I can’t clarify, but would trust Noctua over what 45HL puts on the store page, noting a few points;
a) dB and dBA are not the same, if they truly mean just dB. dBA adjusts for low frequencies not sounding as loud to the human ear.
b) Because dB/dBA scales logarithmically, six 24.6 dBA fans would have a combined max noise level of about 32.4 dBA. Over an ambient of 36 dB that is a total of about 37.6 dBA.
c) Total noise for the system will also include the PSU fan, active CPU cooling if present, and the spinning HDDs. I don’t know if the store specs are trying to describe the noise level of one fan, or a full system set to max cooling.
For reference, using a sound meter app on my phone, not professional or calibrated equipment, and an HL15 v1 with the CoolerGuys 120mm fans connected to PWM headers, not doing extensive fan curve tweaking (think they’re spinning around 1600 RPM), and with 15 12 TB Seagate SATA consumer HDDs … With an ambient of about 30 dBA the total noise is in the low 40s, maybe around 42 dBA, 1 ft directly in front of the server.
I’m sure I could get it quieter, but it’s not in the same room as me, so I just need to not hear it with the closet door closed.
Thank you for looking at. Whomever had the pci-e mounting brackets above, I did order some similar to this. I suppose what I’m wondering is why is there not a way to mount 2x15mm ssds in the SSD backplane with a different enclosure? (the slots on either side of the 4 middle ones are definitely at least 15mm wide, and could house 2x15mm and 4x7.5 mm in that ssd backplane.) This would be ideal. Without it, I have no reason to get the beast as 7.5mm SSDs are kind of a dead technology as far as I can see down the road. NVME will take 90% of their marketshare, and the other 10% will have a considerable amount of enterprise 15mm ssds (which many homelabbers own due to them being widely and cheaply available with plenty of life left, PLP, and other features that are nice to have in a NAS.)
There certainly has been interest expressed here both in people’s commentary as well as a poll (Hey Homelab Heroes – We Need Your Input!) in enterprise SSD support. I’m a bit surprised by Vikram’s response above based on that poll.
Unfortunately afaik there haven’t been any official, sponsored, or independent reviews or demos of The Beast yet, so it’s a bit unclear (at least to me) how modular that SSD area really is. I’m surprised the launch wasn’t accompanied by at least a demo by Zack or an overview by one of the influencers that go to their creator summit like Techno Tim. We probably need to wait for that, or someone here to buy one and post their experiences here.
I could be wrong, but I think with the HL15 it’s the same exact 3.5" drive backplane they use in the enterprise servers. I’m surprised if they created a backplane specifically for 7.5mm consumer SSDs for the beast rather than reusing one of the SSD backplanes already in use on one or more of the enterprise servers.
So are 15mm SSDs–an offramp or two further down that road; the enterprise is moving to EDSFF.
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:
A true 15mm enterprise SSD backplane would require a custom-designed backplane (not a reuse from our server line).
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.
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!
I’m not employed in the enterprise, so my direct knowledge of enterprise SSDs and all-flash servers is minimal, but I thought LSI supported tri-mode backplanes starting with the 9400 series. And Brett held up this from the Stornado (F2?);
What are the challenges to putting that in a Beast? Does it not have standoffs because it is mounted in the Stornado vertically instead of horizontally? Is the power delivery different than simple molex connector(s)? What are the data connectors on the back–SFF-8654? It seems like the F16s have an even more modular per-drive PCB power and data delivery system, not sure what connectors those have, but maybe those require more recent LSI controllers.
I don’t think most people are asking for a 9600-24i trying to do flash on all the bays, just some kind of hybrid solution, possibly using a second 9400/9500/9600 -8i and/or connecting to some of the motherboards that support NVMe via MCIO headers with appropriate cables. This would be geared to the Epyc people not the Creator people with limited PCIE. I think the people interested in this can figure out the connectivity, they just need the backplane for a limited array of drives.
Just my thoughts, not complaining or trying to make trouble.
Thanks for the thoughtful post and the photo. I appreciate you sharing your perspective without any gripes. You’re spot-on that LSI’s 9400 series kicked off tri-mode support, and it’s cool to think about adapting something like this for our HL15 Beast.
You’re absolutely right that most folks aren’t chasing a full 24x NVMe flash monster with a 9600-24i. A hybrid setup (e.g., 9400/9500/9600-8i for SAS/SATA + a secondary -8i or MCIO cables to the mobo) makes way more sense, especially for EPYC users with PCIe to burn. The F16’s per-drive modular PCBs are even more granular (SlimSAS + separate 12V/GND per bay), which is why they pair best with newer tri-mode HBAs.
That said, the backplane itself is the big cost driver for us to manufacture at scale, custom PCB, high-density connectors, and tri-mode signal integrity all push it way beyond a simple SATA/SAS board. And while a 9400-8i/16i works great for hybrid, it’s PCIe 3.0 only, so NVMe drives would be bottlenecked at ~50% bandwidth in a full build. We wouldn’t want to sell an “NVMe-ready” Beast that ships with that limitation out of the gate.
Totally get that the community could handle the cabling side, we’re just trying to avoid fragmenting configs too much while keeping costs sane. Appreciate the input, though; it’s exactly the kind of detail that helps us prioritize what to prototype next.
I agree with many of Digital Garden’s points and I do hear your POV. That said, let me expand on those points a bit while also adding some new ones. However, before we get going, let me first say that I am a proud HL15 owner so I’m in the soup here with everyone else. Ok, onto the show…
(1) DIY Buyers vs. Turnkey Buyers
It is definitely true that there is a material % of buyers here who want the HL Homelabs Team to deliver them a fully built, turnkey system where all they have to do is plug it in and turn it on.
