45 Drives HomeLab HL 15: Why the Chassis is Important

[@waynoinsaneo]

This has been far and away the most compelling case for the HL15. Hype for the upcoming forbidden router video.

[@Saturn2888]

I had a completely different experience with 45Drives. They don't hold your hand, and you're typically on your own unless you pay for a support plan. I'm watching this video thinking "I have no clue how you had this experience except that you're a KZbinr, and I went in as a regular customer". I paid them over $10K for 2 cases + an SSD mod. I never felt like a first-class citizen there because I only bought cases, no hardware. And in my dealings with the company, they don't feel small.

[@LabiaLicker]

What do you mean by "they won't hold your hand"?

[@Saturn2888]

@@LabiaLicker if you're not extremely technical, it'll be difficult to pinpoint an issue. I got direct-attach boards replaced because I noticed the lights weren't working, and through pictures, we figured out some LEDs were damaged. On the other hand, I still don't understand staggered start because their docs say it only works with their OS. Doesn't make sense because the PSU should be handling it. I haven't asked them about it because I'm not sure if this is a non-support-plan question. A question that requires a support plan is why drives are sometimes not showing up at boot or why adding a drive eventually causes ZFS errors or disappears from Linux unless that drive was plugged in when the system booted. Is it software or hardware? How do I debug when this is my only SAS system? It's up to me to figure out those questions. I'm not even sure if that's normal behavior. 45Drives can't debug that kinda stuff without a support plan, so it's tough to figure out if a cable, power supply, or board is bad without doing the work myself. If I can narrow down my question or request (replacement parts), then I can get answers. Does that info help?

[@LabiaLicker]

@@Saturn2888 Thanks for the rundown

[@skilletpan5674]

@@Saturn2888 Staggered start has nothing to do with the psu. It's usually done by the controller when it inits the drives. If you have a raid controller for example it's usually an option. A consumer grade motherboard with only 4 to 8 drives won't have it. They might be saying it's unsupported because they don't want to hold your hand for XYZ manufacturer and they just can't waste their time finding that for you. If you do tech support you learn that you just can't support everything. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago you could but nowadays there's just too many brands and config options. You are responsible for your own choices of products you buy. The manufacturers should support you if you don't want support from a company like 45drives. Think of it like this. Would you take a BMW into a Toyota dealer and expect them to be able to diagnose and replace parts in that car? I'd not even trust them to not damage it Leta lone diagnose and fix it. Expecting a manufacturer to support hardware they didn't supply to you is just a nightmare in their eyes.

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

Same experience (but slightly cheaper) for me and Asustor. Geerling got an email address for issues, I had one of the worst support forms I ever saw (for 2 years until they fixed it). I don't think anyone should be buying home/server hardware based on KZbin experiences.

[@danmcmahon1656]

Wendell - most of this goes over my head, but I must say, I find myself looking forward to your vids for your positive attitude, being focused on moving forward, totally looking ahead at a time when IMHO that is a rare commodity. Please keep it coming and thank you.

[@frankcastle5737]

Ikr lolol. I've followed Wendell since the previous channel he was on and I still struggle to grasp tf is being talked about. Other than that he's very ahead of his time and knowledgeable.

[@seanwilkinson2291]

Awesome case and video... $800usd is waaaaay more then most people would be willing to spend on a home nas chasis even if it does last for 10 years... I think it will primarily find its way into the smb market then filter down into the home lab when its decommissioned.

[@travisschneider3011]

If they can get the price to half around $400. It would be pretty attractive.

[@chublez]

You guys are crazy. My mostly plastic PC case was $250. You want this at those prices? I think you're forgetting it has a NEW backplane in it. Not a used one. My PC case and a used backplane is near what you guys want to pay for this new.......

[@FlamesForYou]

@@chublez if you are buying pc cases for 250 you are just getting ripped off

[@zackwilliams7284]

yea 800$ is nuts... i can pick up a supermicro case with more bays and psu for less....

[@smorgisborg1]

Liked the look of the 45Drives chassis for a while but always been put off with the fact you had to buy them as completed servers. Great that they're making chassis available now.

[@Slavolko]

They do sell the chassis alone as well, you just have to email them and get a quote. You get the same options as this HL15, where you have to at least get a backplane and/or PSU with the chassis, but it's bare besides that.

