Yeah, I don't understand why JBOD with a decent chipset is so hard to find. I really don't expect much from it, I just want to slide some drives in and have everything run consistently for a few months at a time. I'll power cycle periodically to apply updates, so I'm not looking for 24/7/365 operation or anything.

FWIW, Level1Techs seems to recommend MediaSonic (timestamp is where he talks about reliability), but doesn't give it a ringing endorsement. And that was one of the better ones he's seen...

After a bunch of research, what I've found is:

• okay chipset, but garbage build quality (no dampening for drives, no hot-swap, etc)
• fancy controller that doesn't support JBOD - non-starter for me, I don't want anything to do with hw controllers
• expensive - at a certain point, I'll just keep my oversized ATX case that does the job

Now I'm looking for compact cases that support 5 drives, like this one (a little too cheap perhaps?) or this one. It just seems reliable 4-5 bay USB-C enclosures just aren't that popular.