But based on the technical sophistication of many of the comments in the forums, it feels like there is also a material % of us who want you guys to sell us these cases bare (Case + Backplane only… notice I didn’t include Fans in that list ) so that we can DIY them however we want.
Given that, please just be very careful about how much weight you are giving to making product design decisions that affect ALL of us because you’re worried about how it may impact only SOME of us.
When that happens, then this product is being unnecessarily held back from what it could be.
Now to be fair, I don’t want to understate the importance of the Turnkey buyers.
They matter a ton.
This product doesn’t work without them as they help get this product to a higher scale of sales, etc. thus making this product commercially viable for you to produce.
So I get all of that. But let’s not over index on them either.
(2) HBAs
I think we should have a deeper discussion about what HBA Cards we would want, would buy, already own. etc.
Why? Because some of us already own many of the cards you are discussing above (ex: Broadcom 9400s, 9500s, 9600s, etc.)
Some of this is just POV, as the LSI 9300 series SKUs have been the go-to workhorse for the 45 Drives Team for many, many years given the heritage of the Storinator’s SATA based SKUs.
And I do get why you guys have done that.
You guys have chosen to stay married to the 9300 series for so long due to reasons of standards, supportability, cost, and assumedly volume.
That said, to help maybe broaden that POV out:
The LSI 9300 is 11+ years old (Storage Review reviewed them back in 2014 here.)
So if we’re talking HBAs, the 9300 is pretty long in the tooth kit at this point.
And to be fair, the 45 Drives team has also moved past the LSI 9300 too as well in very specific cases such as the Stornados, etc.
So overall, yeah, some of us will have moved and/or be very welling to move past the 9300 at this point
(3) Backplanes
Ok, here is where I am very sympathetic to the points you are making.
I do get that it is not cost effective for 45 Homelabs to have to R&D a whole bunch of Backplane parts that are specific to the HL Homelabs Team
What you instead want is parts that can be also shared with the 45 Drives Team.
I get that from a scale, costs, etc. POV
And I also hear your point that you don’t want to fragment configs, etc.
I get that from a Support Team POV.
TLDR… I don’t think much more needs to be said here
it sounds like you guys are working on it, doing the right things, trying to get a part that works for both sides of the company, and thus assumedly working on what I affectionately have termed “LEGOs for Backplanes” as had been discussed in my other post here
The last thing I will say on this topic is please also make the Backplanes you guys use from both the 45 Homelabs and 45 Drives Teams available as custom parts to the Protocase Team so that they can offer them to customers designing custom builds as well.
(3) Beast - Product Market Fit
Speaking for myself, and maybe others too, I think some of the underlying sentiment you guys are getting on the SSD Backplane being SATA only is the combination of the SSD SATA Backplane + the price.
FWIW, I personally think it’s harder to position the Beast at $1,800 given the Backplane only has support for SATA / SAS. Why?
Let’s start with the actual product positioning verbatim as it was written here:
“The HL15 Beast Homelab Server is the next evolution of our best- selling HL15—developed hand-in- hand with feedback from the homelab community. With a larger footprint and upgraded architecture, the Beast delivers unmatched power, flexibility, and cooling capacity for the most demanding self-hosting environments.”
IMHO, that’s actually a great product summary.
The issue though is that the Beast, as currently sold, doesn’t quite live up to those product aspirations. Why do I say that?
Because right now, I feel like the Beast is sort of placed squarely in the middle of 2 opposing target markets.
On one hand, the Beast is not always high end enough for the high end crowd as it (currently) lacks Tri-Mode on the SSD side of the Backplane.
But then on the other hand, this case is not always low to mid range enough to be enticing enough for those lower end markets either. Why?
Because it’s priced at $1,800 (whereas say the HL15 was priced at $800 (Case +PSU only) out of the gate).
If I’m in the market for a low to medium end of the rackmount case market, there just are better options (ex: Sliger, Silverstone, etc.) than the Beast starting at $1,800.
So I think some of the feedback here would be more favorable if the vision, pricing, and execution for this case were a bit more aligned.
To close this point, I think it’s really important in the early product phases to give yourself the correct amount of freedoms
It’s totally fine for you guys to give us low end products that cost less
It’s totally fine for you guys to give us high end products that cost more.
The key is just for you to just be very clear about which target user(s) you are or aren’t aiming for and then executing the product to match those goal(s).
(4) Minimum Price
Again, I am sympathetic to the arguments that you are trying to keep costs down as prices are exploding all over the place on computer parts for all of us.
That said, if lowering the min cost is 1 of your primary goals, then TBH, I still think you guys are really not really using all the tools available to you.
You could cut the min pricing down from $1,800 right off the bat if you just offered us a SKU with the Case, the Backplanes, and nothing else.
No Fans
No PSU
Etc.
Now let’s put actual numbers behind that:
Parts
Corsair RM1000x
Amazon = $170 / each
Quan = x1
Total = $170
Noctua NF-A14
Amazon = $25 (ish) each
Quan = x6
Total = $150
So right there, you guys could cut the base price of the Beast Base SKU down by another $300 - $400 (ish) or so if you just sold it as the Case + the Backplanes and nothing else.
I say “ish,” because the prices above are retail and you guys obviously get better pricing than we do
But doing that would drop your min price down somewhere into the $1,400 - $1,800 range.
This would be a material win not only in terms of a lower base price, but also because the DIY crowd among us wants to customize the PSUs and the Fans that we want
We don’t want to have to pay extra for parts that we don’t need.
Example
I own the HL15, and so I loved that you took the feedback from the community and ditched the original HL15 Fans by going with Noctuas Fans as the stock fans on the Beast.
