Rack question

[Wasmachineman_NL]

I have too much computers, too little space, and I would love to consolidate my crap.

Is going rack mount for systems like the Better Retro Rig etc useful for saving space or pointless and am I better off sticking with normal cases?

 

[i386]

normal cases

define "normal" cases
I have 3 big towers, all from Lian-Li and with different sizes.
With rackmount you have more prefictable sizes: width is always 17.75" wide or high (19" with rackmount ear/rails/etc.) and a multiple of 1U in height (or width) with usually a max depth of 90 cm. I prefer rackmount stuff and I even use it in my living room for the avr, power amp, media/sim racing pc, consoles and networking

 

[elvisimprsntr]

I briefly went the pull out rack method to hide everything in a cabinet, but it introduced unsolvable thermal issues. Rack mountable gear just adds to the cost and limits options.



Now I simply put everything on a wire rack with casters and hang drapes to hide everything. Makes it easier to route connections.

 

[Wasmachineman_NL]

define "normal" cases

Define 7/XL, TT Core X5/X9 etc

I briefly went the pull out rack method to hide everything in a cabinet, but it introduced unsolvable thermal issues. Rack mountable gear just adds to the cost and limits options.

View attachment 44558

Now I simply put everything on a wire rack with casters and hang drapes to hide everything. Makes it easier to route connections.


View attachment 44555

If I had more vertical space and not a sloping roof I would've just considered this.

 

[itronin]

I briefly went the pull out rack method to hide everything in a cabinet, but it introduced unsolvable thermal issues. Rack mountable gear just adds to the cost and limits options.

Now I simply put everything on a wire rack with casters and hang drapes to hide everything. Makes it easier to route connections.

Throwback to the mid-late '90's and stacks of headless sparcstation 10's running sunos and penitum 90 PC's running FreeBSD.

 

[ca3y6]

Plus you like me, may be compulsively opening the servers to keep tweaking, upgrading and simplifying. Rack servers aren't really designed for that, they are a pain to pull out and move back. Tower servers that you can open with a simple button are much more suitable I think. Put them on a small dolly so they can rotate and move easily!

 

[i386]

Rack servers aren't really designed for that, they are a pain to pull out and move back. Tower servers that you can open with a simple button are much more suitable I think.

I can't agree...
My supermicro 836, 846 and 745 are pretty easy to open/service. Short cables will be a problem if you want to pull the server out of the rack, but I think this is a selfmade problem... (I'm using 0.5-1M qsfp28 cables for my servers and I have to remove them to pull the server out )