Hey everyone,
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion and for linking that poll.
To address the surprise around my earlier comment: you’re right that the community has spoken, and we do hear you. The reason we didn’t include a 15mm SSD backplane in The Beast comes down to practical (and cost-conscious) design choices tailored for the homelab crowd:
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A true 15mm enterprise SSD backplane would require a custom-designed backplane (not a reuse from our server line).
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Most 15mm enterprise SSDs are NVMe, which means we’d need a newer-gen HBA like the LSI 9600-24i or similar to support them properly.
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That combo adds significant cost. we’re talking thousands of dollars, which would push The Beast well outside the sweet spot for most homelab budgets.
We made the call to optimize for affordability and flexibility with 7mm 2.5" SATA/SAS drives (which still offer great performance and capacity via consumer or enterprise SATA SSDs), while keeping the door open for future expansion.
You’re also spot-on about the industry shift: 7mm is fading, 15mm is the new generation drives, and EDSFF (E1.S, E3, etc.) is the future. We’re watching that closely.
Your feedback is gold!. We didn’t want to lock in a pricey NVMe backplane yet without real-world validation from early adopters. Once we have more units in the wild (and hopefully some teardowns, benchmarks, or mods from you legends), we’ll have the data to justify a dedicated enterprise SSD variant or upgrade kit down the line.
So yes, this is on our radar for future projects. We’re already sketching out modular backplane options and next-gen HBA integration. Stay tuned, and keep the ideas coming.
P.S. We are working on getting a proper demo out soon, Zack’s been slammed post-launch, but a deep-dive is in the queue. Appreciate your patience!