Does anyone have any experience with this board or with TYAN in general?
This has 12 SATA ports on board. Which cable option would I choose with the HL15? I am guessing Set F, but I am not sure.
The board is a CEB form factor, 12" x 10.5" – I read in another forum that while this is not officially supported, someone else was able to integrate that size mobo in the HL15. Are there other concerns I should have?
Set D
(2x) SFF 8643 → SFF 8643 [Mini-SAS-HD (Backplane) to Mini-SAS-HD]
(2x) SFF 8643 → 4x 7-Pin SATA [Mini-SAS-HD (Backplane) to 4x 7-Pin SATA]
That gets you 12/15 drives. You would need to figure out how to connect the other 3/15 drives. That could be a 4x HBA or SATA expander, or via the MCIO connectors, but you would need to source your own MCIO-to-SFF8643 cable.
There are two or three considerations if using an oversize board;
Physical footprint. Yes you can physically wedge a 12" x 10.5" motherboard into the motherboard compartment
Header locations. Headers at the front of the motherboard will be right up against/under the mid case fans. There is some space under the fans, but any connectors at the front of the board are going to be awkward to work with when building, and for the thickest, straight-up cables may be hard to bend. The impact of this depends on board layout. For this board, you’ll either be sliding the motherboard into place with SFF8643 and SATA cables connected, or more likely, removing the mid case fan wall when you do the motherboard install and need to fiddle with the cables at the front of the motherboard any time in the future. It’s not that hard to undo the fan wall (four screws) but might get old if you are a perpetual tinkerer.
Standoff locations. The HL15 has standoff locations based on ITX/mATX/ATX boards. I understand that CEB is supposed to have similar screw locations to ATX, but comparing that board to a standard ATX, if it is really 12"x10.5", I don’t see how some of those screw locations line up with ATX, and you will have a few standoff stubs you might want to protect with electrical tape or such to prevent grounds, or use some plastic spacers to prevent flex. Specifically, I don’t think the HL15 would have standoffs for the screws at the front corners of that board, and will have stubs for standoffs under the RAM slots.
There was apparently a 2008 release of the CEB standard (subset of EEB), and some 2011 updates. The original spec was based solely on ATX, the 2011 spec allows for additional mounting holes that do not align with ATX. Refer to the link and the diagram below. See pages 6, 9, and 10 in the 2011 EEB spec. The alternate mounting locations are marked with a “prime” tilde in the figure below (eg, K’, L’, M’; K, L, M no tilde are the ATX standoff locations). So, a “CEB” board based on the updated 2011 spec may have holes in locations that may not have standoffs in an ATX case, and may have electronics, traces, and solder connections in locations that correspond to standoff locations in an ATX case.
This doesn’t fully negate the use of the board or anything, since many of the standoff locations will still correspond; it just means that you’ll probably need to fabricate your own support with adhesive nylon spacers or tap your own hole for a few standoffs or something (not sure) to be sure the board has mechanical support in the locations the manufacturer expects.
What I like about this board is that I can initially create a working system using the lowest-cost (16 core) EPYC processor and the least expensive RAM and then upgrade later if needed.
Initially, I don’t need all 15 drives, but the MCIO is worth investigating. Also, TrueNAS Electric Eel has improved drive expansion.
This forum has at least one other person using a CEB board in an HL15, which is promising.
Yes, the power connectors and mini SAS connectors could be a problem. I will have to investigate further. Removing the mid-fans for the mobo install is probably the best choice, as I have seen others, such as @geerlingguy, do this before.
I don’t live too far from Linus, of Linus Media fame, so maybe he could build this? Just kidding…
The Asrock Rack BERGAMOD8-2L2T appears to use legacy ATX screw locations, although it seems to use a MicroATX location that technically isn’t part of the 2008 or 2011 CEB I don’t think.
The Gigabyte MC62-G40 appears to only use six screws with five of them in the legacy ATX locations and the sixth in the alternate CEB location. It appears to be missing any screws through the middle of the board from side to side. Maybe @zigzag32 can comment if he did anything to support the alternate screw location, protect the underside of the mobo from shorts, or any other notes about the install, since that board also seems to have headers along the front.
Your board seems to have alternate screw locations at H’, K’ and M’. I think you’d at least want to give it some support on the corners at K’ and M’.
I’m not trying to blow this out of proportion, simply responding to your request for things to consider. It’s a thing to be prepared for, not something there isn’t solutions for.
I don’t have any experience with this particular board but I recently picked up a different Asrock Rack motherboard for my HL8 build. I’m very impressed with it. I think Asrock Rack components will be my first choice going forward for custom server builds.
Yes. There don’t seem to be a lot of manufacturers though. It doesn’t seem like a more common brand like 10Gtek makes that cable. In the “Middle of the Build” chapter of the video he references some forum links, but I don’t see those in the video description. I couldn’t find a forum thread or blog post to accompany the video with specific manifest links or a general discussion of cable quality he alluded to.
Depending on your Amazon status re free shipping, you might be able to purchase the cables cheaper directly from the MicroSATACables web site;
There are also similar cables for lower prices on eBay, but can’t vouch for their quality, eg;
You don’t seem concerned about cost, though.
75cm is a bit on the long side. The mobo headers aren’t going to be that far from the backplane connectors. If you could find cables closer to 12in or 30cm or so that would be cleaner for cable management and electrical noise
If you didn’t notice, the GENOA8UD only has VGA video output, no HDMI or DisplayPort. Since I think you said you plan to run TrueNAS, I don’t think it is an issue. You can probably do everything including initial setup headless over IPMI, and you probably have a monitor around with a VGA input if needed, but just noting it.
Also, if you didn’t catch it, Wendell mentions the set of power connectors on the board aren’t quite the same as traditional ATX (eg, there’s no ATX 24-pin). I think (but could be corrected) you’ll need two cables like below to be able to use the PCIe cables included with the RM750e (or probably most other PSUs if you buy a different one) to connect to two of the 3x 8-pin ATX power inputs on the motherboard. Alternately, for a cleaner build I think you could order two additional (or all three) custom ATX 12V 8-pin cables from Cablemod.
It wasn’t clearly called out but the Asrock Rack X570D4I-2T motherboard I bought didinclude a 24-pin ATX adapter for the motherboard. This board has similar verbiage on Asrock’s website so that same adapter might also be included.
Power Connector: 1 (4-pin, ATX PSU signal) w/ ATX 24-pin adapter cable, 3 (8-pin, ATX 12V) support 12V DC-in
Eric can review the manual and QSG. It does show the 24-pin to 4-pin adapter, although one might not need that with the RM750e PSU since I think it’s 24-pin splits into a 20+4. I don’t see any adapters re the three 8-pin ATX 12V headers mentioned in the documentation.
Just kidding…