I think I installed mine via USB stick and had no issues.
I managed to get one of the new heatpipes for mine, rather run it as cool as I can without extra fans etc.
Do I need to buy any power adaptors to fit an SSD to the Gen8?
Search for.
StarTech 12 inch SATA Serial ATA Cable
LINDY 0.15m 3.5" Power Female to SATA Power Adapter
that's all you need to get an SSD working
If you fancy 16 GB then:
2 x Kingston Technology 8 GB DDR3 1,600 MHz DIMM ECC Memory Module
Its like we have the same setup
Stelly