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://a.co/d/j6zZrhO

https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/

https://a.co/d/7N0HakF

If I remember I’ll post the pcie card with 4x sata I use.