Hardest part was mounting everything in my 1U chassis. Using an ATX power supply with the break out board solved a lot of problems. That way the SBC gets 12v, and the sata drives get power at the same time. And you’ve got connectors for fans and stuff. You can use a smaller form factor PSU. I think mine is like 200W but that’s more than enough to power the board, expansion card, fans, and drives.
On the software side, I just use the Debian based distro “Armbian”. But it looks like you can use others.
https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/
https://a.co/d/7N0HakF
If I remember I’ll post the pcie card with 4x sata I use.
I’ve looked at this route before, but worried that it would be a headache to get everything running smoothly. What’s your experience been?
Hardest part was mounting everything in my 1U chassis. Using an ATX power supply with the break out board solved a lot of problems. That way the SBC gets 12v, and the sata drives get power at the same time. And you’ve got connectors for fans and stuff. You can use a smaller form factor PSU. I think mine is like 200W but that’s more than enough to power the board, expansion card, fans, and drives.
On the software side, I just use the Debian based distro “Armbian”. But it looks like you can use others.