I would like to move towards a clean looking rack mount setup - Pros and Cons?

Printable View

05-31-2009, 07:15 AM
Nitro

I would like to move towards a clean looking rack mount setup - Pros and Cons?

Currently my 6 PC's are just lined up next to each other and its pretty ugly, a waste of space and different box styles. I think I would like to rebuild them all into a nice looking rack mount case, possibly the following:

http://www.lanshack.com/20-Unit-Port...TchXl4dCbJrp4A

http://www.lanshack.com/images/Stand.../prack-20u.jpg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811165154

http://www.istarusa.com/images/rackm...0b10sal007.jpg

Has anyone done this and ran into issues. Any problems building a high end setup into these boxes with space or ventilation? Just wanna know if I'm getting myself into any issues before i drop a lot of cash on this.
05-31-2009, 07:35 AM
CaptainEO

Make sure you have room for the GPUs - you might need 4U chassis. It will be hot and LOUD (unless you are very careful about selecting quiet fans).
05-31-2009, 09:42 AM
Lax

I don't know how much experience you have with racks, so here goes. Definitely hot and loud, and definitely need 4U per box (to fit the video card as CaptainEO said). The chassis you're looking at is probably fine, if not expensive. You may need a plan to move heat from the back of the rack -- since they will be stacked on top of each other, the heat from the lower ones will go straight up to the back of the top one and make it more difficult to lower its temperature. The heat from each one underneath also will radiate to the one directly above it. So if you're putting heavy load on them, make sure to plan around that. A 20" box fan from your local wal-mart might be fine, just make sure the ambient temperature is kept low enough that the case fans can do their job.
05-31-2009, 10:40 AM
Noids99

If hot and noisy is an issue, maybe a couple of these could do the trick. Obviously going to add to the expense of the whole system, but then again, a clean looking rack mount setup isn't really the cheapest solution for boxing. I suppose you would also have to look for more than a 20U rack then also...

http://www.frozencpu.com/images/prod...ge/cas-354.jpg
05-31-2009, 01:40 PM
Powerwar

Rackmount chassis are for datacenters mainly.

They are loud, noisy and heat disipation is thinked in a completely different way than your vanilla home PC. Making a good rackmount installation is expensive.

If you decide to go ahead then you need the following besides the rack itself:

1 ) Calculate how much power will all your machines burn together. Get a correct UPS system to be able to hold them up for 15 minutes at least after power has been disconnected. This is needed to avoid problems in case of power supply cut and to normalize your power usage with your home power grid. Usually in some cases your PCs may demand more or less power, the UPS system will take care of these peaks without overloading your electrical installation. Having all the PCs racked this is very important because if they run low on power they may cut on ventilator speed and end burning some expensive component. HDs, CPU and video cards are the first to burn, but you could also end with a damaged motherboard or your own house on fire... no joke.

2 ) Make sure to buy rackmount cases for your PCs. As explained by other posters, you need 4U ones because your graphics cards need lots of space. The cases you need must have front to rear ventillation and NO ventilation holes on the sides. There are 4U rackmount cases that can also go as pedestals, so if they overheat due to concentration you can always get one or two boxes out... These cases must have really strong ventilation. If you drop a piece of paper (DIN A4 format will do ok for the test) at about 10 cm in front of the case while it's working and it doesn't stick to the case just by the power of your fans instead of dropping to the ground, your boxes may burn without a properly air conditioned environment.

3 ) When placing the machines into the rack don't leave free space between them or leave at least 4U space. This is because if you leave 1 or 2U your rack air flow will get severely altered and you may get lots of extra heat due to hot air return and convection. Specially convection is a big issue. The boxes you have pointed in your post may burn because they don't have front to rear air flow design.

4 ) Make sure the room where these machines are has a POWERFUL air conditioning system AND a BIG WINDOW. Failure to fit these requirements may endanger your own life. Due to the considerably higher air flow and the heat dissipation, your computers room air will get burned really fast and this ends causing lots of medical problems if you breathe that air too much, including cancer. Also since the heating of the roon will be much faster than your current setup, you may end getting a heat shock without even noticing it... If you feel head pain or naussea while in that room, go out and drink something cold. Opening the windows to get the room ventillated will be needed considerably more often than with your current setup.

5 ) Make sure your floor can support all the rack + rack mountable cases weight. A rack mountable case and the rack itself weight considerably more than your current vanilla home PCs. The full rack with the UPS, the cabling, network switch and the 6 machines will be near 200 - 300 kg weight. If your room floor is wooden it will leave marks on the wood.

My rackmountable gaming station is in fact my old video processing cluster master server. It has 8 HDs inside because I also use it for some work from time to time and having less than 3 TB of disk space for video processing makes me unhappy. It has the HDs in two different "mini cases" into the big case with 4 HDs each one. Each of these cases has it's own ventillator and they are mounted in the front part of the case. the HDs are lined with the air flow direction, so the air just refrigerates them before continuing to the central and rear part of the machine. The case itself is longer than the normal home PC case, but that's usual with all rack mountable cases.
Then the CPU has it's normal CPU ventillator and the Graphics card it's own stock ventillator.
On the rear there is the PSU ventillator and another BIG one to take out all the extra hot air from the machine.