[@ciciedee5474]

Also on a different note, my new ssid is "stable as a moose on ice skates" stolen from your last level 1 show. I was roflol picturing Bullwinkle.

[@GearSeekers]

The HL15 is looking like the perfect case!

[@johnnygreene4658]

I use a 12700 for my Plex server in a Deskmeet B660. Keep it around 65 watts. With a WD Red NAS drive and two M.2 drives for the OS and Plex data. Been running 24/7 for 10 months with zero issues. Great server processor.

[@smccrode]

I thought I was used to the knowledge firehose from Wendell. But this was next level! Very grateful for you freely sharing all the options that could work here.

[@lifefromscratch2818]

Can't wait for the HA forbidden router video. I've been working towards that setup for a while.

[@ivanmaglica264]

Thumbs up for dual virtualized router setup! We have been rocking it since 2018. Provisioned 3 ports to a separate WAN VLAN, connected modem to one port, two to each router's dedicated WAN ports in their hosts. We don't actually run two instances of virtual router, but have a single virtual instance that we migrate between hosts as we need. Highly recommend it.

[@Cpgeekorg]

I love this idea and this was what I wanted to do here as well (I've got a proxmox cluster set up and I could easily have a single router instance set up for HA), but I found that BSD's support of virtio network cards at the 10g level was trash (with it maxing out at something like 4g or so). hardware wise, I'm using intel x520-t2 dual port 10g network cards lagg'd into my 10g netgear 24 port switch on each node (5 nodes) with little going on traffic wise during my testing (it's a homelab / homeprod setup). I did a bunch of searching on forums and whatnot, but it seems to come down to virtio support in bsd (the nodes get a tested 9.8gb or so going from node to node baremetal and other operating systems in vms don't seem to have the same problem (linux works great, windows is a little behind but I get roughly 8gb on windows vm's). I *could* use sr-iov which is supported on the card, and does work, but if I assign an sr-iov adapter to a VM, that VM can't do HA. very frustrating.

[@brunosardine1]

it took me an unreasonable amount of time to realize you weren't actually going to put 45 drives into this chassis

[@blazewardog]

You should checkout the Sliger CX4712. It is a much more reasonable price point for a bare case than this. Made in the USA also (so same manufacturing advantages/disadvantages as 45 drives).

[@Level1Techs]

Keep in mind this comes with a nice backplane and fans tho

[@blazewardog]

@@Level1Techs The Sliger case comes with a backplane and has the option of coming with 3 or 6 Noctua fans (at a slight discount). It's only $400 in comparison and those bays are hot swap. With some Icy dock accessories you can fit some SATA/U.2 drives in the 5.25in bays, or put in an actual optical drive for you to rip your movies directly to your NAS.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

@@blazewardog Did the sliger CCX4712 change? It definitely did not come with a backplane originally. It used direct wired with no backplane. If you search CX4712 on youtube and watch the "infocomm 2022: sliger designs showcases CX4712" video you'll see there is definitely no backplane there. That being said, it is definitely a great chassis!

[@BlackC5Z06]

As an owner of that case - no, it's not a back plane. It's cheap sata passthroughs. There are other niggles I've had...I'd much have the HL15.

[@RollerCoasterLineProductions]

I’d totally score one of these DIY cases but I already built a new home lab running unraid back in may/june. I used a fractal design R5

[@kornelious2010]

Excellent video as usual! Thanks for all the great work, Wendell.

[@thestrykernet]

Really love the stuff coming out of 45 drives and wish I could justify the cost. When it comes to W680 I think Asus has taken the market with the WS W680 series as they're cheaper than Gigabyte/Supermicro/ASRock Rack, better VRM and have better IO. So unless there's something specific that the others provide there isn't much decision making to be had anymore.

[@Yeltrah]

The new forbidden router with high availability sounds awesome!

[@YouTuber-jz5nd]

All that hassle you described regarding cables and crap is why I bought it fully assembled. I also like warranties.

[@samishiikihaku]

Some of us are just madness incarnate. Muwahaha... Though I speak for myself when I say, I prefer to build with my own hands. I love that aspect of life.

[@CKOD]

Thanks for pointing out the Freezer 4UM, I have a 5000 series threadripper, and boy it was sweating under an NH-U14. Woudlnt throttle, but it was getting up there, and just surviving off of "well I'm not REALLY going to hit it with an all-core workload like prime95"

[@2008mjb]

"Hold my beer" is right. I am loving Asrock rack lately for DIY servers.

[@wecharg]

You're simply the best; better than all the rest!

[@TheKorgborg]

I'm retirering my haf 900 this build. I prebuild in it but in two month's there is going to be a new case. That haf have seen floppy drives. 12speed cd rom drives. single core cpu's corede duo, i7's ryzens, But it has served his time

[@bochattin6760]

More forbidden router, love it!

[@AaronPace93]

Thanks for all the ideas on hardware. I have my eyes on the chassis to replace my old Rosewell. What you do for HA with pfsense is what I run at home too, with evpn and mpls mixed in my network because I like to make things hard

[@BrownieX001]

I would love to have a homelab with a 45drives rack but don't need all the drive options. This seems very interesting for sure.

[@Chad_at_Big_CAT_Networking]

Wendell I knew your build in the HL15 would be a step above the rest. I didn't realize that it would be observing the other builds from the stratosphere! Wishing that power supply the best of luck in the near future. haha If you're replacing the power supply with something modular it would be pretty cool to see a quick video showing how easy it is to make custom length power cables. A build like that would look amazing with custom length perfectly routed power cabling since all of drive data cabling is so minimal.

[@anothersiguy]

This build is absolutely mad and from Wendell I wouldn’t expect anything else

[@Jordan-hz1wr]

I've worked in IT for many many years and I have a hard time keeping up with half the stuff Wendell says.

[@redtails]

I don't really get who this chasses is for? My fractal define 7 has room for 12× 3.5 inch hdd, 4× 2.5 inch drive, and more drives if you get creative, a rtx4070, full atx mobo, normal psu, and it's just a desktop case with normal desktop case pricing? In the front there's 3 fans and a filter. I'm using this as my main PC right now, but if I ever decide to change it out, it'll be a kick-ass server chassis due to the amount of drive bays and ease of building in it.

[@newstandardaccount]

There is a lot to like about this chassis - compared to my NAS case (Antec P101), this has a lot of advantages. The backplane alone is really valuable. The question is, is it $800 worth of value? I'd say 'no', though for some people it might be.

[@elalemanpaisa]

It's not for home use it's for enterprise and there you want to have easy swap, support and rack mount. It's very cheap for what it is. For consumer not. Have a look what professional storage solutions costs and if you fully populate it and run it 5 years 24/7 it's is the lowest part of costs here

[@newstandardaccount]

@@elalemanpaisa but it is explicitly being sold as a home lab solution. It's adapted from an enterprise solution.

[@elalemanpaisa]

@@newstandardaccount yea I know however it's pretty difficult as many people assume an old laptop or a tiny pc is a home lab. Granted it's fine but a real lab would use actual server hardware. I endorse to use a different naming schema like: Pro home lab Or calling the other stuff just "hobby pc"

[@newstandardaccount]

@@elalemanpaisa at the end of the day regardless of what we call it, it is being marketed as a home solution yet it is way more money than most people can justify. I'm not knocking it either - it appears to be a very well built case, and in an enterprise where time is money, that can make a lot of sense. For most home users however, they'll be able to find better ways to spend $800.

[@ProjectSmithTech]

The case is very good, 45 drives have done a fantastic job here.

[@marikann9073]

Sometimes I envy regions with cheap grid power. My homelab 'server' is a prodesk 600 G6 DM.

[@Swagmastah-wh2co]

i've just started to watch the channel more after I've followed a tutorial from your video about a mini home lab with TrueNas Scale. I have no idea why this is called "level1techs". I mean the things you guys do on the video, like this one for example - to me it's just insane & out of this world. I would love to have this sort of setup but man I'm broke, and my dreams are short-lived usually, plus I'm a total noob. Anyway, love the video!!

[@leviathanpriim3951]

thanks Wendell, great info

[@Jango1989]

Brilliant review!

[@ozcanison]

I just wish they didnt have the huge graphic on the front panel. Also be nice to see one in a silver, to match (or come close to) Ubiquiti gear.

[@Radek125]

Level 1 techs living up the name.

[@nagantm441]

Is this really worth all the extra money over the fractal design 7 XL?

[@tek_soup]

not a bad price, a sonnettech thunderbolt 3 chasis is the same. ill be picking up. it looks real nice.

[@bryce2113]

Case looks promising. Wish they had a deeper version that was unused space for tinkering and such. I also wish they had options to use Supermicro redundant PSUs. I know I can 3D print an adapter but would be nice to see OEMs support it out of the box. There might be IP protections in place that 45 Drives can't get around but who knows. I took an HP DL380P Gen8 (with 12 3.5" LFF bays) and gutted it besides the drive bays. Added a Tyan board with Epyc 7302P and watercooled the whole thing with Alphacool's server lineup. And salvaged an Supermicro PSU setup from an old 2U I had in the graveyard. Works like a charm and I plan to use it for a long time to come (until I somehow need a 4U setup instead).

[@zacharylewis417]

I really wanted to love this case. But the price... For $800 its a hard sell for what it offers? They knew this going into the homelab community. We look for price/performance above all else. A small portion of the community might spend $$ on top tier hardware. If I can get an H12SSL board, 7302P EPYC, and a SM CSE-826 for less than what they sell for a barebones case. We have a problem. Its a great case, just outside of my justified price range.

[@timramich]

Looking at those Chinese ebay listings huh?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@timramich aren't we all

[@zacharylewis417]

@@timramichLooking? You mean bought and owned for 4 months now lol. I did pick up a 7302P for $150 shipped. No issues with it. Solid purchase for all those PCIE lanes. Seems the community has a preferred seller on ebay from China so I went with them.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

@@zacharylewis417 brother with respect, the SM CSE-826 is not very aesthetically pleasing. We built the HL15 with full understanding that this will not be for everyone. This is very much meant to be the centerpiece of a homelab. I've had my Storinator in my rack in my wreckroom for a couple years now and without fail when I have someone over it's nearly always the first thing they look at and go... what the heck is THAT thing? It is very much an eye catcher. I get it though. Many of us as homelabbers are 100% function and I completely get it. I personally have a bog standard ol' Rosewill chassis underneath my Storinator. It serves the purpose - but I've never got excited about a Rosewill chassis. Upgrading and working on my Storinator has always been fun. For me, its similar to my gaming PC. I love having a very aesthetically pleasing gaming rig. I used to go custom water loops but because I switch parts out so often now I just do AIO. but my 4090/13900K rig is also very much an eye catcher. The build quality of the chassis compared to the Rosewill, Supermicro, etc also just isn't even in the same stratosphere. No rivets, all screws designed from the ground up for customizing and repairability. I am the chief architect at 45Drives, and we on the r&d and support teams are very much homelabbers. We love this stuff. When we set out to start this division we did it as a passion project. We've grown a great fanbase over the years and we've heard so many times about how people would love to get one of our servers in their home - but the enterprise model was just too expensive to be able to do it. We wanted to keep the 45Drives DNA and we didn't want to cut corners. And this was very much a big part of why we started the HL lineup. We manufacture the chassis completely in house. We would love it if we could get the prices a bit lower as well, but I can promise you that our margins are very thin on these products. The good news is, we have had an incredible response to the HL15 launch, and orders have overshot all of our expectations. This means that we are absolutely continuing and currently already planning to bring out more models in the HL lineup. I really hope some of them appeal to you as well!

[@Cpgeekorg]

I would love to set up 2 pfsense routers in HA, I understand connecting an interface on each of them to the switch and connecting the ISP fiber ONT to the switch and putting them on a vlan. but my isp only gives me a single external dhcp IP address unless I pay them entirely too much money for a business plan and then another $10/month per ip address *shutter*. is there a way to set up an HA router situation in this case?

[@boneappletee6416]

I'm also interested in this

[@1xXNimrodXx1]

Finally a build for the common man.

[@MikeKirkReloaded]

So... with a focus on fast storage subsystems for pretty much all aspects of homelab: and the reasonable costs of NVMe/AIC/U.2 flash... looking for a massive amount of PCIe lanes on the used market (EPYC-gen2/TR-gen3) would put you in a good place?

[@zacharylewis417]

Yup. Rome generation is cheap now and Milan is getting cheaper. If you don't plan for upgrading to 3rd gen you can snag boards for around $200. All those PCIE lanes at your disposal.

[@Cynyr]

The chassis is really really nice. I wonder what is going to displace sas/sata? I saw some nvme 3.5 drives a while back. Are new backplanes going to be available in 10 years?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

mechanical drives are still nowhere near Sata 3.0 bandwith and given how the main growth is capacity and not speed (they can't compete with SSDs anyway), they are still going to be Sata in 10 years

[@grproteus]

what's the power consumption of that system with the full drives spinning? What's the noise produced? Any numbers?

[@mjn96]

I have been thinking recently, what is the point of no bottleneck? (for consumer level connectivity) in both spinning and flash scenarios By no bottleneck I mean cpu, networking and drives operate in 100% mode (I know, nothing is ideal it will be lower) So something like: I have 32 lanes of pcie. 16 to storage, 16 to network. My x number of gen y cores does all the parity calculations and stuff without dropping the speed It there such a golden ratio?

[@marcesw35]

the cost is still out of most consumers pocket!

[@JackBender]

23:34 Awww, I saw what you did there to the half-height PCI bracket...

[@chaosfenix]

I feel HA is overhyped for homelabs. I love having my home server setup and actually use an old zen2 platform using the setup you mentioned but I also don't feel the need to have it running 24/7.

[@nathanscarlett4772]

I totally agree

[@fanshaw]

I've played a bit with truenas scale and virtualised pfsense. I can't get it to work without passing through a dedicated NIC to the vm - multicast doesn't appear to work for failover. I ended up using the motheboard nic for the firewall, a cheap 1G pcie/x1 nic for truenas management and a 40G storage nic (because I"m cheaping out and don't have a 40G+ switch.)

[@icebalm]

Hey Wendel, thanks for the vid, but $800 USD for a homelab case is fucking ridiculous.

[@patrickproctor3462]

Is there an all-2.5" drive option? I can't seem to find one. I have a bit of a unique use case in that I want to build a family NAS, but it needs to be light enough it can be carried out the door in an emergency (we live in a tinderbox Victorian-Era farmhouse) and it needs to (really) not suck on data throughput. It needs to be able to sustain 4 PCs running backups to it simultaneously, each over its own 10GbE NIC. Currently we store family PC backups to external USB 3 SSDs, and once a month those drives leave the house, get driven to the bank safety deposit box we have to be able to recover our lives should the absolute worst happen. There, they're swapped with the alternate drives from the previous month. Rinse, repeat. Each computer in the house has ~1TB of storage on it, and we follow the 1 + 6 full/incremental backup cycle, so the external SSDs are 2 TB each. So, with a 7-drive NAS, the current system could be replaced with a RAID Z3 array. With a 14-drive NAS, it could be replaced by a Z30 array (double the write throughput, which is pretty much where the "it feels as fast as having the local drive" part comes in). Since there are ITX boards with 2 M.2 slots +3 SATA ports out there (or you could get one with 2 SATA ports and boot off a USB stick), this is a feasible setup, as long as the chassis to support it exists and you acquire 2 M.2 to 6x SATA adapters. I went to the trouble of checking if the Fractal Design Define 7 Nano has enough internal footprint to support mounting 14 SATA drives which all receive active cooling. It, in fact, does if you're willing to drill a few holes and mount some 2.5" drive cages (16 max if you do something a little crazy with a dremel). But, if there's an off-the-shelf solution out there, I'd much prefer that.

[@UndyingShadow83]

Do you have a list of the final hardware that went into the system? I can't find a link or anything.

[@Wayofthelao]

Thank you Wendell

[@thegreenpickel]

I still use an Antec case from 1996, had to modify the 80 mm fan exhaust.

[@cdoublejj]

i tried to buy a a used epyc, i went through three and returned all three, they had been programmed to dell or whatever, i had to get a new never used one before it would post.

[@Strykenine]

I really want one of these.

[@sundinmikael]

Next server at home will be AMD 5600G + ASUS Prime B550M-A + and to start with 32GB DDR4. This motherboard + AMD 5600G support up to 128GB. 32GB will be around 350 euro total for 32GB or 550 euro for 128GB. The bios support 8x4x4 PCIE bifurcation when running 5600G. Later when i got a adapter from aliexpress for 8x4x4 (2nvme + 8X PCIE) i will try 2x drives + network card on 16X slot. Motherboard itself support 2x PCIE NMVE drives.

