The PERFECT Desktop Homelab Server!

[@elikirkwood4580]

Coming from a position of having built my homelab from entirely used hardware without paying more than $200 for any single piece, this is an expensive product, but I also realize that compared to basically any other off the shelf nas box this is an insanely good deal

[@Jetta4TDIR]

Im in the same boat as you, im curious to what he plans to do in his custom build

[@cracklingice]

This is their entire product line. I mean to me, $300 is an absurdly expensive case and they want $900 for the HL15.

[@joshua7551]

Yeahhh, I used an old Power Edge T420 as my TrueNas Scale host and an HP server whats model name escapes me as my compute node. I paid $0 for both of them. The most expensive thing I bought was an SLA battery.

[@Jetta4TDIR]

@@cracklingice i agree its expensive but i think in this case its relative, the competition is far more over priced as Jeff mentioned. Im in the EU so becomes even more expensive for me, so either way its beyond my reach. Thats not to say im lacking in repurposed hardware though. Im just now focussing on power draw since electricity in EU is just plain a joke i was running 2x custom built rackmount xeon based servers but it was costing me a fortune to keep running ive now downsized to a handful of the HP 1ltr 800 g3's mounted in custom rack mounted chassis's 1 is running a docker environment 3x i setup as a proxmox cluster, but having problems with it since i can't get the ceph stuff to work properly and then i have 2 more i have other plans for if that falls through i will repurpose those to run a nas my whole rack, including my unify switch and dream machine is running at 70 ~ 80w at the wall.

[@Jetta4TDIR]

@@joshua7551 I was an HPE field engineer till they laid me off during Covid... How do you get past the HP pay wall for updates to the server? I presume its a DL of some kind most popular was the DL380 since its HP(E)'s flagship server the 360's were also common in the field.

[@Kvantum]

How was this not just called the "Deskinator"?

[@lifefromscratch2818]

Because 45Drives inexplicably threw out there cool naming for the "HL" line.. Sigh

[@austinleong3319]

"I'll be back(up)..."

[@RaytheonTechnologies_Official]

​@@austinleong3319(sensible chuckle)

[@theroyalaustralian]

Pun intended, I hope 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@jakeprewitt3009]

@@lifefromscratch2818 Gotta pay up if you want the cool name

[@RemyL75]

Hey Jeff, just an FYI... that mobo DOES support Bifurcation 4x4x4x4. The support is determined by the CPU. AMD Cezanne CPUs (5500GT and all 5000 APUs) do not support that particular mode. AMD Vermeer CPUs (most 5000x and non-x series that do NOT have on-chip graphics) do support the 4x4x4x4 setting. It will appear as just 4x4, but it does allow 4 NVME drives on a single 16x slot. I remember running into this on a Asrock mobo and after seeing this video, I tested it with the B550I AORUS PRO AX 1.1, Asus Hyper m.2 card with 4 1TB NVME drives and a Ryzen 9 5950X on a TrueNas Scale test build. The 4x4 option did appear in the BIOS and once i set it, I saved the changes and added the card. All four drives showed up in TrueNas without any issues.

[@wbedard]

Thanks for all your testing and the great feedback in support of this product!

[@Elkarlo77]

I use an Ryzen 5 5600 and on the mATX Version of this Motherboard in my Homeserver (96GB ECC Ram) and can confirm that Bifurcation runs with 4 NVME on a simple Card on this Board in 4x4x4x4x Mode. I got all three sizes (itx, mATX, ATX) of the Aorus Gigabyte B550 boards and the Uefi seems to be the same in the Options. (Workstation, Server, Gaming PC, HTPC)

[@KormakurDanielsson]

5:21 LMAO. Your "Ah, ah!" was perfectly timed! My jaw dropped when that opened

[@jdl3408]

Barebones price seems out of line with very similar offerings. 8 bay Silverstone DS382 has SAS/SATA for $230, 4 bay Supermicro CSE-721tq with PSU is $270, 5 bay CS351 for $190, etc. IMO the value isn’t there to get thicker gauge steel. Perhaps the backplane is more reliable than the Silverstone products, but without data that’s just speculation and the Supermicro product is certainly reliable and at least as high quality.

[@frankwong9486]

Yep Legendary node 804, cheap , no backplane concern as it do all direct connection cons : no hotplug design and it really large

[@michrech]

There's also the Audheid K7 8 bay hot swap case, with fans for cooling HDDs, on Amazon for $190. I'm currently using one for my media server, and it's pretty nice.

[@frankwong9486]

@@michrech that thing support matx board which lower the cost and more options compared to itx board 🙈

[@marcogenovesi8570]

passive backplanes don't fail all that much as it's just a board that breaks out the connections from the cable

[@jdl3408]

@@michrechThat case looks great. It’s $10 off right now, so $180. Top compartment cooling looks like a single 60mm fan so that could be better, and the half height card limitation is tough for homelab stuff.

[@david_sanchez]

I'm excited to see someone finally addressing this issue. It's an impossible task to find the perfect home lab NAS chassis. They're either too small (not enough drive capacity), too underpowered, have limited network bandwidth, or you're stuck with only gigantic rack-mount options. This is definitely a step in the right direction and I hope it brings in enough ROI so that they keep progressing down this path and evolving the product. I'd love to see a version that offers 10GbE out of the box but I know getting built-in 10GbE on a Mini ITX platform is hard to find and usually expensive.

[@jgmor6]

No cooling on the drive bays? Seems like they would get pretty toasty in that box.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

"The PERFECT Desktop HDD Cooker" 🙃

[@Gelantious]

Yeah was wondering about that too....

