What Should 45HomeLab Build Next?

General
22

I would be down for an HL30 personally. When i checked on a Q30, the prices was like 3x the price per bay of the HL15, likely because its the Enterprise pricing. But the price scale was to lopsided for me to order. its 5 inches more chassis, extra cage/backplane and thats it.

I’m with @DigitalGarden on the beast, it turned out not to alot of people’s expectations that was Iwas speaking with. If it wasn’t so deep I was tinking of buying one and removing the backplane for my rack gaming machine since 5U allows fit of even the biggest GPUs, but its very deep and heavy and no AIO support.

Its like when the workstation was first previewed, it was perfect for what i was going to use it for, then it turned into something entirely different form factor. I also wanted to use the smaller servers like HL8 but the cooling issues i read about, which make sense when i see how little and few the air slots are and slim fans. its impossible to please everyone, i just wish there was more that i wanted to buy. I had to locate another vendor with better assortment for my nonstorage needs and now my rack is mismatched. so now i’ wait for them to release top loaders or you to release chassis that could be used for my compute server purposes.

I know alot of people want something to support enterprise SSD, especially since SATA SSD are not that fast, rumors of production of SATA SSD being cut to save NAND for AI and NMVe. etc. SATA to most homelabbers is also too “consumer” and they resist it from my experience.

I was hoping there would be more optional kits by now with how modular the HL15 construction is, Like different drive cage/back planes for different stuff. maybe AIO compatible fan walls, etc. Like for the beast a u.2/u.3 SSD cage option for example would fix the above issue and shouldnt be hard for 45Drives

3 Likes
23

I think it would be super cool to see a super short depth disk shelf that could be an add-on for like an HL15 or similar that was just a power supply, 15 or so drive bays with a couple of minisaas connections out the back …. or maybe a “mini” hl15 style box that fits in the form factor of like the HL8 that is all 2.5” bays.

4 Likes
24

While not the most realistic idea, I was thinking about a conversion kit where the HL15 motherboard is replaced with HDD/SSD’s. That way I could move my motherboard and everything on it to the upsized HL15Beast enclosure.

The additional required molex connectors shouldn’t be a problem thanks to Corsair’s “Load balancer“ that converts 12V CPU to sata/molex power.

1 Like
25

So a conversion kit to turn your HL15 into a disk shelf that could probably hold 30 drives. That might be more realistic than you’d think. A YouTuber recently built one from scratch, but you’ll notice its heavily inspired/modeled off 45Drive system designs.

2 Likes
26

A rackmount 6u case that I can put AIO or a custom loop into along with a bunch of SSD/HDD. I have a threadripper 3970x I’d like to give a new home.

1 Like
27

Something roughly the size of the HL8 but that is all 2.5” drives :smiley: