I was just looking at and decided to buy a H2+ SBC for future nodes. Was curious if anyone else has used this or something similar? I also purchased the “case 1” that holds two HDDs since the board has a pair of SATA3 ports.
All of my current nodes are running on raspberry pis, which I like a lot. But I was intrigued by its future-forward design with 2.5 gigabit ethernet, NVMe support, and pair of SO-DIMM slots.
It looks like a pretty soild SOC its just that it costs a bit more then a RPI4. which I couldn’t really recommend over a rpi4 if its sole purpose was to run nodes.
why not? I would always recommend a SATA connection over USB connection that the rpi offers.
Well apart from the price difference of course… rpi is a lot cheaper than the H2+
Now that I looked at it, I would replace my homeserver with this in an instant, if it had one pcie slot to connect an esata card so I can connect my esata HDD enclosure… don’t want to use the usb3.0
Yep, the pair of SATA connections/power ports were the biggest selling point for me. I just recently replaced two 6TB HDDs in my NAS with 12TB HDDs, so I’ve got those sitting on the shelf that I figure at some point I’ll use them for two more nodes.
As always, thanks for the feedback!
Because you can build a cheap PC to do the samething, You need to buy ram external psu for hard drives an external encloser. It would end up costing close to a full desktop by the time your done.
yeah that is true. It’s not a cheap solution.
I thought of buying it till I saw the price and what would be needed to setup… 300 Cad alone for me…
yeah I didn’t quite calculate all the costs… at first I thought it was with RAM. but all those mini-pcs look very attractive but I always forget they are barebone, no RAM, nothing… then I realize that staying with my custom built desktop pc as homeserver is cheaper, even though it might use 20-30W more…
Yeah, I priced it out to around that as well in CAD. It’s a really cool device, but the value just isn’t there.
You can NOT build a PC this size for the same money, at least not from new parts.
Is that a challenge?
But I didn’t say new but more at the used pc market, the cpu is not a powerful one you can find a pc for cheap to compare.
Like I said this SOC isn’t a complete setup you further need to buy stuff for it. When I said 300 cad that is for the SOC alone nothing else the price could easily reach 500 dollars after you buy everything to get started.
No PC is as small as a SOC, you get way more connectivity though.
The main drawback of the H"+ for me it that it only has 2 sata parts. I’d rather have an old computer with 4-6 sata ports and if need be I can add more via pcie.
Personally I have no trouble finding PCs with an i3, 4-8gb of ram and a hard drive for 50-100 usd here in Switzerland.
I did find on this website, a M.2 to PCIe adaptor that would work with this board.
which I assume means you could add additional SATA ports.
But anyways, good discussion all.
How’s that? The SBC is like 130 USD with a PSU included, you only need the SATA power cable, 4 or 8gigs SODIMM and a cheap m.2 boot drive
Believe me I checked it out before I posted this, https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07LHBMC8W?pf_rd_r=ZC1TQE3VCPW709H86HVZ&pf_rd_p=05326fd5-c43e-4948-99b1-a65b129fdd73
The main website that sells it sells for a decent price but shipping is 50 dollars.
You still need to buy ram for it, and an external power source to power hard drives, and a case to hold these drives less you just spread it across a table.
I didnt see power for sata on the board so I assume there isnt one. But I guess there is just with a different cable.
Just buy this cable:
The white ports next to the SATA sata connectors on the board are meant for that.
The supplied PSU is a 60w unit, able to power both the H2+ and your HDD 
Also, is buying directly from their Korean shop not an option? Luckily, there is a german retailer that charges a pretty decent 150€ (~165 USD), which seems ok since that already includes taxes and does not involve having to deal with customs…
I don’t even believe there is a cheap PC that offern 2x 2.5GBe
Keep in mind this will only work with SATA controller cards that only use power from the PCIe slot.
Also the 2.5GBe is useless though less you have a router or switch that supports it. Its a nice SOC that would be good for a NAS though.
I find it a bit overkill for a storagenode but you’re right it’s not usual on consumer PCs.