single 8-pin PCIe power connector supplies additional power for up to eight NVMe SSDs, and the active cooling solution keeps temperatures in check during sustained transfers.