But even then, I still don’t want the stock fans on the Beast.
I would instead prefer the G2 Noctuas
Now again, I get that you can’t please everyone and so I’m not asking you to.
I’m merely asking you to give us the chances to make our own choices while offering everyone a lower base cost on the Beast in the process.
(5) Target Markets
As I said above, please just be very careful about how much weight you are giving to product design decisions that affect ALL of us because you’re worried about how it may impact only SOME of us.
I think there is a common misconception that the people in these forums only have Homelabs use cases.
While I acknowledge that the Homelabs use cases are probably the majority of users, I don’t think it’s the case that they are ALL of the users.
Why do I say that? Again, go back to Digital Garden’s point above about the Hardware Survey here.
To give the exact stat, 75% of us voted for you to offer us either a Tri-mode Backplane or Both (Trimode or a Hybrid backplane only).
Ok, well, if 75% of us are voting for Tri-Mode to be an option, then this forum is clearly filled with a massive amount of people who aren’t just doing basic Homelabs use cases.
There is clearly a lot more medium to higher end technical needs present in these forums here and so a product positioned as “The Beast” needs to reflect that.
(6) PCI Slot Covers
Ok, so I know that the basic case design was inherited from the 45 Drives Storinator lineup and those cases only have 7 PCI Slot Covers.
But man, 7 PCI slots covers is not where you want to be on a case that is billed as a GPU case meant to offer “unmatched flexibility for the most demanding Homelabs environments.”
This case needs to be at least, at least at 8 slot covers.
Really it should ideally be even higher than that given it has a 5U ceiling.
Check out how the Puget Systems Team snuck in a 9th PCI Slot cover here by modding what is clearly a Silverstone RM44 OEM case.
And this case is only 4U, it’s not even a 5U case with a higher ceiling.
This may seem like a “small thing,” but it’s not because PCI Slot Covers are too scarce of a commodity these days on rackmount cases.
Here are some common examples of PCIe Cards that gobble them up:
1-4x dual slot GPUs
And if that last point didn’t grab your attention, how about triple slot GPUs?
If I even add 1 triple Slot GPU to the Beast, 43% of my total PCI Slot capacity just vanished just by adding that 1 single GPU.
But it gets even worse, because if I have a Triple Slot then I almost certainly also have an HBA on a Beast Build, because that’s the easiest way to feed the Beast’s Backplanes.
Ok, so given that setup, I now only have 43% of my PCI Slot Covers remaining as I’m using 57% of them. So as you can see, your PCI Slot Covers start to become very scarce, very, very quickly given that we only have 7 to start with and given that most medium to higher end GPUs are Dual or Triple Slot Cards. And I’m not even going to try to get into Quad Slot GPUs, lol.
HBAs
NICs
1-4x AI Accelerator Cards
Which BTW, can also be Dual Slot cards
Capture Cards + attached breakouts
Extra USB Card(s) to deal with the fact we have lots of peripherals straddled across 2 different, yet concurrent standards (USB-A + USB-C) that our motherboard can’t full supply
Etc.
Especially given how hard it is to find Rackmount cases with more than 8 PCI Slot Covers to begin with.
There is just a massive gap in the Rackmount case market that is so huge you could drive a truck through it right now.
Any case manufacturer that offers a rackmount case well above 8 PCI Slots is going to make a lot of $$$ because it’s all crickets in terms of options until we get up to say a low end Supermicro GPU Case starting at $20K.
We can’t afford a $20K Supermicro GPU case
But we could afford a high quality GPU and/or PCIe oriented case from you guys that really tried to focus much more on handling say 10+ PCI slot covers
Also, just to save the question since I’ve gotten it before:
…no, open Mining Cases aren’t always a great solution to this problem either
Because if I have a bunch of components I really care about in my build, I am probably going to want case panels surrounding my case to protect my components.
Especially if this is deployed in a home office (especially if you have kids or pets) or even just an office.
So there are just a lot of small tweaks that could be made to how the Beast is built that would make a very big difference very quickly with adding more PCI Slot Covers being one of them.
(7) The Wins
However, I want to look at both sides of the equation here so that we don’t just focus on the nits.
I also want to make sure that we also celebrate the Homelab Team’s wins here in shipping the Beast vs. the original HL15 as they delivered some really important steps forward for this product line:
Additional depth to accommodate larger Motherboards (ex: E-ATX)
Additional depth to accommodate normal sized GPUs
A proper SSD Backplane for the Beast vs. having to sometimes get a wee bit creative on the HL15
Dust Cover
Etc.
The Homelabs Team completing this work is huge because this collective set of improvements are all critical steps forward for the HL / Beast lineup as they greatly expand the amount of use cases that the Beast can help us all with.
In Closing
Vikram, we actually have spoken before and you’ve always been very great to deal with so thank you for that.
And thank you for listening to this talk
I hope you realize that everything above is all coming from a place of passion for your products
I do get that you can’t solve all the world’s problems.
I do get that every product is a compromise of some sort by definition.
That said, I am really excited about the 45 Homelabs Team because I think it has a huge niche it can (and is starting to) really grow into and really thrive in within the industry.
There are so many needs you guys could serve beyond just Storage that are already here or just around the corner (ex: Homelabs, GPU Workstations, AI, CXL Enclosures, etc.)
So I hope all of this feedback helps and I’m very excited to see the new Backplanes that the team is cooking us up in the labs
Both the backplanes support both the SATA and SAS protocols. The SFF backplane becomes de facto SATA though because of the 7mm drive height limitation vs a dearth of actual 7mm SAS drives in the wild.