[@michaelmalenchek4575]

45 drives never seems to do hotswap drives either. Big pass. Looks like it still makes more sense picking up used Dell PowerEdge towers.

[@dustojnikhummer]

I see a fan on the drive bays though?

[@blacktrooper100]

@@michaelmalenchek4575the front drops down with two thumb screws and the drives don’t require a sled I feel like that would still be just as fast as lots of enterprise hot swap bays with screws unless you are swapping drives daily at home

[@cameronfrye5514]

I happy to see companies are thinking specifically about home servers, but there might be an upper limit to what people will spend on what is ultimately just a nice case. I mean, it doesn't even have RGB or tempered glass panels! In all seriousness, I can't see too many home labbers paying that kind of premium. I just put a part list together, and you can get all the components listed in their fully built & tested offering, as well as a competing 8 bay hot swap case, for less than they're asking for just the HL8 + power supply. They seem like a great company, and I'd love to support them through purchasing their products.. but I simply can't get to $600 for a small ITX NAS case.

[@EkiToji]

Yeah considering a lot of us probably have an old desktop case we could throw together for a NAS I think that's a bit much just for the sake of a SATA backplane.

[@chomp7927]

I did the same thing for another comment... right now I can next day every piece from Amazon for $785 (rounding up for even dollar values)

[@cameronfrye5514]

@@chomp7927 Exactly. If you're going to list off the shelf components, you have to expect people are going to price shop. I understand the premium you'll need to pay for a niche component like a visually appealing NAS focused case from a North American manufacturer, as well as a build fee and whatever 'burn-in' they do. Ultimately though, my NAS lives in a basement.. and that's a pretty extreme premium.

[@coinholio470]

All the ITX "NAS" cases on the market are crap, this one is certainly pretty but $600 is just way too much. I'd go for it at $300, but even then I'd be hesitant to spend that much on a case.

[@iankphone]

The lack of 120mm fan positions in the back is a big miss. Airflow seems super weak. GN Steve's gonna eviscerate this thing. I mean, look how packed that drive cage is. Or am I missing something?

[@zyntax81]

Yeah it's bad. But then again, this is an ad and it feels like a dishonest one. Also magine how 8x20TB drives will vibrate with no decoupling or anti vibration. Hot and loud.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@zyntax81 their mount points are the same as in the bigger server, and I've never bought the "muh vibration" excuse. Most server trays have no dampening for that either and the 1U ones have you bolt the drives to the frame. Hot is an issue, vibration is mostly marketing imho

[@zyntax81]

@@marcogenovesi8570 This is wildly inaccurate. Bigger harddrives with many platters are much louder than the good old days with WD Red 6TB for example. I have had Synology with Exos 16TB and 20TB drives, it's impossible to use because of the vibrations. It's loud. Same with Silverstone CS381. It's all good with smaller NAS oriented smaller drives. Rack mounted, then vibrations are usually not a factor and it also eats up more vibrations. Today i use a Node 304 with DIY anti vibration and i cannot hear the same drives. The title of this sponsored ad is "The PERFECT Desktop Homelab Server!". So i would have liked him to show how loud this is on the desktop with this configuration. I would love to be proven wrong. With 8 Exos X20 20TB my guess is this is very very loud at spin-up and writes.

[@chomp7927]

@@marcogenovesi8570 you have never used large drives and it shows lol, sound is generally not an issue on server/rack mount stuff because the rack as a whole is loud as hell lol, but you slap 8x 16's or so in this thing, metal on metal, and place it 3-4 feet away from you, you'll never be able to forget it's running lol

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@chomp7927 So it's an issue with the 16 and bigger? Because I've been using 10 and 12 that don't do this. Also the "muh vibration" has been a thing in marketing since at least 1TB

[@jesmasco]

For less budget options, Fractal Design Node 304 lets you mount 6 3.5 HDD, ITX motherboard, dual PCIe slot, 3 Fans, ATX/SFX power supply. It is possible to mount more drives if you use 2.5 units and 3.5 to 2.5 adapters. Is not the only one, there are "chinese" NAS cases too, you can use ITX boards too.

[@sumosys372]

Despite the lack of a backplane, the Node 304 makes much more sense, with it's plentiful cooling and ATX PSU options. Not to mention about one fifth of the price. Using this as a start point, with it having been around for so long, you would have thought that a company with a reputation for design like 45Drives has got, you would have expected so m much more for what is very simply a very large asking price.

[@oliveirajmr]

Try putting 3 or 4 enterprise drives inbttr 304 and sees what happens. The vibration and rattling is unbearable

[@atleast4566]

I'm in both camps on this one. I definitely see how it's a great value for people looking for a relatively compact server that isn't shaped like an enormous pizza box, doesn't have an eco NAS CPU, and isn't government contract level expensive. On the other hand, I have a small rack, run all my VMs and containers on mini PCs, RPis, and other SBCs, and have a budget about on par with most ebay shoppers. Soooo... I'll be looking forward to your next collab where the end result is a 1/3-depth 1U, rack-mountable 6-bay SSD only, x86 based homelab solution for under $400. Cheers! 🍻

[@CampRusso]

I would like to see that in a 2U, so I can put some nice quiet 80mm noctua fans. 😁

[@Prophes0r]