[@Nealio6s]

My struggle with high availability in the home lab is the fact that there aren't many easy options for 2-node hyper-converged. During my last go around, every hyper-converged option required a 3rd node for quorum, and suddenly all the input costs go through the roof (equipment, power and cooling). Are there any projects that support 2-node (or a very easy quorum node) deployment?

[@Schonke]

The Corosync cluster engine (used by proxmox) allows you to use devices as only a quorum "voter". If you have a raspberry pi sitting around that can provide a quorum vote to get you past the two node initial limit, or to provide uneven vote count in case you've got for example 6 cluster nodes with equal votes.

[@mattk.5258]

These guys are so damn expensive, even worse than Caselabs was. 800 bucks for basically an ATX case. I contacted them to get a price on JUST THE CHASSIS on the 45 drive rack mount case and depending on the PSU, prices ranged from 2k to 3800. That's crazy, what they are offering isn't really worth what they are charging when you can get a used 36 bay supermicro for 500 bucks.

[@markdjdeenix6846]

Interesting content .and they use 3d printing .you made a monster 😁but will it run Doom .LOL😬Merry Christmas Level 1 Crew

[@26Macdylan]

Would definitely love to see more home server builsamsoftware. Maybe some budget build Nas/secuirty? Maybe vm of synology?

[@AA-co8oq]

Do it really support EATX and what is the max CPU cooler height?

[@lavavex]

Would you even use sas drives with this or is it a waste of money

[@KrissBartlett]

No i watch everything you post your such a wise man hahaha

[@inducedapathy1296]

these are real nice however very pricey for what is essentially a case. I really want to see backplanes for 10-50 bucks depending on size as I can make my own HDD racks even with fans for peanuts. I'm thinking backplanes in the 2/3/4/6/8/10 variety. I generally try to do 4 or six myself when making my own drive cages as two stack of 120mm fans fits perfect. i'd also like to see old school cases with large amounts of HDD cages for under a 100. full server towers all that. the prices are way out of whack. i don't understand why drobo and all these off brands charging so friggin much for a backplane plus simple case.

[@inflatablemicrowave8187]

Icydock is the king of this

[@0xKruzr]

Ceph isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with high performance; you just need to be willing to spend on the things that make metadata access fast.

[@ewookiis]

Got old chieftec 4U chassis still, 20+ years .. And btw, that cat must be DAMN heavy...

[@444chroma]

I get compliments on my chassis.

[@droknron]

I'm not sure I would want to buy this Chassis for my home rack due to well firstly it's $799 without hardware and second it has no hot-swap front bays which are easier to work with. I'd have to pull this entire chassis out to access the screws to remove the top plate. Like I would forgive that on a $199 case but $799? - I can get a $399 SuperMicro with 16 front-swappable hot-swap bays. Or I can pay $550 and get a Gooxi with 24 hot-swap bays and a SAS expander backplane built in with ATX PSU support. I'm honestly scratching my head as to why someone would want to pay more money for less stuff? I could see it being useful if you need a super shallow server but still.. that price is hard to stomach for 15 drive bays without a SAS expander included in my opinion as that alone would necessitate buying a larger HBA with 16 drive connectivity which costs more money and so on and so forth I'm not sure it makes sense to me this product.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

yeah it's kind of strange. The only benefit is less noise (because of large fans), which is debatable for a rackmounted case anyway. This case is a "cut down" version of their larger ones with 20+ drives where it's normal to have them come from the top because that's the only way to fit so many. But it's clearly designed in a way that is "more convenient for them to make" than actually useful in this form factor and market segment

[@timramich]

Not to mention it can only hold 15 drives in a 4u height. A SuperMicro 4u would hold 24 drives.

