HL15 v2.0 -- Just "Beast" It

Feedback & Suggestions
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Intro

Vikram got me excited with his Beast pics post. So as a current HL15 owner who is literally working through my HL15 build this weekend (timing is everything right, lol), here are the top 4 things that I’d love to see from “The Beast” as these are IMHO the top limitations holding back today’s HL15 from being even greater than it already is:

“The Beast” - Features to Please Add

1.) SSD Storage - “Beast” It

Similar to the folks on the other post, I would triple or quadruple tap the button for some 5.25" Drive Bays on the front of the case. Yes… I realize we can buy the SSD Caddys for the main bay in the HL15. But the problem is that the Backplane on the current HL15 doesn’t fully support Tri-Mode. It supports SAS / SATA, but not NVMe.

And yes, you can buy (or print) the SSD Mounting Bracket to mount 6 small SSD Drives on the back of the case. But if you need say 15mm SSD Drives then 6 drives gets roughly cut down to only 2 drives (if you use the alternative 3D Printed Caddy). And even in a best case scenario, 6 drives doesn’t go very far if you’re using say ZFS and you need SSDs for your various Caching needs:

  • Special vDEV
  • L2ARC
  • SLOG
  • Etc.

…no less the common desire to do some of those and to also create a 2nd SSD only Pool in the HL15. Having only 6 drives is just not enough at that point.

Now a PCIe M.2 Carrier Card is an option that may help in some cases. But even then, the M.2 22110 Form Factor has a much lower capacity ceiling than say U.3 / U.2 / EDSFF drives do. M.2 2280 will go a bit higher, but tends to be a Consumer oriented form factor (lacks PLP, etc.).

TLDR… moving forward, people increasingly want to blend SSD with HDs in a storage oriented case and we need more a bit more flexibility in doing that.

2.) Backplane Upgrades - “Beast” It

45 Homelabs should really offer 3 Backplane choices at time of sale for the “The Beast” with the options being:

  • U.3
  • EDSFF (E3.S)
  • and then the classic SATA / SAS Backplane that shipped with today’s HL15.

The 2 new Backplanes should also be offered as upgrades to all of us loyal OG HL15 customers as well.

3.) PCIe Slots - “Beast” It

Given that this new form factor will add both height & depth by moving to 5U, I would love to see the team considering bumping up the PCIe Slots from 7x (on the current HL15) to something materially higher than 8x. I realize that most standard 19” Rackmount cases top out at 8x PCIe slots, but there have been some cases that have pushed that limit. And the need to push that limit is getting more & more critical as more of us are looking at AI Workstations / GPU Workstations

And when you’re doing those builds, adding 1 – 4 extra PCI Slots above and beyond the standard 8x slots is actually really tremendously helpful in a rackmount case because there are many hardware configs where 8x PCIe Slots just isn’t enough. Not in a world of Multi-GPU Dual & Triple Slot GPUs (and / or AI Accelerators) that also have to be paired with other single slot cards such as:

  • High Speed NICs (onboard 10 Gb/s isn’t what it used to be)
  • HBA(s)
  • Video Capture Card (with possibly an optional 2nd bracket eating a 2nd slot)
  • Audio / Sound card
  • Nvidia Sync II Card
  • etc.

The minute you run say more than 2 or more GPUs / AI Accelerators, there is a good chance you’re either very near or completely ready to hit the wall if we assume the 7x PCIe slots found on the HL15 today.

To quickly illustrate this:

  • 4x Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Max-Q = 8x PCIe slots… (which leaves you with no room to add any other PCIe cards without getting very custom with the case)
  • 3x Nvidia GeForce 4090’s = 9x PCIe slots
  • 3x AMD Radeon W7900 = 6x or 9x PCIe slots (there are 2 version of this GPU, the original was a Triple Slot, there is a more recent Dual Slot version though too now)
  • Etc.

How might this work in a 5U Case?

Here is a real world example of a case manufacturer pushing above 8x slots. Here is the Puget Systems RM44-4U case.

Now to be fair, the “Puget” RM44 case is really just a very slightly modified Silverstone RM44 in disguise.
https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/RM44/

The key difference (or at least one of them) is that Puget had Silverstone add 1x extra PCIe Slot that I assume is accessible via a Riser Cable.

Now all of that being said, I honestly think the even better way to solve this ask would be for 45 Homelabs to commit to creating a whole new product for this. In other words, I think you guys should create a separate, Multi-GPU focused Workstation Case as it’s well past time you guys did more than just Storage cases. Lol, it’s “45 Homelabs,” not just “45 Drives,” right? :slight_smile:

I have tons of ideas there, but I’m happy to save that discussion for another thread as that’s a deeper topic and you guys are working hard to get the HL15 Beast finalized here.

4.) Fan Connectors - PWM Headers

Please make a PWM, 4 PIN Header the standard cabling connector for the Fan system on the Beast. It really should’ve been on the original HL15. For the HL15, I had to totally bypass all of the otherwise great custom fan work you guys did on the HL15 because I wanted PWM Fans and the default Fan system only had 3 PIN, non-PWM headers.