1U isn't a "Home" form factor. It's for Datacenters that need maximum density. When going 1U instead of 2U you give up the ability to run 80mm fans, flexATX PSUs, and mount half-height cards upright. We aren't shoehorning stuff into the Space Shuttle. 2U is as small as a HomeLab needs. (Obv. doesn't apply to used enterprise and/or networking gear which COMES as 1U)

[@atleast4566]

@@Prophes0r 2U is fine, but then I would want it to fit in a 10" rack. I may not live in the space shuttle, but my apartment isn't much bigger. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I have to miniaturize everything to be able to fit my hobby into my tiny living space. /shrug

[@paulbrooks4395]

Your intro was spot on, I paid around 1k for essentially desktop PC hardware and a tower and put in 4 HDDs and a bunch of old SSDs. Im an apartment dweller and quiet is my hard requirement alongside space and power. Being able to customize the hardware is crucial since I want cores and RAM, but not enterprise level (nor the price). I found that once you hit 1k it became pointless to do prebuilt and many prebuilts that cost less were underspecced junk with no upgrade path.

[@jeremybarber2837]

This is so great!! My whole lab needs to stay under my 22”x60” adjustable height desk and this rig is sooooooo needed for folks like me. The HL4 is very tempting. Congrats on getting this to market!

[@_vilepenguin]

With the wifi 6 on board you can run an access point docker container. Then put the NAS in a dead zone in your house. Helps justify the cost a bit.

[@45Drives]

Great idea!

[@SycsFinest]

Sata a legacy port. ☠️ I aged 20 years just listening to that.

[@CraftComputing]

...sorry :-/

[@marcogenovesi8570]

it's not legacy, Jeff is mean

[@TechnoTim]

Woo can't wait to see it in person, oh and you of course! Does it come in white???

[@CraftComputing]

I don't know about color yet, but I do know there *might* be some RGB in store....

[@TechnoTim]

@@CraftComputing 🙋

[@RaytheonTechnologies_Official]

​​@@CraftComputing which anime waifu editions should we expect?

[@enkaskal]

⁠​⁠​⁠was not expecting RTN to enter the chat ngl 😂

[@45Drives]

Yes, it does come in white!

[@AlphaConde-qy7vi]

Watching this video, what I kept in mind was your glaring omission of the *thermals*. That case looks so cramped, the disks so close to each other... and I didn't see any ventilation path for the disks. That's a big nope for me.

[@chomp7927]

No mention of the thermals, I wonder why lol. No mention of the glaring lack of I/O anywhere, fuck even the power button is on the back lol. What's the point of having a desktop unit right beside you if you can't plug things into it without going around behind it? The whole point of it being desktop is so you can plug things in right there.... No views from any of the other angles that people actually want to see. The comparisons are against low power storage NAS's not home built labs, that's done on purpose, while also ignoring that all of those units also come with ports for expansions bays to add way more disk space while keeping costs much lower. Notice how they didn't compare a similarly built DIY server in the case to the one HL is offering, I wonder why that is... Lets explore that. Using the EXACT SAME parts list as HL and just using a 8 bay hotswap IT case from silverstone we can do the EXACT SAME BUILD for $785 with 2 day shipping that HL15 STARTS at $1399 with a $100 preorder and an unknown shipping date. If you shopped around a bit and changed brands on a few things you can easily get that under $700 but part for part doing a clone you come in at almost half the price. At least now where know why they only ever compare them to off the shelf SOHO NAS units from SYN/QNAP and not something an actual home labber would do...

[@AlphaConde-qy7vi]

@@chomp7927 Very good points. If this NAS case were well ventilated and had decent I/O, a small premium could be overlooked. But paying 100% more for a worse product ? That's BS. The channel owner should be ashamed to label it "PERFECT" 🙄

[@chublez]

I'm a bit concerned about thermals with the drives crammed in there like that myself but I imagine atleast one test has been run with the bays populated over there at 45 drives, I hope. I'm okay with the comparison to qnap etc. though as I really think that's the target here. The available Silverstone "competition" you guys are on about for less money is huge, unattractive, and poorly built. These is compact and sleek much like the 8 bay offerings from the likes of qnap just with a much better bit of hardware inside. Probably not going to replace a heavy use homelab anytime soon but a basic storage server that you want to tuck in a corner or like me have a spot in a desk with a hard limit on dimensions...this could very well replace the old frustrating slow qnap I've been backing up my other server too. Think I'd go for the barebones and put my own NAS board in but there's not a lot of case options that fit the hole I've got.

[@45Drives]

This version in the video passed our thermal testing! We made some changes to the unit, including added vented for peace of mind, since Jeff's video and we will be completely re-testing thermals again.

[@AlphaConde-qy7vi]

@@45Drives Thanks for chiming in and good to know that you improved the cooling of the case. I still wish the reviewer had pointed this flaw at the time of his overview (I can't call it a review), and checked the thermals as well.

[@GotWire]

$600 for just the case and backplane they are crazy!! I guess im just poor but that is way way to much for a metal box with a backplane in it. How much mark up are they doing %200???

[@tHe0nLyNeXuS]

I doubt. It is a low volume product and it is entirely made in the USA, as far as I understand. Labor cost is going to be higher than other brands.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

@@tHe0nLyNeXuSbingo!

[@gearboxworks]

@@tHe0nLyNeXuS- I think our Canadian brothers would resent that comment. #justsaying 😁

[@gearboxworks]

@GotWire - Just curious, how much did you spend on your gaming rig? #inquiringminds

[@elalemanpaisa]

Imagine what qnap and Synology charges you

[@av-mike]

Nice desktop solution. As someone who owns 2 Homelab 15's, their quality is top notch. This is a nice alternative to crummy plastic retail NAS solutions...