[@notserpentis]

I thought I finally got who the target market is: nerds who want to build their own 10-20k$ servers from new parts, and don't want to go for a pre-built/used for the similar price. Case costing 5-10% of the build may be justified then. ...but, your comment just destroyed my argument before I've posted it. Realistically, you can buy a decent spec used machine for 800-900$

[@timramich]

@@notserpentis I don't understand the hype for their cases at all. The things have to be slid out to change drives. But as for the price...I spent $868 back in 2018 for a 3U SuperMicro chassis brand new from AcmeMicro. Too hard to find used for the specific backplane and PSU setup one may specifically want. But I will backtrack on the sentence about cost. I looked up my invoice as I was typing that sentence, expecting it to be at least twice the cost of this 45drives thing. But that gains me 1 more drive slot at 1 less rack unit of space. Drive caddies. Two power supplies of a higher wattage, and something to bring them together. Most stuff on it is tool-less. The power supply board can be plugged into the motherboard for management info stuff. Same with the backplane. If used with one of their boards, everything is going to line up with the air duct that sits inside, which means you don't need fans on the heat sinks. And then last year right before Thanksgiving, I found someone local selling a server inside the same exact chassis. Loaded full of 4TB SAS drives with old X9 hardware, for only $500. If you jumped up to 4U with SuperMicro, that gives you 24 drive bays. So yeah, I don't get the market for this either.

[@chrisjohnson7255]

Hey what HBA sata card should I be using?

[@alymuni]

now this is what I call timing, I am searching for a good server chassi

[@Fiberton]

For transcoding a simple Tesla P4 with a fan mod will get you where you need to be far as a single slot device.

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

Since ASRock spilled the beans that they are testing regular Kingston non-ECC DDR5 64 GB UDIMMs with Micron memory chips on the X670E Taichi for a total of 256 GB on AM5, have you heard anything about the release of Micron DDR5 ECC 64 GB UDIMMs…? Did they maybe intentionally skip the 48 GB step?

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

48 GB DDR5 UDIMMs have basically been a crutch for economic reasons for about a year since it hadn’t been possible to mass-produce the memory chips for 64 GB UDIMMs. Unfortunately 48 GB ECC UDIMMs from Micron, Samsung and SK hynix seem to never have left the sampling stage. I’m an ECC fetishist so that bums me out - I can’t personally justify a Threadripper purchase.

[@Cpgeekorg]

having a nice sas backplane is nice, but other than that, i'm just not sure why I should pay $1000 for a box with some fans and a backplane in it when I can get something like a fractal design meshify 2 xl for under $200 that has more slots of hard drives and big boards and arguably better cooling...

[@Kelekona_808]

I predict with that colorway that case will end up with Tech Thor in the future when GN needs to upgrade their server.

[@BLKMGK4]

LOL!

[@mikedeath7333]

could one use a arm chip like m3/ampire128 as hypervisior/error correction harddrives+ram for a x86 like apple does on '05 macbooks

[@cdoublejj]

can i get one with amd in it or can i swap out the mother board? EDIT: spoke too soon, i can get an empty case!!!

[@ThisOldChris]

Canadian company selling in USD to Canadian, so I would have to pay the currently ridiculous exchange fee of almost 40% + 15% tax of course... Sucks to be Canadian right now...

[@gfis9254]

I have 1 o droid H4+ connected to 2 DDN SS8460 as my home NAS

[@eliotrulez]

really great video!

[@tryp1cac340]

ive been drilling out the rivets of the super micro psu and removing the whole module and replacing it with SFX power supplies and a home made bracket to fit in the case, there also quieter

[@BLKMGK4]

Check out the Supermicro SQ PSU - it's damn near silent!

[@dlfzstuff4343]

Can someone tell me what that threadripper mother was he was holding up at the end of the video where he was say about options trying to find it

[@ciciedee5474]

A question I thought about this weekend. Do servers ever operate in single core or r they always in multi core?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

No they are always multicore

[@ciciedee5474]

Thank you

[@huplim]

This case is compelling!

[@wizpig64]

a much better investment than my $99 rosewill

[@marcogenovesi8570]

*bigger

[@V1N_574]

Is it like 800 bucks for an empty case?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@V1N_574 yeah, that's for the case and drive board

[@waynetaylor2784]

Would love to buy one but shipping to Australia just kills it for me sadly

[@Agent_Crimson]

I frikin love Wendell

[@travisaugustine7264]

Wendel, I'm going 128 cores of Epyc goodness...me... cries in R5-4600G

[@ajhieb]

1:05 _"Circuit Breakers that have chips in them that are overly sensitive to people doing mad science in their house."_ Preach! Yeah, the GFCI's in my garage do not play nice with the VFDs I use to run the 3-phase motors in my workshop.

