Hello,

 

After 5 years of loyal service, my Helios64 SBC just died on me last night.

Would a Radxa Rock5 ITX+ and a M.2 to Hexa SATA Adapter could be a good drop in replacement to reuse the case?

Both are Mini-ITX so it would fit.

I know I would lose the front panel lights and power/reset button, and I would need to cut the back panel to fit the I/O shield but these are minor problems.

 

What I am more concerned with, is if it is at all possible to power the 5 HDD from the radxa board (as the Helios 64 board didi).

Helios engineers had made it possible to do it with minimum power, mainly by starting up the drives sequentially.

 

Can the molex 4-Pin connector on the Radxa can do it?
Provided I could buy/make an adapter to connect it to the J8 harness of the case?

 

That would definitely be a great thing if I could reuse that very fine enclosure.

 

Thanks for your input on that matter.

 

Edited December 25, 2025Dec 25 by ploubi

I like it, unfortunately I couldn't find anything about the specs of the 12V/5V molex output. Only the recommended power supply using the 12V barrel (90W/ 12V/8A).

You should probably reach to Radxa on their discord/forum to find out if the board can supports the intensity peak of 5 3.5" HDD spinning up a the same time....

 

Thx, i'll do that

Oh and i missed one thing, the Helios64's board is nano itx (120x120), the one from radxa you want to use as replacement is mini itx (170x170)

Edited December 26, 2025Dec 26 by luneth
Typo

How did I miss that?

Well that settles it...

 

Thanks

That the Helios64 SW/firmware did sequencing of 3.5inch HDD spin-up is indeed a good method to limit the maximum current draw. I do not know how power architecture is done in Helios64, but w.r.t. 3.5inch disks, so the 12V power need, you might avoid letting the current of the 12V flow through the SBC/motherboard. It is not needed, there might be connectors, still it is not needed. Even for traditional x86 PCs, 12V (and 5V as well) comes straight from the PSU, that is 100-1000W or so usually. The 12V also does not need to be exactly 12V, I feed a 4TB WD HDD from a 12V car battery in the field, is solar powered and 10 years old or so. Due to battery wear out, it sees a voltage of 10.5-14 Volts or so. No problem. 5V for SBC and some other small stuff is via a 3A DC/DC module. A car battery (72Ah or so) should have no issue with spinning up a handfull of 3.5inch HDDs simultaneously.

The  PCIe-to-SATA chips support hotplug, so you could use some P-MOSFETs or so to have GPIO-controlled powerswitch, but is of course electronics circuit design and soldering etc.

Also maybe think if you need all that 5 HDDs (and at the same time) and with a RK3588 SoCo that can go as low as 1.5Watt idle. 5 spinning disks is 20W or so. 

Board that would fit though, the H4 PLUS from hardkernel, limited to 4 sata instead of 5. 120x120, but only 2 screws would fit I believe...