HL15 sugguestion

Feedback & Suggestions
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1

After building in HL15 for several months, here are a couple of suggestions I would like to make.

  1. Separate the fan cable from the backplane. Many of us use aftermarket fans for the case. When we do that, we use a PWM fan that goes into the motherboard or a dedicated controller. However, the original 3-pin fan header can not be removed. This leaves the 12V pin on the fan header exposed and causes potential short. My suggestion is to build the fan header into the PCB of the molex/backplane instead piggyback of the 24-pin backplane power.
  2. Use the Left Exist cable for the backplane SAS cable. This would make cable management much easier. The left exit cable is similar to the Dell 08RJM1.
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  3. Add front dust filter. The front panel needs a dust filter. This is for the home lab, so the environment will have more dust than the dedicated server room in a business environment.
  4. Improve cable routing and management under the backplane between front and back. Right now it’s really hard to move cable between front and back without removing the backplane due to the huge amount of Molex cable under it. Maybe Daisy chains the 4 Molex connectors to reduce the total amount of cable and create a 3D print cable tunnel under the backplane for other cables like fan and SAS.
  5. Increase the motherboard area for GPU support. I am not asking for supper long GPU, just a standard FHFL server GPU with side EPS/PCIe connector. 10-15cm should be enough.
  6. Add HDD leds to the cage. There are LEDs on the backplane, but unable to see them in normal use. Maybe add some clear plastic pipe on the cage to bring the LED to the top next to the drive bay number.
  7. For re-build system. Use Supermicro’s PWS-1K26P-PQ power supply or any other option that has PMBus support. Those are semi modules too. Really easy to make a custom cable set for this case.
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The nice thing about the HL-15 is it’s ability to use commodity/desktop parts, not specialty server hardware. A “no PSU” option is available in the configurator, and not everyone needs a $500 PSU.

Brett said they are working on s stretch version; I’m not sure if it will be offered through HomeLab or their new Pro line. Not everyone needs this size case though, some/many people are looking for the smaller size, so this needs to be an option, not a “one size fits all” change.

I agree the fan connectivity is atrocious for a prosumer product, and I have given such feedback also, I don’t know what they were thinking. Maybe that design came unchanged from the enterprise side without anyone thinking about home users and homelab builders, perhaps it was their way around the X11SPH not having DC fan support, but CoolerGuys makes a PWM version of the fans used in the HL15 for almost the same price. Calling a Noctua fan upgrade a solution misses the core of the design flaw.