[@H3adcrash]

Undoing those two thumb screws and it goes all early 2000s DELL Optiplex on you.

[@ckaceritus]

Or better yet, the clamshell style ones with just buttons to press, and POW entire desktop opens up, everything tool-less.

[@H3adcrash]

@@ckaceritus that would be an early 2000s Optiplex. But yes.

[@computersales]

I don't get how they justify the price. I don't feel like people building their own setups are price matching against prebuilts like Synology.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

low production numbers, made in Canada. They cannot and will never match prices of mass produced cases in china/taiwan

[@radical_ans]

ALL HAIL B-ROLL CAT!!!!

[@karenorgan6203]

Foshore, lil orange ball of purrs!

[@THEMithrandir09]

Daang, if I hadn't upgraded my desktop into a proxmox all-in-one two years ago, I'd buy this in a heartbeat.

[@JureGrbec]

Amazing! This is almost exactly what I made myself at thome after years of trial and error: 5600G, 32gb ram, SFX PSU, and 10 sata slots. Total cost was much lower, but so is build quality :) If you need more than that you probably should get a dedicated machine for that specific task.

[@criostasis]

Ok Jeff have to disagree with your "Noctua tax" argument at 11:59 . Youre comparing apples to oranges man, there is a huge difference with a small premium you pay for noctua fans, which in reality isnt even a premium anymore with how much mainstream fan manufacturers like Corsair charges for their fans. This on the other hand is way more of a "premium" tax, however, there are glaring omissions to the design of the product many others have commented on to include: Thermal concerns Vibration and noise Backplane and controller issues Bifurcation support of which you pointed out yourself Lack of ecc support with the chosen amd chips Etc etc etc.... So please, stop wagging your finger at us about a damn "noctua tax". 😂

[@HerrRatzle]

Agreed. A few dollars extra for proven noctua quality is an easy decision. Hundreds of dollars extra for a well-designed case is a much tougher decision.

[@P.I.E.]

What is that quad nvme adapter you were showing? Is there a particular one you recommend? I personally like a diy type setup. Most can do just fine with an old desktop and a bit of tinkering.

[@V1N_574]

Would have love a full atx mobo capacity like the Jonsbo N5.

[@bitlinkchai]

This is an interesting chassis. Its built very much like the U-NAS 810A case, but without trays. I like the ease of access to the motherboard components via screws. Its definitely a pain to do the same work in a U-NAS 810A. One thing I didn't see mention is hard drive temperatures and fans with this iteration of the product. There are some visuals of the rear at 9:22, with fan mounts... but I couldn't tell if they were 40mm or 60mm fan mounts.

[@skylermertz]

I build a brand new server two weeks ago and now I see this. OF COURSE THAT WOULD HAPPEN

[@Paulnt04]

Since it's full-height, with x8x4x4 bifurcation, you can add one of the risers with a LP x8 and 2xM.2, so you can get 2 NVMe and a 10/25Gbps NIC.

[@frankwong9486]

Yep I got a 5600G set to 8/4/4 with a adapter which spilt 8/4/4 , it have a 16 slot running at x8 and 2 more M2 slot on it

[@motmontheinternet]

Is there a product type or name I can google to see one of these risers? I see them from time to time, but rarely see one that would fit in a single slot as in this case.

[@Paulnt04]

@@motmontheinternet either x8x4x4 bifurcation adapter/riser or x8+2x M.2 bifurcation riser/adapter.

[@motmontheinternet]

@@Paulnt04 I don't see anything that would actually fit in this case. You only have one slot in the physical box to put stuff.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@motmontheinternet the adapter he talks about goes in a x16 slot and has one M.2 per side, then in top another pcie slot. It will fit a low-profile pcie card on top and two m.2 drives

[@knghtbrd]

My budget was smaller and this didn't exist yet, so I went with a Silverstone tower. It hasn't been without problems unfortunately, but it holds a mATX motherboard which makes a lot of things easier, but it's still pretty cramped for how big it is because eight freakin' drive bays. It's not 2mm steel and it doesn't unfold for easy building, but it cost me half the price. Which on my budget was very necessary.

[@rdsii64]

I'm the knucklehead with a server rack in a spare room in my house. The HL15 is more my speed. With that said, something like this has been a long time coming. GREAT JOB!!

[@45Drives]

Thank you!

[@StorageReview]

Nice! Fills an interesting niche in the market. Can't wait to get this one in for review!

[@CraftComputing]

I'll see if I can smuggle one out for you ;-)

[@45Drives]

Thank you, thank you!

[@marcogenovesi8570]

I'm seeing a lot of flat surfaces without significant holes, and I'm not liking that. The drives I have would overheat in there. HMMMMMM not a fan. I don't even see a way to add fans without some redesign, they would have to move away the PSU to leave the whole upper side of the case free and mount fans in the back to push air over the drives to the front where it would need to have more holes for the air to come out. Maybe do it on the bottom by adding holes under the drives and fans in the back?

[@ruojautuma1]

Ryzen G models only support ECC with the PRO chips. That means your options in 5000 series are 5350G, 5650G and 5750G PRO. Chips in 5000 and prior series that don't have integrated graphics will all support unbuffered ECC.

[@jamestiller]

also this is a slick design, you were a part of this Jeff? fantastic design all involved.

[@45Drives]

Thank you!

