Vertical Mounting

[halfelite]

Is there any downside to mounting vertically? I have two 4u cases a Norco 4020 and a Supermicro sc846. I am redoing my home office and dont have room for a rack nor room for them to really sit horizontal. So was thinking of turning them vertical and rotating the fans to pull from the bottom and push out the top.

I am thinking it can go in the closet with one side of the closet door removed for good airflow. Here is a picture of the norco case sitting to test the fit. I think I could build something fairly strong out of angle iron to get them up in the air. Dont mind the rat nest of cables everything is thrown together to work while office is being done.

 

[TuxDude]

Shouldn't be a problem. And I wouldn't flip the fans - probably cause more problems with air not going where it needs to vs the very small efficiency gain from letting hot-air-rises help.

 

[Chuckleb]

I agree on the fans, I'd do front-to-back (aka top-to-bottom) in order to avoid sucking in additional dust-bunnies/hair/etc.

 

[halfelite]

Alright sound good. I will keep fans the way they are. Hopefully I can get to the home depot today to pick up some angle iron.

 

[Brian Puccio]

I agree on the fans, I'd do front-to-back (aka top-to-bottom) in order to avoid sucking in additional dust-bunnies/hair/etc.

I've got a small, server rack I made (with spare IKEA wood and some vertical rails I bought for less than $40) and at the base, I've got a 1RU blank. But it's not solid, it's perforated. The amount of dust bunnies on it is disgusting. Avoiding dust by going top-to-bottom is probably a good idea. With the airflow the fans will provide, I doubt they'll have to fight hard against the "hot air rises" force. (I forget, is that convection?)

 

[TuxDude]

It's not just dust bunnies - rack servers are designed for front-to-back airflow and just flipping fans can have strange results. Think about this - if you put your hand near the intake of a regular 80mm case fan (not right over it, but a few inches away), can you feel the airflow at all? What if you put your hand the same distance on the other side - I bet you feel it now. Yes the same volume of air is going into the fan as comes out of it, but how that air flows is radically different and is quite possibly important. Servers are often designed with plastic baffles, carefully placed redundant fans, etc. and those engineers are modelling air-flow vs heat output and are a lot smarter about this kind of stuff than we are. I wouldn't mess with it, just leave the airflow as it was designed to work.

 

[halfelite]

I built the rack. But ran into a problem the ears on the SC846 are not strong enough to hold the full weight of the case so need to build a support system to hold the SC846. The Norco case ears are a beast and I feel safe having them hold the weight. I just need to make it back to the store for another piece of angle iron. I planned it out to well the first time and bought only what I thought was needed and had zero scraps left.

 

[T_Minus]

SuperMicro could improve their rack ears on ALL their chassis IMHO. The "thin" rivets or "thin & short" screws simply DO NOT hold up with the sheet metal chassis and 1/4" ears and they pull-through. Even a chassis sideways that's stored and bumped I've come back to months later and gone "WTF, how did this occur!! It hasn't even moved!".

Then again I'm not mounting them sideways, or relying on the ears, but it's my least favorite part of any supermicro chassis, and one I've broken the must or received broken the most, and the ears are so "beef" compared to the chassis a slight bump damages the chassis holes/rivets/screws, it's one area that could be made MUCH beefier with little effort IMHO and experience with metalwork.

/rant off


ps: yeah we're probably handling them more rough, and using them differently htan intended, that doesn't change the fact they are the "weak link" in their chassis to me.

 

[halfelite]

After looking it over. I think if I can find some slotted flat iron I can make my own rail/bracket using the original rail hooks. Trouble will be finding slotted flat most of the time its punched hole.

 

[halfelite]

Finally got it mounted vertically. And for some reason drive temps increased 15 degrees. While it was sitting in the closet horizontal drive temps hovered around 33c-38c. Now they are 40c-50c . I just realized I still had the top of the case off so put it back hopefully it was the fans just not pulling air across the drives. Will monitor and update again.

 

[markarr]

How high off the ground did you get it with the angle iron?

 

[halfelite]

Here is the picture of it. Dont mind the wire mess still. I ran smart again now that the lid has been in place and temps are hovering around 37c. So a slight increase from the 33-35c they were at horizontal. But that could also be ambient temperature effect

 

[vl1969]

Looks nice. You know they actually make a vertical wall mount racks. You moint it on the wall and hang thw server on it just like that.

 

[halfelite]

Ye I saw it. But there is actually another norco case going in the rack as well so its not just a single server

 

[vl1969]

Nice, lools like you have the same ups us I do.