[@timramich]

Sounds like you need some sort of power factor correction on the input of that VFD, or just skirt your codes and don't run GFCI outlets.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

aren't VFDs supposed to act as soft-start too

[@ajhieb]

@@marcogenovesi8570 Most offer that option, but it isn't necessarily enabled by default. (Though I do have it setup on mine)

[@timramich]

@@marcogenovesi8570 They don't do wye-delta starting obviously, but just running AC power through a rectifier and capacitor to get DC leads to a poor power factor on the mains line.

[@MrMartinSchou]

8 cores per drive seems like the right balance.

[@daviddorny-f1k]

what card is thad @23min31sec?

[@sparkyenergia]

The jump to NVME storage is going to be hard. I might just die with an LSI SAS2008 in my hand.

[@ZachGoethel]

You're starting to build my cluster, I have a heterogenous ProxMox cluster w/ a forbidden pfSense router, ~300gb memory, 2 GPUs, ~68 threads. Everything network boots, which is a point of failure. Has Intel confidential Xeons, Zen 3, every flavor of Linux, Windows, a domain controller, automated certificate issuing, the whole 9 yards

[@ralmslb]

If 45 Drives wants to reach the home consumer market, they need to come up with a cheaper chassis. This chassis is way too expensive. It's just impossible to justify an 800$ case. I can buy 4 x Fractal Define cases at least. For that price (and considering the added cost of the components), I can also buy an enterprise refurbished server that will still be cheaper. For me, this shows a big disconnect from 45 Drives and the market target they are trying to expand to.

[@jairo8746]

The market is just Wendell... he is supporting the whole company with his madness.

[@ivanmaglica264]

That is a problem of being profitable with low volume product. The potential of how many cases they can sell is realistically just not that high. However I see this as an investment. It's not something you are going to replace in two years.

[@hariranormal5584]

@@ivanmaglica264 The thing is, this is "homelab". This is a market where people generally "DIY" things. If they are selling a product which is otherwise DIY'able by MOST of the users (skill level), and that's what most homelabbers even will do, it doesn't seem like the best marketing for them honestly. Dunno why would they make something like this.

[@DPCTechnology]

@@ivanmaglica264 The waiting list is long.... Demand has been high..

[@ralmslb]

@@ivanmaglica264 sure, however for a home environment, they did zero compromises, which didn't help. For example, the home user doesn't need a tooless drive slots. The home user doesn't need a fancy front face place, instead could be a simpler mesh with a filter. The home user in general, doesn't need a chassis that is made like a tank (thickness of the metal). So in general, 45 Drives didn't release a server for the home user, they just released a small server that will only be purchased by either people with a lot of money or small companies. Supporting my claim that are out of touch with the target market.

[@antonterekhov9389]

The largest miss with this chassis is the HDD target only. Sure, you can use 3.5" to 2.5" printed adapters, but it's wasted space. I'd love to see a hybrid version of 8*3.5" + 12/16*2.5". It would make much more sense for HomeLab.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

Hey Anton, So the great news is that this is simply our very first homelab product. We have enterprise hybrid nodes for all of our chassis going all the way up to our XL60s. We are taking everything we learned building Enterprise grade hardware for the last decade, and shrinking it down to the homelab, while maintaining the build quality and robustness we are known for. If you are interested in a hybrid server for us, take a look at our enterprise F8X1 - It is the HL15 form factor (AV15 is our Enterprise naming) however it replaces 3X HDD slots for 8X SSD slots - This gives you 12X HDD slots and 8X 2.5" slots in the exact same form factor. While I have nothing to announce to you right now about this specific model coming to our HL lineup, definitely keep checking back over the next few months as we have big things coming :)

[@theshadowduke]

Meanwhile I'm looking for a 3U 12-16 drive case that's less than $500 to replace my Rosewill case. I just need something with a real backplane.

[@ClaytonMacleod]

Whoa! That case holds 45 drives?! I could use that! *click* “Here’s a case that holds 15 drives…” *throws remote*

[@shadowarez1337]

When your Nas Journey starts with a whole pc with 2 8tb drives then you quickly realize thats barely enough for GOT in 4K so you upgrade to a Synology with 8x18TB drives a year later you then see that space dwindle to 14TB free only way to go is this bad boy with 45x24TB drives with Nvme cache drives.

[@lavavex]

The u12s from noctua fits