[@criostasis]

I get it for those that dont want to mess with building their own or a business that just wants to get up and running. For those of us that build our own servers, i dont think this is it. Im glad you point out the issues with it though and how 45drives is going to implement changes along with 3D print files, thats a nice thing to see. Good video!

[@45Drives]

We appreciate your feedback! What changes would you recommend for us to make it better?

[@criostasis]

​@@45Drivescooling and hotswap with drive sleds would be my main concerns. Sleds can also give support for 2.5" ssd's. Someone else pointed out going with a different amd chip series that enables the pcie bifucation so that would be nice. I like intel for quick sync with plex though and that rules out the 4x bifurcation on consumer platforms as far as I am aware.

[@guhak]

@@45Drivespersonally, if you ever made a micro-atx compatible version of this chassis I’d likely have immediately purchased it (unless it was like outrageously priced…). Right now this is a cute case and I love the design of the chassis, but $600 for an 8 bay rig and forced mini-itx just isn’t an attractive enough sell over using the (aging!) fractal node 804 (micro ATX, fits 8 3.5” + 2 2.5” without mods, and a GPU) or node 304 (mini itx, 6 drive bays, GPU with 4 drive bays, without mods), let alone cases with hot swap drive options built in. Essentially, I’d love to pay a (reasonable) premium for a quality well made case, if it were micro-ATX mainly. Mini-ITX and it just doesn’t seem to be that much better than much older offerings to justify a 6x price increase…

[@MaxVoltageMiningCrypto]

I loved and hated this video at the same time. I hated the video because this wasn't available when I built my home server. I just built a 6 drive Unraid server in a Meshify 2 case. I really like it, but didn't check as many boxes as this case from 45 drives. Of course, I was able to build it out for about half the price as I got the Meshify 2 case for just over $100 and I didn't have to limit myself to an ITX MB. With that said, I love this case. If it were available, I would have probably said "take my money" to 45drives. Kudos to both you and 45drives for coming up with such an awesome product!

[@codllc]

I might have to build my own. I want 10Gb ethernet, an Intel Arc A310, and 8 drive bays with a ZIL. Could be a challenge to find the right parts, but it should be a fun challenge. I'm so happy there is now a good case to build in.

[@45Drives]

We appreciate your feedback!

[@zo2ahy]

... Seriously?! I juuust finished my server build, which is just a crappier version of this... AGH. This is perfect! 😭 Thanks for posting!

[@elalemanpaisa]

The price is more than fair for what you get and it looks sick! This baby will run for 10+ years and in contrast to other brands if something breaks you can feed it with off the shelve parts

[@elalemanpaisa]

@@BenState U drunk

[@elalemanpaisa]

@@BenState I was what did you expect on a Saturday evening

[@wayfarer1549]

This is a very exciting product. Thank you for sharing the announcement!

[@45Drives]

Thank you!

[@Badoyz]

If I had one of these, I'd build it from scratch to not only have fun, but to learn more about building a custom NAS while also making a great place for me and my brother to store our files and also make a nice little plex media server/storage. I have a nice small media rack with a shelf that this would fit into perfectly. Love seeing your videos! keep up the awesome work!

[@ausare32]

I would have liked to see ATX power and motherboard, with more expansion slots.

[@Bobstone2131]

That's awesome. I would still like to mount it in my 19" short depth 12u home rack.

[@pkt1213]

That's about what I run too. I only have 16" of depth, so I had to move the front back 3" on my new case. I use the drive bay assembly off of a 2u server for mt storage.

[@nuuukethewhales]

Absolutely beautifully done, and kudos for thinking about 2.5" slots, I'd be using them for L2ARC in my case. I look forward to checking out the Canadian pricing. I've been wanting to upgrade my old PowerEdge T110ii server (e1280v2) and my retrogaming PC (i5-8400 on mini-ITX). I'm tempted to transplant my emulation PC guts into one of these along with the 8x6tb SAS drives, 2x1tb SSDs, and dual NIC from my old server, and keep the Zen 3 board for the emu PC, which could use the extra horsepower. Congrats Jeff and 45Drives, I'm totally stoked, that fold-out was absolute gold.

[@Prophes0r]

L2ARC is almost always a trap. There will be some really weird edge cases where it provides some good value, but those almost don't exist in the "Home" space. L2ARC is one of those zfs things like "Zfs requires tons of RAM to function" that is absolutely untrue and totally misunderstood by almost everyone. What you PROBABLY need are zfs special metadata drives.

[@denvera1g1]

14:26 I have a very shallow audio rack(shallower than it is wide), this would fit perfectly in there on a tray or some rails.

[@balex96]

7:15 That felt personal considering I have a E5-2697a v4.

[@OwlishGeorge]

TBH this looks pretty damn good. If I'm in the market for an upgrade anytime soon this will likely be a consideration.

[@Sykuro42]

that folding thing sold me. i really want one now

[@Its-Just-Zip]

I was honestly waiting on some of the Silverstone cases that were announced at Computex, but this might be a shoe-in to take over from that. Especially because of its size. Oh, you just made my homelab efforts more difficult.

[@45Drives]

Thank you - we'd love to chat and see how we can help with your HomeLab!

[@kjakobsen]

Also its nice to see them making products, that doesnt require mortaging your house.

[@jakeprewitt3009]

Hopefully coming soon is something between this and the HL15 for people who are limited to 18 inch depth racks.

[@45Drives]

Good idea!

