Hey Homelab Heroes,
Thought I’d drop a little something special for you all — a sneak peek at what we’re calling the HL15 Beast! 
Now before you start frantically measuring your rack and planning cable routes, a quick disclaimer: this is still a prototype, and the design isn’t final yet… so don’t go carving the model name into your NAS just yet. 
But yes — it’s real, it’s bold, and it’s brewing in the lab.
Stay tuned… it’s only going to get wilder from here.
Looking good!
Is this the potential 5U version with E-ATX board support?
Other than the 5U height dimension, what would the depth/length dimension be?
DANG! Yes. please leave it without the notches !!!
I love the name. Can I place my order now😜
Adding on these questions, Why was 5U chosen? Will the room beneath the drives be used as well? Maybe adding 5.25 inch bay support for external devices like SSD caddy, DVD-ROM or tape drive?
I think some people were complaining that 4U didn’t allow for some of the taller CPU coolers they wanted to use, or for taller GPUs with power connectors on the top. 45HL still hasn’t responded re water cooling support; I have my doubts on that given the placement of the radiator.
If the backplane is raised 1U and the space under it is otherwise unused, a good use for that space would possibly be some optional external 5.25" drive bays.
I would think the extra 1U of space beneath the backplane should make it more serviceable overall. The 4U design really doesn’t have enough room for your hand to get underneath and unlatch the SFF 8643 connectors. That makes re-seating or replacing the cables more difficult. You pretty much have to remove the backplane to get at it in a comfortable way.
I second this. I’d love to have 3 5.25 in devices along the bottom, along with a front power/reset switch and USB ports.
I would like a bluray writer and another 2 blank bays for something to put
Also not shure if 45 homelab can talk to fsp and get a 1000 watt version of this with a replaceable/removable battery but that would be great for a nas setup https://youtu.be/aBdtuCTyfAs?si=b-JdLrvF7FOTB9aA
I’ve always been curious why we don’t have dc ups since battery is dc why not have replaceable batteries on the system that can be easily serviced instead of a ups that converts ac to dc back to ac just for your psu to convert back to dc
I really hope its available without the Beast cutout. I also hope 45 Drives starts offering 140mm fans as they are quieter and would look better on the larger face.
Not much, when they insist on running them as 2-pin. 
After all the feedback and complaints i doubt 45Drives would make the mistake of not using PWM this time, even if cheap PWM fans. Atleast I would hope. Especially with all the competition that is entering the market.
When I got my unit i remember looking at it funny because of how much dead-space it had between the fans. After doing some rough measurements I remember thinking that 140mm fan could fit. I even looked up shrouds to use 140mm fans in the 120mm mounts.
I don’t know if the actually could fit, if the inside seams and support structures would impede their use.
If they could fit it would be silly to not use them. It would be kinda like having a full car tank’s capacity for fuel to use and only using 85% of it (120/140).
Actually, 73.5% of it. Remember πr²? Also remember that a percentage increase going from x to y is not the same as the percentage decrease in y going back to x. (If you have $1 and you lose 50% you have 50¢, but to get back to $1 that 50¢ has to go up 100%.)
For a simple square, going from 120 mm to 140 mm is a difference of 5200 mm². 14400 mm² vs 19600 mm². 5200 / 14400 is an increase of about 36%.
If you consider a circle instead, the percentage increase is actually the same since π is just a constant. If you ignore that some area is lost to the frame and motor, the math is more like (π70² - π60²) / π60². (15393 - 11309) / 11309 mm² = 4084 / 11309 mm² = an increase in open area of about 36%. Probably even higher since, eg, the diameter of the motor hub is probably the same in both versions.
That’s substantial.
Ya I also wish there was some AIO support, I was going to order an HL-15, rip the drive bays out to use as a matching Compute server, but the front fans are spaced for even drive cooling, not AIO mounting. So i located a vendor that focuses on such chassis. If the Deeper version used 140mm fans, they would give full drive coverage with airflow, but also allow for 280AIO possibly. Not everyone is using the very old hardware and heat is an issue which alot of large GPU and CPUs.
I also had friend from a NAS community sold on HL-15, he placed order, i guess it got cancelled and prices changed when he went to reorder. Then another that bought one of the HL8 has been dealing with high drive temps.
I LOVE my hl-15 but i have no chance of getting more people to use them with things the way they are going. Soon I need to get a larger storage solution because I’m already using all 15 slots in my HL-15 for 28TB. but with several price increases since my preordered purchase, its hard to rationize the difference in price from competitors that are starting to flip the homelab market on its head. with pricing and innovation.