I think we need to acknowledge that the design goal of The Beast was not around introducing removable NVME storage technology, it was around GPUs and EATX. Being able to throw in the separate SFF backplane was maybe a bit of a bonus for those complaining about the printable brackets for the HL15. We conflated the poll and shouldn’t have.
Legos for backplanes isn’t as simple as the epithet suggests; you need to be concerned not only about data, but power delivery, cooling, etc., while trying to keep the sheet metal work for the case and any inserts high quality but relatively simple.
As I asked someone in another thread, it might help 45HL to know what mixture of LFF, SFF, and EDSFF drives you are trying to run and what protocols? Loading up 15 120TB Kyoxia SSDs is a lot different than adding four 1TB SFF SAS drives. As a bit of an outsider, I get the impression that although used u 2/u 3 drives are appearing on eBay, the use of that protocol/connector type was somewhat transient in the datacenter and the industry has moved on to EDSFF similar to the way consumers have moved on from SFF SATA to m.2 NVME for most high speed storage in new builds.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think anything on 45’s enterprise side mixes both LFF drives and SFF NVME. The trimode stuff is all 2U front loaders with different designs. Are you going to buy an SFF-only HL chassis? Maybe you will, that’s why I asked the question about storage mixture. If not, if you want LFF and SFF-NVME hyperconverged in the same case then we need to see if they can come up with a design for that. I suspect just adding a trimode backplane in a design similar to the F8X1, for example, won’t cool the NVME drives properly.
Good to chat as always. Ok, let me break this response into a few pieces then. I’ll start by getting the easy stuff out of the way.
SAS Correction
Thanks for correcting me on the SAS piece. I will correct that in my post above then in order to give proper credit where due.
SSD Interfaces
SATA SSDs
Not useful to me personally
I’m not a fan of the tradeoffs when buying net new vs. the NVMe alternatives
But I get why some people want them and/or have them lying around from past builds and then would like to get a few more miles out of them
NVMe SSDs
I’d like to see Tri-Mode support on the Backplanes
From a form factor POV, if we’re talking U.2 / U.3, I’d like to see 15mm for reasons that are probably similar to others.
NVMe SSDs - EDSFF
As others have said, this is where things are headed so I would rather see EDSFF support sooner vs. later so that I don’t have to buy a bunch of U.3 drives if I don’t have to
For me, the form factor is just going to come down to what’s widely manufactured and what we can by for a halfway reasonable amount on the lower end of the spectrum because the larger sizes will be crazy pricey.
This is a case where I think the 45 Homelabs Team will have much better visibility both on what’s coming and then also what is also going to ship in actual volume as they almost certainly do regular vendor roadmap presentations with Micron, Samsung, etc. to know what’s coming down the road
So TBH, I don’t have lots of religion here.
Lol, TBH, like most of us, I’m just the tail on the dog being wagged around here more than anything else
If I had to guess, I would guess that the EDSFF form factors that will prove to be most salient and most widely available to us as:
E1.S - 15mm
E3.S - 7.5mm
But again, the Homelabs folks would probably know this cold and way better than I do.
SFF vs. LFF
By “LFF, I am going to assume you Large Form Factor storage as in 3.5” Hard Drives.
If I’m missing you there, let me know.
By “SFF, I am going to assume you Small Form Factor storage as in 2.5” SSDs as well as E3.S and E1.S SSDs.
If I’m missing you there, let me know.
If the above is correct, then yes, I would want a mix of 3.5” Hard Drives (LFF) and NVMe SSDs.
The mixture above is very critical if you want to create separate Hard Drive Pools (raw storage) vs. SSD Pools (smaller, but faster, can be used).
Mixing the 2 Pool types is a very cost effective way to scale out a NAS both in terms of capacity, but also performance.
So yes, to answer your question, I would want LFF and SFF-NVME hyperconverged in the same case.
I just pulled a few of the datasheets for the Storinator / Stornado lineup and I believe that your assumption about the 45 Drives SKUs was correct:
Stornados
Backplane = Tri-Mode
Media = All Flash
Storinators
Backplane = SATA / SAS
Media = Mix of Hard Drives / SSDs (SATA/SAS)
SSD - Key Takeaways
I feel like the key takeaway here isn’t so much I need 5 of these size drives or 5 of these backplane expanders, or 3 of the other.
I feel like the message is just that the 45 Homelabs userbase is so large and diverse, 45 Homelabs shouldn’t try to over design for any single 1 of us or discrete groups of us.
They should instead just design the Backplanes to be flexible and swappable so each of us can configure it however we need it to be
They could have Backplanes Tiles (or whatever we want to call them) for each type
probably a few SATA / SAS Tiles to accommodate different form factors
3.5” Hard Drives
2.5” SATA Drives
Etc.
And then probably a few Tri-Mode Tiles
U.3 / U.2 - 15mm Tiles
EDSFF - E1.S (whatever size they think most people will use)
EDSFF - E3.S (whatever size they think most people will use)
So they create a set of tiles at launch and then we would mix and match them
Now, sure, as you mention, there will still be upper end tolerances they have to design for
Example = Ok, these EDSFF Drives run really hot in this form factor, so we can only put say 6 of them in this space to make things work thermally, etc.
Sure, that engineering will exist and is very critical.
But I also trust the Homelabs Team to figure all of that out.
They know those pieces better than I do
I think the key message they need from us is to say, “Here are the Form Factors we care most about.” Now please help us modular Backplane Tiles for each. The exact ceiling for the quantity each Tile can then hit, the thermal constraints, the power required, etc., I mean I could make up arbitrary #’s here, but I trust the Homelabs Team to give us the most they can per Tile while still making the Tile modular.
Hopefully that gives you the details you asked for. If not, let me know.