[@gabrielenitti3243]

as a European homelabber myself I'll add my two cents: what I was personally looking for is some kind of quiet and highly expandable server with out-of-band management. I live in an apartment in southern Italy, so both space and electricity are a scarce resource, so a single bigger machine is ideal. AMD consumer CPUs are a really good choice as they support UDIMM ECC RAM and they are reasonably power efficient, however there is no adoption in the server space therefore no products in the used market. Designing a quality server case therefore becomes the main bottleneck. I would have preferred a more traditional ATX or uATX case as ITX motherboards are the most expensive and the least flexible. Having to use a M2 SATA controller is a no go as used SAS drives are usually cheaper. Ventilation seems scarce and Flex ATX PSUs are still uncommon. I would also have preferred hot swap bays paired with a proper backplane. 45 Drives's unit seems like a passive backplane, very similar to a cable splitter, while server ones actually have logic and ICs builtin to handle both hot-plugging and activity lights. I really love seeing some thought being put towards homelabbers, however this seems still far from being a good solution.

[@gogorichie]

Great video i loved the price comparison to Synology and Qnap section. It looks like the perfect size to fit on a wall mounted network rack.

[@45Drives]

Thank you!

[@angelgonzalez2379]

This looks very interesting to me. I've been considering moving away from used enterprise gear for about a year now. I'll keep it in mind once I start doing serious research.

[@45Drives]

We'd love to chat about how we can help with your project whenever you're ready!

[@DPCTechnology]

Love my HL15, I think this is gonna be a big hit... Seems like a more practical price point and a hell of a NAS!

[@wojtek-33]

So i understand the price, no real issues with that. 1 nic and having to choose between a gpu or 10G nic is tough though. They missed an opportunity to include a 2nd pcie case slot so you could throw an m.2 nic in there and have somewhere to attach it externally.

[@ToddSpatafore]

This is so cool! Finally I can get a 45Drives device.

[@45Drives]

Glad you like it!

[@moogs]

It’s a rip off

[@greenprotag]

Ah the fruits of your labor. If I was in the market I would definitely grab it.

[@45Drives]

Thank you!

[@mflotron]

Just reserved mine now! Was just about to buy a QNAP but this is honestly the perfect form factor and waaaay more powerful

[@agh8459]

I think I have just seen the building blocks of my next Ceph cluster...

[@45Drives]

Niiiiice!

[@XolandoX]

Very intrestring what 45 drives is able to make when they trow a bit of engineering at it. It edges on the proprietary of the shelve NAS solution, while they still make it possible to support a vast array of custom hardware.

[@45Drives]

Thank you for your feedback!

[@antoniocheca]

I was waiting for a product like this 8 bays to run unraid!

[@ewasteredux]

Well said Jeff! Looks well designed and expertly made. Wish I had the cash available to purchase it. Maybe some day...

[@45Drives]

Thank you for the positive design feedback!

[@d3xbot]

OOOOH This might be what I need to replace my R720XD! Nice and small, would actually fit on a desk, and (fingers crossed) be much lower noise! It looks like it'd be great for Plex, Immich, Borg/Time Machine, and general storage~ I could even see myself deploying such a unit to my parents' house for network backup and Immich

[@45Drives]

Works great for those uses and much more - we'd love to chat about how we could help you out!

[@aromaticsnail]

45Drives really need to expand out of North America and allow clients from other regions to buy from local suppliers.

[@45Drives]

We are available in many places worldwide, where are you located?

[@TheDeathM]

I would buy this if I had the money for it. This is exactly what I was looking for a few years ago when I got my Synology NAS

[@fuoman100]

Visited 45drives today, got to tour around. Their chassis are no joke top notch stuff. Got to see some of the stuff in their RND room. Love what these guys are doing. Their chassis though need to come down a bit in price but they are nice.

[@ygguazoid]

The design of this thing though … especially the paint. PERFECT FOR STEALTH LIVING ROOM DEPLOYMENT 😂

[@chomp7927]

this thing is going to be loud as hell with large drives and any sort of load on it, for the love of god don't put this in your living room lol

[@SudoYETI]

This is exactly the kind of device I was looking for. I went to go buy a NAS and was so underwhelmed at the specs of the machines but didn't want to build a giant ATX tower just to house a few drives.

[@RM-hn6ir]

For people who can't afford this, Erying does have Tigerlake Xeon boards that might be useable for many homelabs. Decent performance per-watt, 8C/16T, a less trash AVX512 implementation than Rocketlake, hardware virtualization *should* work, and cheap for what you get.

[@buhizkewl7105]

Don’t forget to support, monetarily or otherwise, any OS / software you end up rolling on one of these beautiful machines. That’s where a lot of the extra price for a Synology comes from.

[@MadMatty72]

Is what i want, nice one Craft Co and 45 Drives.

[@druxpack8531]

notice no shots of the back with it open? That's because Jeff knows that the lack of cooling back there is an issue...and the 4 bay is only a whole whopping $70 less for 50% bays?? don't buy this, it's a swing and miss.

[@AlphaConde-qy7vi]

Yeah, awful cooling and awful pricing. Also, steel ? For that price, it's a shame. Should have been an aluminium case... lighter and better thermal conductivity (especially important given the awful cooling).

[@TheQuinn50]

Agree, the hl4 barebones should at least be 200 cheaper for it be worth it since you might as well just spend the extra hundo

[@deefdragon]

The things that you're missing(and that's throwing you off) is that most companies have a "premium charge" for their higher end products. If you look at the iPhone for example, even though the next step up in memory would only cost maybe 25 in materials they charge $1-300 plus or whatever. With this new server the 8 drive model is really only going to be that little more expensive than the four Drive model, which means they're not adding in that premium charge that every other company will charge. that said, I won't agree or disagree on the opinions of the prices themselves, as that's always circumstance dependant.

