HL15 backplane compatiblity with OCULINK?

General
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I was wondering of the HL15 backplane can connect to oculink? Has anyone experimented with this setup?

I have the an ASRock Rack X570D4i-2t and am using the 2x OCULINK connectors to connect 8x SATA drives (4x per oculink connections). That is the max my board currently supports.

I’ve occupied the PCIE slot with a device already so I cannot use that.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X570D4i-2t#Specifications

2

The HL series backplanes have SFF-8643 connectors, so you should be able to use an SFF-8611 (OCuLink) to SFF-8643 (Mini-SAS HD) cable. I think Supermicro sells one as part CBL-SAST-0972 or there are generics. Asrock Rack might have a recommendation. I haven’t specifically tried it though. As long as you have the Oculink configured for SATA (which you already do) in the BIOS it should work. This isn’t one of the cable options in the configurator, so you would need to purchase your own.

Are you planning to get a motherboard with more PCIe in the future? Getting an HL15 and throwing away 7 of the slots seems like a bit of a waste. I assume your PCIe card is too big for the HL8.

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I have the ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T in my HL8 and the OCULINK is working great with the backplane. Other than number of slots, there really shouldn’t be a difference between the backplane on the HL8 and HL15.

I documented my build in the post below. There’s also a link to the cables I’ve used.

Be sure to allow for enough strain relief on the OCULINK connector. It’s not exactly robust and it’s easy to bend or possibly break off the motherboard.

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