Not fully familiar on how backplanes etc work so wondering how many sata ports my motherboard will need to be able to fully use the backplane.
A SATA port only supports one drive, so to connect all 15 drives by SATA you would need 15 SATA ports.
Typically to connect more than a handful of drives a PCIe card called a Host Bus Adapter (HBA) is used. This allows you to use cables that carry the equivalent of four SATA connections on one cable. Some examples of those connectors are SFF-8087 and SFF-8643. Some examples of HBAs are LSI 9300-16i or LSI 9400-16i, or other cards that use a SAS 3008 chip.
The somewhat unique thing about the X11SPH motherboard used for the full build is that it has the HBA built onto the motherboard. There aren’t many motherboards with this feature, so the PCIe card is used for most custom builds. Note that to work best most HBAs want an electrical x8 slot. This can be an issue if you are looking to run both the HBA and a GPU on lower end chipsets, If you’re not using a GPU, you can put the HBA in the x16 slot, but if you need both, you will need to consider the PCIe slot configuration on the board.
The backplane has four SFF-8643 connectors, where each connector carries the data for four drives. When you choose your chassis in the store, you can select different cable sets based on what connectors you have on the motherboard/HBA. Using an LSI 9300-16i is probably simplest as it also has SFF-8643 ports, but there are many other options you might have on the motherboard side.
Technically you can get SATA expansion cards like this;
and use that in conjunction with the 6 or so SATA ports that would be on a regular motherboard, in which case you would order the 4x-SATA-to-SFF-8643 cables when you order the chassis, but this type of SATA expansion card typically isn’t recommended, as it will be slower and less stable that an HBA.
The other thing you can look for is motherboards with MCIO connectors. These carry the equivalent of 8 SATA channels, and you can get MCIO-to-SFF-8643 cables (but I don’t think 45HL has a cable set selection for them, so it would be an additional purchase). I think these are appearing on higher end server, workstation, and creator motherboards.
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Thanks for this suggestion!
I have a motherboard with 8 sata, and had ordered another 8 sata ports in a PCIE card, but this would keep my cable management a lot better. I ended up ordering an LSI 9305-16i based on some reviews suggesting it had better power management (and hopefully heat) than the 9300.
As a note, the HBA cards you can just pick up on amazon or newegg are pricier and harder to find info on as a consumer than the SATA expansion cards.
Now I need to figure out what to do with all the empty motherboard sata ports.
Most consumers aren’t looking to connect 15 hard drives to their computer, and the builds that do with SATA expander cards, as you say, typically have a nest of wires. They’re an enterprise grade component, so may be a little more difficult to find info on, but once you know what to search for it is readily available through your favorite search engine, r/HomeLab, ServerTheHome, etc. As with other homelab stuff, you’ll often find deals buying used on eBay, etc.
I’ve used a 4-port SATA expander in the past to get 8 drives connected to an ITX mobo, and had no issues with it, but I wasn’t stressing the system. And the new HL8 uses a 4-port SATA adapter in an m.2 slot. So the expanders may be fine for certain use cases.
The HL15 has various options to purchase or print yourself 2.5-inch SSD caddies to mount in the case, such as;
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