Thoughts on HL8 by 45Drives?

[iif2fo]

Has anyone heard of the HL8 storage server by 45Drives? Seems pretty interesting for running Jellyfin.
https://store.45homelab.com/presale/hl8

It's a small ITX server with 8 3.5in hard drive bays.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO AX 1.0
CPU: Ryzen 5 5500GT or Ryzen 7 5700G
Memory: Up to 64GB ECC

There's no GPU, but it seems like you should be able to fit an Arc A380.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IitwrXJuKzw&t=503s

They even have different options: buy just the case, case+power, full build.

I'm kiiiinda thinking of buying this... except I'm not sure if I should just buy the case and migrate my existing hardware or if I need to buy more parts.

My current motherboard has two SATA ports that I connected from the motherboard to my two drives.
I've never built anything with more than 2 drives.
How can they get 8 drives working with that motherboard?

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B55...X-10/sp#sp

1. 1 x M.2 connector (M2A_CPU), integrated in the CPU, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280 SSDs:
   - AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series and Ryzen™ 3000 Series Processors support SATA and PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSDs
   - AMD Ryzen™ Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series and Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series Processors support SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSDs
   
2. 1 x M.2 connector (M2B_SB) on the back of the motherboard, integrated in the Chipset, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280 SSDs:
   - Supporting SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSDs
   
3. 4 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors, integrated in the Chipset:
   - Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10
   

Seems like this should have no problems running Jellyfin, right?

[3216]

How can they get 8 drives working with that motherboard?

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B55...X-10/sp#sp

1. 1 x M.2 connector (M2A_CPU), integrated in the CPU, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280 SSDs:
   - AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series and Ryzen™ 3000 Series Processors support SATA and PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSDs
   - AMD Ryzen™ Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series and Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series Processors support SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSDs
   
2. 1 x M.2 connector (M2B_SB) on the back of the motherboard, integrated in the Chipset, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280 SSDs:
   - Supporting SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSDs
   
3. 4 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors, integrated in the Chipset:
   - Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10
   

 Theres an M.2 to 4xSATA adapter in there. 

https://youtu.be/IitwrXJuKzw?si=duLnZ_VwJdH1monM has some more details.

[TheDreadPirate]

 Theres an M.2 to 4xSATA adapter in there. 

https://youtu.be/IitwrXJuKzw?si=duLnZ_VwJdH1monM has some more details.

That sounds right.  Labeled 1 thru 4 in my pic.  Looks like there is 1 free SATA connector on the M.2 SATA adapter.

   

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This would be a neat little ITX server. Just make sure to put a NVMe SSD in the M.2 slot on the back of the motherboard.

[3216]

The only thing that puts me off their compete build for combined NAS and Jallyfin usage is that you can either install a GPU for transcoding, or a 10Gbps network card. You can’t have both.

An intel version would be nice as that solves the transcoding issues, and leaves you the PCI slot for future-proofing the network side of things.