[@acenio654]

​@@TheQuinn50That is likely the reason it's not any cheaper. They offer the cheaper version to lure you in and then you spend the extra because "it's only a little more"

[@GrandpasPlace]

I would not buy one but that is because im moving away from big hardware like that. Im using small (think size of a medium flower vase) systems that have 8c16t with 32g of ram, 2x nvme, 2x 3.5in bays, and 2x 2.5g network ports. Drop in a couple of 10tb hard drives and proxmox with the two drives set up in ceph. I just add another little system when I need to expand and add it to the cluster. If I need a share I can put a vm on it that shares the drive and set it for HA to move between them in a failure.

[@cracklingice]

This is slick design as you put it - but my requirements are full ATX. What I would want is basically the HL15 but at a reasonable price instead of $900. If it means a removable bottom panel and no backplane, I could live with that.

[@zacharylewis417]

So overall its an average chassis with x8 SATA drives. I just don't understand 45drives anymore lol. This doesn't fill a void in the market. Just adds more unneeded congestion. The Homelab community wants something between pro consumer and enterprise level. Similar to how Unifi does it but at a more affordable price. I just think 45Drives is trying to upsell to community that should know better. Honestly I'm waiting on Unifi to realize the market they have and make something.

[@zyntax81]

Would have liked to hear how much vibration this case makes while writing with 8 drives. Perfect for desktop, i have my doubts.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

Yes, because such a thing has never been done before 😂

[@zyntax81]

@@mitcHELLOworld Not sure i understand your comment. This was an ad. The case has no ventilation at all and no anti vibration. There is a good reason he "reviewed" it powered down.

[@SimonZerafa]

The HL4 sounds like it would be an amazing product for a general home or SOHO NAS and small server. I would add a remote controlled servo mechanism to open the case though. It's begging to have a gas strut to smoothly open and close that chassis 😉🖖

[@christopherwestphal7149]

hmmm... the bare kit and adding two 2.5" SSDs would be nice. 8 isnt quite enough (I outgrew that about half a decade ago). Kinda wish they still did 2.5" SAS high density SSDs in modern capacities. Those would be nice to pick up used and throw in something like this if it had a SAS 12GB backend.

[@45Drives]

We are adding the mounting holes for 2x2.5" SSDs!

[@dagamore]

I know that is a pre-prod unit, but how is it cooling the drives, from looking at the 45drives site, the front is not a wall of fans like their other options, the back also does not look like it was built with a bunch of airflow in mind. Any stress testing done on it with drive temps? like say a 8 disk z2 array during a drive replace/resilver going on. I am currently doing that in my truenas and even with it cranking away the drives are sitting at ~40c. and at that price point I really think it should have some sort of 10gb networking on it, yeah it is steel and not plastic but other options with at least dual 2.5 or dual 2.5 and 10gb for same or less. Does it support hot swapping of the drives at least?

[@faealiciadotsys]

The specs on this are almost on par with my own plan for my first homelab server. My current desktop is a Ryzen 7 5700G with 32GB RAM and it's in an old Antec Three Hundred Two case with plenty of 3.5" drive bays. If I hadn't already planned this build out to be able to recycle it into a homelab server once I do my next upgrade, I probably would've loved to jump on this because of how it's right there in the specs I'd want. That said, if I were to do it from scratch today, I'd shoot for an AM5 platform instead, since those CPUs have built-in AV1 encoding/decoding, meaning I wouldn't need to install an Arc GPU for transcoding. It would definitely boost the price tag, but it would free up that PCIe slot for something else. And if I wait for the B850/X870 chipsets, I might even be able to get onboard 10G networking too. All in all, though, this is an amazing little system and I'm glad it exists. I was looking for something like it even back when I started planning what ultimately became my current build way back in 2019. To finally see it become real is amazing, and I hope it takes off and forces the likes of Synology and everyone else to up their game too.

[@Sismodium]

THANK YOU! Finally something that is worth the investment! Why oh why has it taken so long?

[@briancmoses]

Companies and people have been serving up files just fine on CPUs that are potatoes compared to modern quad-core embedded Celeron CPUs. The whole "usually not fast enough to get out of their own way for storage needs" isn't very accurate. The HL8 is wildly priced, but really neat. If I had one, I'd put a quad core embedded Celeron CPU in it and help find it more work to do after watching it fully saturate its connectivity.

[@wwubwtndyoutube6027]

The idea of insane necessary CPU and RAM requirements just to push data on spinning rust is pushed by the TrueNAS community, their forums are extremely toxic too.

[@pappyman179]

@@wwubwtndyoutube6027 I'm using Truenas Scale, 16 x apps, a 4600G, 10 HDDs and 3 SSDs, 48 Gb RAM and I rarely idle over a few percent. Even booting up, I've never seen it peak over 43 percent CPU usage.

[@JustinLeif]

Nice! I've just been pricing out Homelab equipment also... and as much as the cheaper older rack mount units are enticing... their power draw and noise is a no-go. But, man that HL8 looks perfect :) Your vid's on Proxmox & Truenas have been gotten me to pull my almost 15yr AMD64FX system out of mothballs to test Proxmox and PCI passthrough. Which works... but man is it slow and the 64FX is not the best TDP in the world either... I now want a HL8 to use for a number of Homelab situations. As well as providing my wife a VM she can use when she not working in order to get rid of her old desktop and enjoy a nice fast VM without the extra heat and noise in her office :) Thank you for the video! I look forward to the next ;)

[@ScottPlude]

I love my ancient enterprise gear for only ONE reason: airflow I hate the noise, the power bill, the 24U rack that keeps begging me to buy more enterprise gear, etc. How does this unit handle heat? I see a lot of heat producing gear inside this case.