Bumper Stickers for Backplanes DG: “Legos for backplanes isn’t as simple as the epithet suggests; you need to be concerned not only about data, but power delivery, cooling, etc., while trying to keep the sheet metal work for the case and any inserts high quality but relatively simple.”
Lol, I think it’s pretty clear that we both are detail oriented people who realize that we shouldn’t ever confuse bumper sticker product slogans (“LEGOs for Backplanes”) for detailed product specs.
Look, all of your points are fair.
Themals matter
Power delivery matters
Etc.
But at the same time, simple bumper sticker slogans can help get the ball rolling for products such that it then leads to a spec that is properly fleshed out and does have all of those key details you are getting at
And I also like that slogan for 2 more reasons:
It’s catchy and gets people talking
More importantly, I feel like it helps get people thinking what might be possible WRT to Backplanes.
Which is critical because nobody wants to talk about something as dry as Backplanes around the watercooler (even if we do, lol).
So we have to try to find geeky ways to make it fun, right?
DG: “I think we need to acknowledge that the design goal of The Beast was not around introducing removable NVME storage technology, it was around GPUs and EATX. Being able to throw in the separate SFF backplane was maybe a bit of a bonus for those complaining about the printable brackets for the HL15. We conflated the poll and shouldn’t have.”
POV #1 - Product Spec as Success
I do think the take you are offering as one very valid way to look at it.
I think that this POV is what I might call a very product spec (or maybe even “PRD” in industry parlance) driven way to view it.
To maybe try to put that POV very simply, the Beast had 2 major items on the spec (Large MBs and better GPU support), they shipped them both, so therefore it’s a success.
And again, that’s a valid POV for you to hold.
That said, this Spec type POV is not the only valid POV someone could hold here.
Why do I say that?
Because products aren’t always a pure science so much as often being one of being part art, part science.
Products aren’t always a binary or a black and white thing.
There can be some interpretation to them sometimes.
POV #2 - Product Success is Multi-Dimensional
Another possible way to interpret success here is to consider that hitting all of the goals of a spec, by itself, does not guarantee success in the marketplace.
Specs don’t always guarantee that enough of the key parts of your customerbase will see the product landscape exactly as you do upon launch.
Thus, while the execution of the product spec is indeed one key ingredient in the proverbial soup that is success, it is not the only one.
The core vision, price, competition, and the wider environment that the product is released into all matter too.
Given that, let’s start with the product vision. The easiest way to do that is to just use the verbatim product summary text written by 45 Homelabs for the Beast that they use for it on their Storefront which can be found here.
“The HL15 Beast Homelab Server is the next evolution of our best- selling HL15—developed hand-in- hand with feedback from the homelab community. With a larger footprint and upgraded architecture, the Beast delivers unmatched power, flexibility, and cooling capacity for the most demanding self-hosting environments.”
This is a very well written product description, IMHO.
That said, the question though is does the Beast, as it exists today, does it fully fill out those out product aspirations?
I’m not sure. I think it’s open to interpretation (at least at launch).
For me, personally it doesn’t. Not yet.
IMHO, heading into 2026, I don’t think you can claim that you’ve conquered the most demanding self-hosting environments and not also offer a Tri-Mode backplane
Giving us several 5.25" Drive Enclosures could’ve been a workable alternative.
To be fair though, it’s possible that adding them to the Beast would’ve been hard to pull off given the front panel and Backplane design it inherited where they are both at the very front of the case.
Part of the lens here is also just the price and the competitive environment.
I was very willing to buy the HL15 and not worry about too much about the Backplane only being SATA / SAS because it was a total different situation.
The HL15 v1.0 launched at $800 (bare) back in November 2023.
That is not the same thing as launching the Beast at $1,800 at the end of 2025 where 2 other things are also very different:
NVMe SSDs are in a very different place than they were 2 years ago
The biggest ticket upgrades on the Beast (larger motherboards and proper GPU support) is very helpful and welcomed. But it’s also basically playing catchup to other cases.
In other words, full sized GPU support as well as full size motherboard support was already starting to become table stakes by other mid to high-end range Rackmount cases
The Silverstone RM51, RM52, and then also the RM53 which just hit retail.
Also Sliger’s 4713 which has both large MBs and at least take normal dual slot sized GPUs, etc. even if it’s not a 5U monster like the others.
Therefore the rackmount game has just changed since late 2023.
The Beast’s SATA / SAS SSD Backplane is also not a complete slam dunk at launch either.
It is great if you need SATA SSDs because mounting SATA SSDs in the Beast is WAY easier than mounting them in the HL15 v1.0.
It’s just so much better to finally have a dedicated SSD Backplane zone.
And it will be even more amazing once the new Backplanes ship down the road.
Here’s a real world use case though. Right now in 2025, if I only want say 3x - 8x U.2 / U.3 15mm Enterprise SSDs for say a NAS Build, the Beast can’t really handle that Storage use case very well.
Because for that specific Storage use case, you’d still be better off with the Sliger 4713 or the Silverstone RM53 right now.
Yes, the Beast has a way better SATA / SAS Backplane for 3.5” Drives. No question. Not even close.
But the other cases both have dual 5.25” Drive Bays that you could throw 2 Drive Enclosures into which would be the best case options you have right now for that higher end storage use case.
At least until the Beast gets the upgraded Backplane.
Pricing also matters.
I won’t overly rehash this as I went into it in detail above.
But suffice it to say that the base SKU of the Beast could probably have it’s price trimmed by several hundred dollars by just stripping out the PSU and the Fans from the base SKU.
That’s a really easy win on the price side.
Especially given that the other cases that the Beast competes against don’t include a PSU.
And they often don’t include fans.
So all of that is par for the course and thus those changes should be fairly explainable as reviews of the Beast begin to happen.