That being said, Jeff Geerling was a lifesaver here with his Noctua Video showing his parts to workaround the entire fan system via the Noctua Fan Hub setup. That worked great in the interim until this can be fixed upstream in the next HL15 revision(s). Thanks a ton, Jeff.

“The Beast” - Gaps the Team Already Has Well Covered

1.) 5U Option

Offering 5U will be hugely helpful both for CPU Coolers and for GPUs. But even better yet, you guys said that you will still offer 4U for people who don’t want the extra height. That’s perfect. Thank you :slight_smile:

2.) Deeper Case

This is hugely helpful so we can use full E-ATX Motherboards vs. just some of them. It will also help so that we can comfortably fit the beefier 1600W PSUs that tend to run longer. Thank you :slight_smile:

3.) Noctua Fan Options

Noctua Fan options at time of sale is great because many of us run these boxes at home, studios, and/or offices, not just Datacenters. And nobody does quiet better than Noctua.

In Closing

Overall, I am really excited with the work the 45 Homelabs Team is doing. For the builds I’ve been doing, I’ve looked at a lot of different cases from across the industry, and I really think that 45 Homelabs has the potential to address a lot of Rackmount Case market needs that other Case Manufacturers (ex: Silverstone, Chenbro, Supermicro, InWin, Sliger, etc.) simply aren’t addressing (or at least not well) right now.

Thanks for listening :slight_smile:

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EPYC 4585PX platform sounds awesome for this as well.

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Yeah, the EPYC 4585 (16/32) is extremely cost effective and just a great value at $700 if you don’t need a huge amount of PCIe Lanes. STH digs into it a bit here:

On the other hand, if you do need a ton of PCIe Lanes and I/O, then the Intel Xeon R1S SKUs are a great fit for just a little bit more $$$. You can grab an Intel Xeon 6511P (16/32) for just over $800.

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28 Gen5 PCI lanes seems like plenty for a homelab with a GPU and 16 hard drives + whatever else you need.

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I do agree that 28 PCI Lanes is enough for the majority of workstation / homelab use cases. But I also think that this gives us an opening to discuss the sheer width and breadth of the homelab market.

If we take a step back here, the AMD EPYC 4005 is a workstation product and the workstation market has product segmentation just like any other product space. And when you look at where the Workstation CPU market tends to segment, it’s around things like:

  • PCI Lane counts
  • CPU Core counts
  • Memory Bandwidth
  • Memory Maximums
  • etc.

Or to put this in terms of real products, you see sizable differences in CPU Core Counts, PCI Lanes, Memory Bandwidth, etc. across both Intel (Xeon W 3500 vs. Xeon W 2500 vs. the Xeon E Series) and AMD (Threadripper 7000 WX vs. TR 7000 vs. EPYC 4005 series).

So using the above as a frame, if I’m hypothetically working in say product for say AMD, then I’m probably going to see Homelab use cases as being pretty wide ranging and having some amount of overlap with the Prosumer, Workstation, Enterprise, and SMB markets. But the challenge is that I have limited resources so I can’t develop individual products for all of those markets individually. So I have to have single products that speak to multiple markets and multiple use cases.

And when we look at that in aggregate, while the EPYC 4005 lineup is more than enough for most people, there is still a very sizable amount of people running workloads where 28 Lanes can be limiting. The easiest example to cite here would be the wide variety of Multi-GPU workloads that could be run in a homelab (and/or adjacent markets as described above) for work, fun, and/or technical skills like: AI Inference, Rendering, Resolve, Mining, Simulations, Scientific, VFX, VDI, VFIO, etc.

Nor is this just a GPU thing, as 28 Lanes also quickly becomes limiting for homelabs folks diving into AI. The reason is that 1x GPU / AI Accelerator often doesn’t take you that far when it comes to AI Inference (and especially AI Training) workloads due to the inherent limits that 1 GPU hits in terms of VRAM Size and VRAM Bandwidth. As such, Multi-GPU (or AI Accelerator) setups where you have 2x - 4x+ PCIe x16 cards are extremely common for these use cases.

Now a valid point that could be made here is “Ok, great. You’re giving me a lot of random AI, Graphics, Scientific, etc. workloads, ok fine. But again, we seem to agree they are a minority of the workstation / homelabs market. So why do we care?” And the reason is that while CPUs like the EPYC 4005 will probably do the majority of units sold across the market, AMD / Intel make way more margin per CPU on these minority type use cases I’m discussing. And so it’s the margin that comes from these minority use cases that allow AMD / Intel to sell their high volume parts like the AMD EPYC 4005 as cheaply (relatively speaking) as they do and thus in real terms, allow you to get a lower price on that sweet, sweet EPYC 4005.

So to finally bring us full circle, your core point that the EPYC 4005 is a great product that is going to be more than enough for most Homelabs use cases is dead on. The EPYC 4005 is going to do a ton of volume for AMD because 16 Cores paired with 28 PCI Lanes is enough for a very wide variety of use cases. More to the point, the EPYC 4005 beats the Xeon E series across the board (again STH really nails this by showing AMD’s marketing slides in their video) and so AMD is going to sell a boatload of these workstation CPUs. Which is good because that healthy level of competition is great for all of our wallets :slight_smile:

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