Kinkajou Posted January 8 Posted January 8 Upside: Relatively inexpensive if you can get a good deal and they aren't too terribly old (the two I got are from 2019). Downsides: It only supports four drives up front that you can swap out without taking the side panel off (I knew that going in from pictures I saw) It only supports one additional HDD internally and it would be mounted in the 5.25" bay, which needs an additional adapter. If the front flex bays have been converted to use NVMe, you cannot use a mechanical HDD or a 2.5" SSD in those slots, it must be a NVMe using their special carrier cards. So there is another additional component you would need to purchase. The front SD card slot shows as a HDD and I have been unable to get the system to stop reporting it as a storage device, I only figured it out by putting an SD card in the slot and now HexOS reports it there with the storage of the SD card even when the SD isn't inserted. It persists after restarts. Supposedly the PCIe slots are capable of bifurcation but there's no clear setting in the BIOS about it, so hopefully when I get a PCIe to NVMe carrier card it will be able to recognize the four additional SSDs I want to populate it with. Hopefully this post saves someone that may be looking at one of these machines to use for their system from the same headaches I have run into. I'm excited to get started on my journey with HexOS, just a matter of fixing the front backplane to accept HDDs instead of NVMe and getting the drives I want to use. 4 drives will be plenty for my needs for the time being, but I know others might feel too limited by that. Quote
ubergeek Posted January 8 Posted January 8 Yeah I am not gonna say they are best use case for Hex. They do make one hell of a Proxmox node Quote
Kinkajou Posted January 9 Author Posted January 9 I'm going to make it work, was just hoping for more HDD bays internally. 4 total storage bays will be sufficient for my use case, at least for the next few years, hoping I can use these till 2030 before upgrading to something more purpose built as a storage server. Also while frustrating to work in, the design and form factor is rather nice on the outside, I wish more cases looked similar. I'm not big on glass size panels and RGB everything. Quote
kerfoster2 Posted January 9 Posted January 9 I was a little disappointed in mine too. I assumed that the NVME boot drive would be on the board not a carrier, and that I could always stick a drive somewhere in the case. Now I see that there is only 1 extra power connector which doesn't leave many options. Quote
ubergeek Posted January 9 Posted January 9 16 hours ago, kerfoster2 said: I was a little disappointed in mine too. I assumed that the NVME boot drive would be on the board not a carrier, and that I could always stick a drive somewhere in the case. Now I see that there is only 1 extra power connector which doesn't leave many options. So keep in mind you can swap in a typical power supply if you buy the adapter cables. And if you get a bit creative with a 3d printer you should be able to add a few more drives or make a external drive caddy to connect more if the pc is not going to move Quote
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