And once you drop the base Beast down to say $1,500-ish, this does move the needle a little bit in terms of market expectations.
They will still be high at $1,500.
But not as high as they are at $1,800.
Now despite those last points, I still do have faith in this Homelabs Team that they can and will ultimately get the Beast to where it needs to be
Because this product has strong roots as it has a strong heritage being a direct descendent of the HL15 Series, the Storinator, and then if we want to go all, all the way back to The OG… the Backblaze Storage Case.
Thus it already has a lot of polish in countless other areas.
The Beast just needs some additional polish in a few places. That’s all.
And just as importantly, people really care about this product.
Lol, that’s why we’re still talking about this at length.
Companies can’t buy that.
They have to earn that kind of passion and the work of the larger Protocase family of companies has done that hard work over the years.
So to be clear, none of the above means that the Beast isn’t a good product. It is.
Because it does move the market forward in terms of what’s available in terms of Top Mounted Rackmount cases at the highest end of the market.
And that is a very good and a very welcome thing.
It also doesn’t mean that the team that worked on it didn’t do a good job.
They did do a good job.
Why? Because the Beast is a more refined, higher end version of the HL15 v1.0 that they launched almost 2 years ago (Nov. 2023)
And that is unquestionably progress forward.
Brevity / Candor
Brevity
First off, I realize that this forum is typically a model of brevity, and this set of posts is definitely not that
Despite that, I hope though that this type of analysis is still helpful to at least some.
The reality is that we should be digging into the products at this level of detail and many of these subtle details don’t always fit into a 3 sentence response.
Candor
Secondly, I also hope that there is a genuine appetite within these forums to have honest discussions about the product landscape where we deeply discuss the newly launched products maybe 1-3 times / year (depending on what’s launched) and then ask some (maybe) intelligent questions.
To borrow the phrasing someone used above, I don’t think that causes trouble.
I actually think it’s very healthy.
Because this kind of deep self reflection is exactly what healthy product teams are supposed to do
The Future of the Beast
Finally, just to make sure my comments are taken in context, I also want to clearly state that I do think that 45 Homelabs will definitely get the Beast to a place where both the Beast does meet that higher level bar that is laid out in the product text on the Store.
They just need a little more time to think through some of the competitive pieces here and then a little bit more time to build out the Backplane so that the Beast can grow into it’s boots so to speak
I have personally worked on projects like that before.
Where we had a great vision, but we weren’t quite able to build the whole house in 1 shot.
Sometimes we needed a little bit more time.
This happens all the time.
You T-Shirt size something as a Large, but really it’s an XL sized amount of work because of all of these hidden factors you didn’t realize at the time.
Again, this is fine.
This is just normal product development.
You ship cool things.
And then you work hard to ship even cooler things next time.
In Closing
One of the other things that I appreciate about this forum is that the people on it generally have good intent and are trying to help move things forward.
And on that note, Digital Garden, I have read enough of your posts over the last year to know that you are absolutely someone
Who has good intent
Who deeply cares about the Homelabs products
Who is trying to help move things forward in your own way that comes naturally to you.
All 3 of those qualities are qualities that we both share.
Even if we may approach them from very different angles and vectors sometimes
So cheers to you.
All the best and thank you for all of your many contributions to this forum
The HL15 Beast is a case that I have been eyeing the most since it was announced. My only wish really is to have a base configuration, similar to the standard HL15 where it is just the case and nothing else.
I fully understand 45 Drives decisions and truly appreciate their goal of trying to keep things as cost effective as possible, especially with how much everything is costing these days…
My feedback would be to include a base offering where it is just the case, no PSU and no fans. Reading some of the feedback regarding the 7mm SSD cage/backplane, another thing that could be considered would be to remove the middle SSD cage/backplane and replace it with a middle fan only tray (in the base option), similar to the standard HL15. Personally I would never use the SSD cage/backplane, so it would go to waste in my build. However, you can still offer it as an additional add-on (in the store configurator) if someone wants it.
Overall I think there is a fairly large customer base (including myself), that just want the case for it’s larger size compared to the standard HL15, but do not need any of the additional features. By offering a base version and including some of these options as add-ons, you would have the most cost effective option for this case, while still giving customers flexibility to tailor the case to their needs.
If you are serious, I think you can send a note to info@45homelab.com and they may entertain selling you just the case & backplanes. It may depend on what the order volume is like. If it’s high, or they have a backlog, you might have to wait until they work through that.
But, are you really willing to pay something like $1450 for some bent sheet metal and a couple of backplanes?
That’s fair and to be honest I would still more than likely buy it with fans preinstalled, as I would be adding Noctua fans anyways. I only mentioned no fans, as that seemed like an option some here want. For me the main things I don’t need are the PSU, and the SSD cage/backplane. I want the Beast for it’s 15 bay storage at the front and larger overall volume to fit larger parts that I otherwise couldn’t fit in the standard HL15. My thought behind the “base” offering is to offer an option to those who want the case, but don’t want some of the features, while still giving people the option to add them on if they so choose.
Ultimately at the end of the day, it’s still a premium case no matter which way you slice it. I think the people buying this, or the standard HL15 are fully aware that there are cheaper alternatives. I don’t mind paying into this price range as I see it more as an investment in a high quality case that would be with me for a significant amount of time and through various builds.
DG: But, are you really willing to pay something like $1450 for some bent sheet metal and a couple of backplanes?
Digital Garden, the take that you are giving here is smart in many ways as you are viewing the Beast though a valid, 1st Principles type POV when you say it’s “some bent sheet metal and a couple of backplanes.”
But we need to be clear, that is an Engineering 1st POV.