[@HerrRatzle]

Having just built my NAS with similar specs, this seems like a great purchase if you don't want to choose your own hardware and make the PC, and if money is not considered. I would not personally spend that much on a case, but it does seem perfect! Also 64gb RAM should be minimum for the amount paid here. ZFS uses a lot of RAM.

[@BlackCrow105]

As a owner of an HL15 i´m a bit concerned in regards of the hdd cooling? The HL15 exceled my expectations in that category with using some Arctic P12 PWMs at around 60% - in other chassis my 12x hdd´s where hitting above 40 C which from my perspective is to high. Am i missing something in the HL8?

[@motmontheinternet]

It's just generally understood that when you're buying a small NAS appliance that sits on a shelf, you aren't actually supposed to run all 8 drives constantly 24/7. This is true of all cases in this form factor. If you're buying a case that reasonably needs high airflow, you're supposed to buy a rackable unit.

[@dustojnikhummer]

@@motmontheinternet Tell that to TrueNAS. ZFS doesn't like when you turn HDDs off.

[@motmontheinternet]

@@dustojnikhummer Turning drives off in TrueNAS works fine. Also eight drives just idling while still spinning aren't that hot.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@motmontheinternet keeping those drives cool does not need "reasonably high airflow", but it does need SOME airflow. Most NAS appliances do it with a single 120mm fan or similar.

[@kev2020-z9s]

At last a well design chassis a lot bet than the ones you can find online thank you and keep up the good work.

[@45Drives]

Thank you - glad you like it!

[@user-cm3wd5hk1p]

That sparkle GPU is the first thing I thought of when I saw that GPU slot was open!

[@CamdogXIII]

I've been really happy with my HL15. I threw a 2nd gen epyc + H12 Supermicro board + 256gb of ram in it. the thing was great to build in. I might pick one of these up to be an offsite backup.... Too bad the HL4 doesn't really scale down in price compared to the HL8... would grab an HL4 in a heartbeat at around 300$

[@alph47ech]

I would argue that outside of rack mounting, it's much more space conscious to do an under-desk tower versus a desktop NAS. By going desktop it just creates a large, growing list of sacrifices you have to accept in order to have it placed on a shelf versus under a desk and out of sight. For example, motherboard limitations, only 4 or 8 drives, limited SSD, limited PCIE slots, smaller form factor MB (limiting options) and reduced connectivity. Same with graphics card expansion. Big list. Or, you can use something like a Fractal Define 7 (various heights) and have near limitless configuration options and huge drive numbers plus 5.25" bay expansion wit Icydock. My $0.02. 45Drives just still feels like they're missing the mark to me, but I definitely appreciate the work they're doing and where this will all continue to go!

[@danieldougan269]

I think these devices should work with or without rack mounting. Maybe you don't have a rack NOW, but if you got one in the future, you would be able to use your existing chassis. Or maybe you can buy a rackmount adapter later? Optional ears would be a great thing. For me, the key spec on something like this is noise. I live in an apartment. I don't have a garage or utility room. My ancient "crap" Synology and Buffalo TeraStation NAS boxes are in my living room. Honestly, the Synology experience is terrific. I wish the Debian / Webmin experience on my TeraStation were that intuitive. Sure, running things like Docker would be nice, but for me, it really is all about storage. I just want to set it and forget it, but I am constantly doing irritating tasks. Video editing over a network is another task where people could use better hardware. That includes ingesting footage from SD or CFExpress cards. Someone needs to make that more seamless on server equipment.

[@jl80kreykes]

What a great piece of kit, I would definitely get the fully built unit to replace/ downsize my current little home lab in a fractal meshify case with a ryzen 3600.

[@andrebrait]

8:54 You can stil use the 4 NVMe card in 8x4x4x configuration, but you have to skip the second NVMe slot

[@montecorbit8280]

At 6:15 5500GT [Edit: I understood you had gotten the bare bones kit and installed your own motherboard and other equipment....that was my misunderstanding.] Did you know that's a PCI 3.0 chip according to CPU-L? Did you choose to make that trade off because the 5600 doesn't appear to have an IGPU? Thank you for your time....

[@CraftComputing]

They have an upgrade option for a 5700G.

[@montecorbit8280]

​@@CraftComputing I just made an edit explaining that I thought you had got the bare bones one and was reviewing the chassis with your own motherboard choice and other equipment choice....that was my misunderstanding. The 5700G is still PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0 . Not sure why AMD chose to go that route.... Thank you for pointing out the upgrade....

[@maruohon]

@@CraftComputing Sadly neither of those CPUs have ECC support. None of the 5000 series APU-based models (Cezanne) support ECC, unless it's a Pro variant.

[@gerowen]

Does the backplane work as a "storage controller" where the individual drives are presented as a single drive, or does it make all the individual drives visible to the operating system? The reason I ask is this looks like a great case to migrate over to but I already have several terabytes worth of data on an encrypted software RAID 5, so I'd really like to just move my drives over into the new case and have everything work in the same way it already does.

[@petermarin]

I wish you featured alcohol less. Otherwise, great content as usual!

[@theInnocentJem]

This is the home server I aspire to build in….. soon