I feel similarly. Even if there are lots of little nits with it, I mostly love my HL15. But similarly to you, I do feel that 45 Homelabs has a limited window as the competition (ex: Sliger, Silverstone, etc.) works to catch up to their backplanes. This is important because I’ve looked at a lot of the competing cases, and IMHO the most standout piece of the HL15 that others haven’t fully copied just yet is the HL15’s excellent storage backplane (which in turn was of course derived from the Storinator line). Sure, the Sliger CX4712 has a decent backplane, but it’s still not at the level of the HL15 yet.
If I was in the Product Team huddle at 45 Homelabs, I would be pushing to finalize the HL15 2.0 so that it fixes all of the little nits with it. And then get hard at work on 2 new cases.
The HL30 has been kicked around in these forums for a long, long time. Please, please, please… it’s time to make it a reality. But before we get into the details, let’s try to address the 2 elephants that often seem to (explicitly / implicitly) be in the room whenever the HL30 is discussed.
Elephant #1 – JBOD
Elephant #2 - The HL30 Cannibalizes the Storinator Lineup
But the HL30 would cannibalize Storinator sales, right?
– TBH, I don’t actually think it would.
– Or perhaps more accurately, I think both the 45 Homelabs and the 45 Drives Teams would gain far more than they lose if they offered an HL30. Why?
Customer Pipeline
– As the Homelabs Team is well aware, the Homelabs products act as a customer pipeline to future Storinator sales.
– Beyond that, 45 Drives has said in the past that they are willing to sell Support Contracts on HL15s. That’s really smart because it allows people to build custom hardware while still paying for 45 Drives to offer a helping hand in supporting critical datasets.
– So the more HL15s that the Homelabs Team sells today, the more Storinators 45 Drives sells down the road
Target Markets
– the Target markets are often different. Many people need to run a gaggle of storage in their office or say a recording studio, but these same people may not want all of the noise that a Storinator brings.
– Most Homelabs customers won’t pay for a full Storinator for their home usage. But maybe they will at work. See feeder point above.
DIY Hardware
– Many of us Homelabs / SMB folks are hardcore DIY people. We want to choose our hardware. Full stop.
– And this is also important because the Storinators aren’t going to, by design, run the bleeding edge hardware that many of us want to for reasons of margin and for sheer reliability / stability.
– For the Linux fans in the room, in some ways, this is basically an Arch vs. LTS (Ubuntu / RHEL) argument. Do you want to run the latest, bleeding edge hardware or do you just want it to be stable and work?
– Storinators need to run more reliable, proven hardware that is more stable for customers (and that also allows 45 Drives to make a higher margin on the parts to fund the greater good things that they do company-wide).
– Homelabs Cases need to ship with hardware that is newer than Storinators while also preserving a DIY option for people who want to ride the hardware bleeding edge.
– Both choices are valid and both should be available to us.
Competition
– The competition will not stand still. The Backplane the 45 Team has is really great. So a deep kudos to you guys for that.
– But all of us who have worked in Tech know that the competition is fierce and so they (ex: Silverstone, Sliger, etc.) will catch up to you sooner than you think.
– So better to create new markets for yourself while you still have the wind at your back
Product Summary
Target Market(s)
PCI Slots
Storage
What Cases would I draw inspiration from?
45 Homelabs HL15 v2.0 - “The Beast”
– This will be a strong base for the team to start with and then work out from
Silverstone Alta D1
– While this isn’t a Rackmount case, and both of the cases above would need to be, I think the modularity of it is excellent.
– There has to be a way to do something like that on the Homelabs lineup before Silverstone inevitably brings that same thinking to their own Rackmount cases. And to be fair, you can already see early signs of them starting to do that via the Silverstone RM45
Silverstone RM600
– This basic design of the RM600 could be married with the standard design of the HL15 that is very airflow oriented
– this could be made extremely modular where you could easily swap out bays for extra PSUs, carriers for extra PCIe Slots, etc.
– I actually think this case could even be made very large to the point of it being a 7U to 8U case. That way, you could have a whole dedicated chamber for the GPUs, AI Accelerators, PCI Cards, etc. That would really, really differentiate this case extremely well from something like say a Silverstone RM51, RM52, RM61, RM600, etc.
OneChassis - OCG9800-10H4-L
– While this case is beyond what most people would want, this is a great case to reference if you wanted to go really mega with it.
– This case can take up to 10x triple slot Nvidia 4090s and is 9U.
– While I think 9U is a bit much for what we’re talking about above, I still think this case provides more ideas on how you can play with 2 chambers (Host vs. PCI cards)