This is not a Product first POV.
Whereas the vast majority of potential customers for the Beast will see this from a Product 1st POV and not an Engineering 1st POV
Why? Because they won’t get into the weeds as much as most of us will
So it’s not right or wrong to hold any of these various POVs as they are all just different lens on the same problem.
But, at the same time, it’s very important that we as a group recognize that Engineering and Product are indeed both very important, but also 2 different disciplines.
In other words, we need to be cognizant when we’ve sort of stepped through the Stargate and sort of crossed over from one realm to the other.
Why? Because these decisions that we are currently discussing, are at the end of the day, not engineering decisions, but are pricing / packaging decisions for a Product.
And that in turn, requires us to shift our lens and focus a bit in some of these discussions so that we are considering some additional POVs from different disciplines.
Does a $1,800 Beast have a “Cost?”
Ok, now that we now that we have that lens activated, let’s now directly address your question.
So to answer your question directly, to me personally, I guess I see it from the POV that if someone is willing to pay $1,800 for the current base Beast config (Case, both Backplanes, PSU, Fans) which is how the Beast is currently offered, then they are probably also going to be willing to buy the Beast in a revised base config (Case, Backplanes only) for $1,450
The tradeoff currently being made here to take the price up from what could be as low as $1,400 - $1,600 all the way up to $1,800 (where the base config is currently), IMHO, that is not a good tradeoff.
I say that because it’s not “free” from a customer POV to raise the price of the Beast by $350 (using your $1,450 estimate) to the $1,800 price it is today.
And also because it’s not “free’“ from the 45 Homelabs POV to raise the price way up either because they will lose a lot of sales volume on the Beast if it’s priced $350 higher.
So from a Product POV, pretty much the only reason you would want the Beast Base SKU (to be clear, the full turnkey build is a different story) to be $350 higher is if there is a gun to your head and there simply is no other way to sell it but with those fans and PSU included.
And yes, there is 1 major exception to that last pricing best practice where a small minority of products do have their normal prices intentionally jacked up sky high by say 2x or whatever the normal price just to make it a bougie, status symbol type thing that someone can show off, etc.
But this is not that “case.”
As such, selling the Beast base config for $1,800 is a CHOICE, it’s not a hard limitation of say the technology in play, it’s not an intentional bougie marketing strategy, etc.
The point should also be made that whether we’re talking $1,450 or $1,800, the obvious reality here is that the Beast is and will remain priced as a premium product.
The Beast is going to cost more than a case from Sliger, Silverstone, etc. because the materials are higher end, the Backplanes are higher end, etc.
This is all by design.
So to be clear, this is not a question of should the Beast have premium pricing.
It already does and will remain so.
The question is how much higher should that premium pricing be?
Not all, but a material amount of the market for the Beast is DIY people who just want to mix and match components and/or already have spare parts they can pull across from older builds to save $$$.
Or they are people who don’t have spare parts, but are going to want the latest and greatest parts that this build doesn’t have because the Homelabs Team can’t afford to keep up with the latest and greatest of everything that just came out this month.
And I don’t blame the Homelabs Team for that.
They need to buy parts in very high volume to maintain their margins.
That (and costs, support, stability) are the major reasons why 45 Homelabs / 45 Drives still uses the LSI 9305 as their primary HBA in tons of their builds even though it’s a 11 year old HBA card.
So the summary point here is that a higher base price is not free, it has negative consequences for all of us, both as consumers & as 45 Homelabs.
Because in the majority of cases, you want a lower price if you can get to it (while also hitting your target margins for the product).
Industry Comps
PSUs
There’s also just straight industry comps to keep in mind here in terms of selling this without the fans & the PSU.
Minus maybe the occasional bundle deal here or there, Rackmount cases from other manufacturers are not typically sold with PSUs by default.
They just aren’t. Full stop.
Silverstone = nope
Sliger = nope
In Win = nope
Rosewill = nope
etc.
Fans
Fans is more of a mixed bag in terms of how the industry sells them. Some cases are sold with fans, some are not.
But before we get too far here, please do keep in mind, these cases
Homelabs Rackmount cases
Beast
HL15 v1.0
HL15 v2.0
They all have a ton of fans.
6 to be exact.
And they just switched to Noctua, which IMHO was a smart move because the old fans on the HL15 v1.0 were not great from a noise POV, etc.
But the point is 6 Nocta fans is not cheap as that adds another $150 - $175 (retail) or so to the base cost of the Beast
And so when you force an extra 6 fans onto customers who don’t want them all you’re doing is heavily cost handicapping yourself vs. the competition such that the Beast is currently priced to be fighting the competition with one paw tied behind it’s back
Let me be more specific
Silverstone RM53
Cost = $760
Fans = no
PSU = no
Beast = $1,800 (current base price)
Comparison
Thus forcing Fans and a PSU onto the Beast Base SKU means that 45 Homelabs is at an additional $200 - $300 disadvantage to the RM53 and the RM53 is already only 42% the cost of the Beast
Now is the RM53 as good as the Beast? Generally no. But it also depends on the exact use case.
The Beast destroys it for heavy SATA / SAS use cases.
The Beast has higher build quality
But there are some places where the RM53 is better such as mid to heavy NVMe U.3 15mm drives, the RM53 has more PCI Slot Cover, etc.
So it’s not as if the Beast is totally dominating the competition across the board either. It’s not.
Sliger 4713
Cost = $460
Fans = no
PSU = no
Beast = $1,800 (current base price)
Comparison
Thus forcing Fans and a PSU onto the Beast Base SKU means that 45 Homelabs is at an additional $200 - $300 disadvantage to the 4713 and the 4713 is already only 26% the cost of the Beast
Now is the 4713 as good as the Beast? Not in most ways, but there are exceptions.
Overall, it’s a very similar comp to the RM53 above, so I won’t rehash it here.
Fight the Battles You Can Actually Win
Some of this is hard because I do get where the Homelabs Team is coming from on the Fans.
They are like “Hey, we heard you guys on the HL15 v1.0 Fans. We heard you. So we got rid of them”
Which to their credit, they did do.
And I give them credit for that because as someone who lost 1-2 hours (between the parts design and the actual work) ripping out all 6 of the original fans on the HL15 v1.0 and then totally bypassing the HL15’s Fan electrical system with a Fan Hub given that it didn’t support PWM, adding PWM and moving to Noctuas on the Beast and the HL15 v2.0 was a very needed change
And as a quick aside, thank you, Jeff Geerling, for that video
Ok great. So then the Homelabs Team is like “We added Noctua Fans to the Beast. Yay!!! We solve the problem, right?”
Well, nope.
Because Noctua went and just shipped the G2 Noctuas which are much better fans than the Noctua G1s.
So it’s the point I made above in play. The Homelabs Team can’t stay on top of the “What’s the shiny, new part this week?” Game.
If they try to do that, they will fail because they need to instead buy in volume to keep their margins up and then just be done with it.
But then they also need to counter balance that last point from a customer POV
They also need to just step out of the way of the people who care about all of their components and who do want the latest and greatest.
Because a lot of the customers who are willing to spend $1,400 - $1,800 for a rackmount case which is by definition very, very high end (if we aren’t talking Enterprise level), well these people do care pretty deeply about their parts.
It’s like saying someone who is modding the hell out of their BMW M3 doesn’t care about the aftermarket parts going into it.
Lol, of course they do.
In Closing
So again, we keep coming back to the same theme that is reoccurring over and over again in this thread whether we are talking the Fans or the Backplane design (how many 15mm drives do you want? How many 7mm drives do you want?, etc).
Trying to please ALL of us is a losing game
You can’t win that
What you CAN win is to give us options and then step out of the way
Just let us do our own thing
whether that’s buying a truly base Beast from you
or buying a turnkey, fully pre-built enchilada from you for the people who just want to plug it in and be done with it
Worst case if the Homelabs Team is dead set on offering this with the fans and PSU, then ok, offer both variants if you want. That’s fine too.
Base Variant #1 = (Case / Backplane only)
Base Variant #2 = (Case / Backplane / Fans / PSU)
Just don’t make people pay several hundreds of dollars extra for parts they won’t use. Especially not if it’s hurting the viability of the Beast in the marketplace because the Base Beast SKU is now $350 (ish) more expensive that it needs to be vs. the competition.
Some of this is coming from the fact I’m doing a new build right now and so I’ve very recently looked at all of the Rackmount Cases from as many different companies as I could get my hands on.
As such, lol, I’m not perfect, I’m fallible, but I do have a reasonably decent idea of what’s out there
So mark my words, and I will put a lot of $$$ on this bet, the Beast will do better in the market and in reviews if it’s offered in a $1,450 base option (if we use DG’s pricing) than it will in a $1,800 base option that also has PSU / Fans.
Even though I am a huge proponent of Backplanes, I can understand the POV of someone saying “I do want the 3.5” Drive (ex: Hard Drive) Backplane, but I don’t want the SSD Backplane.” I think that makes sense for people who don’t want the SSD Backplane ever.
But I also think it makes sense for someone like me given that the SSD Backplane I do want (the Tri-Mode Backplane) isn’t ready yet. Because similar to Spec7re, I also wouldn’t ever use the SSD Backplane (currently SATA / SAS). But I would definitely buy an upgrade kit for the Tri-Mode Backplane when it’s ready to roll.
So again, we keep coming back to this reality that the Homelabs Rackmount cases (Beast, HL15, etc.) are being used in a much wider set of configurations and use cases than all of us realize. As such, it behooves everyone, including 45 Homelabs, if the Beast is sold with a good set of ala carte options as that would materially widen both the userbase for this case as well as the amount of units the Homelabs Team could sell.
Let me try to offer up a solution to the Fan problem based on actual industry comps. You can see how Sliger does it on their website here. I think what they do is a strong best practice that the 45 Homelabs Team should adopt so that we can stop debating this problem and move onto meatier design topics vs. less meaty packaging and go to market topics.
How does Sliger sell Fans for the 4713 Case?
Buying Fans from Sliger is optional, Sliger doesn’t force you to buy Fans from them
But if you want them, then Sliger is more than happy to sell you as many Fans as you want
If you buy Fan(s) from Sliger, Sliger ensures that you just bought a high quality fan that is compatible with the 4713 because they just sold you a Noctua fan (120mm, NF-A12x25 PWM).
TBH, I think that’s a perfect solution to this problem, especially given that we know that the 45 Homelabs Website already supports ordering ala carte parts.
So if 45 Homelabs adopted this best practice from Sliger, 100% of the current Fan debates in this thread would disappear like Thanos just snapped his fingers.
I don’t disagree with your premise. A no-fans and/or no PSU option would be useful, especially given the tariff and vat situation in many countries. I was just pointing out that you might (?) be able to secure what you want via a special order. From the 45HL perspective, I think they need to be sure they can support what they sell, and too many configurations make that difficult; if someone brings their own PSU that doesn’t power the backplanes sufficiently, or their own fans that don’t cool the case sufficiently. I think they said the wiring in the Beast is a bit more complicated than the HL15. I’m also not sure from what has been posted so far how modular the SFF backplane is; if it can be physically removed and the 140 mm fan attached to the LFF backplane.
) so that we can DIY them however we want.