The PSU on this machine is 700 W. Assuming you have 6 PCs with 600 - 700W PSU each one, that's near 4.000W heat dissipation stacked in a single rack and probably without proper air conditioning. I wouldn't say it's a good idea to have such thing at home, unless you live really near a firefight place.
05-31-2009, 03:59 PM
Starbuck_Jones

You don't need 4U chassis for video cards.

http://www.dell.com/content/products...=04&l=en&s=bsd

2U chassis with dual video cards in a rack mount. Course if your building your own your mileage may vary. If all your wanting to do is buy a rack to put your boxes in. That's fine. Just get some rack shelves. and stack them in there on their sides and stuff. No special hardware needed and your clutter will disappear. Even a cheap bookshelf can be used as a "rack".
05-31-2009, 04:11 PM
Stabface

One big con is chapped nipples, you just can't imagine how much lotion you end up rubbing on ... oh, different rack you say? Carry on then, as you were.
05-31-2009, 06:09 PM
Lax

Quote:

2) Heat -You're building HOME PCs in RACKMOUNT Cases - you're not buying SERVER level hardware. So all this crap about "death by heat" is a bit over the edge. Yes, it gets hot - No, its not doing to kill you. You wont' be buying HP Proliant servers after all...

I'm not going to say it will kill anyone, but correct me if I am wrong: Typical servers in a datacenter are not under heavy load most of the time (hence the race for virtualization now), and don't have piping hot video cards in them either. Under load, I stand by my statement that this is going to run hot, and will need airflow to move the heat behind the case. My multiboxing PC is in a rack mount chassis, and I usually have a separate fan running, and I generally need to keep the top off it as well. Then again, I'm putting 5 instances on one PC, not 1 instance per 5 PC. It wont be AS bad with 1 per PC but it's still going to be a lot of heat.
05-31-2009, 08:33 PM
Zyxxsb

A bit off topic, but worthy of mentioning because of the cooling concerns with multiple computers.

This is a unit I recently purchased and it's working great so far. Although the room I have it in is only 250 sq ft, it is very quiet and cool :)
It's a sharp CVP 12LX 11,500 BTU portable a/c.
Best price I've found is @ newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16896111041
05-31-2009, 08:36 PM
Lax

Quote:

He is already running five pcs... He is just changing the cases and the organizational layout

Stacked on top of one another, and the heat will go straight up to the top ones ;) Going from side by side to stacking is a big difference for the heat.
05-31-2009, 10:57 PM
Nitro

I'm sure the heat should be fine as far as the room goes, i already run 6 PC's and 8 x 20 inch monitors.

I would aim for some fans that will balance high air flow and low decibel ratings.
06-01-2009, 05:25 AM
Sam DeathWalker

I use thermaltake sharks (6), I have really low noise (no gpu on board tiny fans and no tiny fans on the motherboard, and no tiny power supply fans, all are 120 or bigger), no heat problems and can swap out hard drives in under 2 mintues, and they look cool. And lots of room to work with when changing motherboards or whatnot.

Everyfan (cpu, gpu, powersupply) is over 120 or bigger, thats helps noise a lot.
06-01-2009, 08:01 AM
Noids99

lol indeed.

Nice to hear a bit about your cooling setup SD, but not really sure that helps the OP out with the rackmount pros/cons ;)

+1 for >=120mm fans though.
06-01-2009, 03:21 PM
Starbuck_Jones

Cooling is going to be the same regardless if your boxes are under the desk, on a shelf, or in a rack. Same with noise. This will only change if the hardware changes. Moving the current hardware into different chassis will not change the power consumption or the heat put out. If the room is currently capable of handling it then it still will.
06-02-2009, 01:17 AM
Sam DeathWalker

I'm just suggesting a superior (at least in the areas I consider important; low noise, best air cooling, fast hard drive swaping, and room to work when updating motherboards) alternative to rack mounting. Although sharks are like $150 each. I am sure rack mounting does give an overall cleaner look though but ....
06-02-2009, 08:30 AM
zanthor

Quote:

Originally Posted by 'Starbuck_Jones',index.php?page=Thread&postID=2060 94#post206094

Cooling is going to be the same regardless if your boxes are under the desk, on a shelf, or in a rack. Same with noise. This will only change if the hardware changes. Moving the current hardware into different chassis will not change the power consumption or the heat put out. If the room is currently capable of handling it then it still will.

This is not quite true. When you enter a rack situation the points brought up are very valid - heat rises, you need good front to back airflow - I have three cases here that simply wouldn't work well in racks - side and top fans are useless when you put them in a rack blowing into the side of the rack and the bottom of another computer. The heat going upwards can cook units higher in the rack if you aren't careful.

That said - everyone jumping on the enterprise bandwagons off their rocker... a UPS for gaming systems is a bit overkill, one that will drive them for 15 minutes is REALLY overkill.
06-02-2009, 01:00 PM
Nitro

Quote:

Originally Posted by 'zanthor',index.php?page=Thread&postID=206235#post 206235

Quote:

Originally Posted by 'Starbuck_Jones',index.php?page=Thread&postID=2060 94#post206094

Cooling is going to be the same regardless if your boxes are under the desk, on a shelf, or in a rack. Same with noise. This will only change if the hardware changes. Moving the current hardware into different chassis will not change the power consumption or the heat put out. If the room is currently capable of handling it then it still will.

This is not quite true. When you enter a rack situation the points brought up are very valid - heat rises, you need good front to back airflow - I have three cases here that simply wouldn't work well in racks - side and top fans are useless when you put them in a rack blowing into the side of the rack and the bottom of another computer. The heat going upwards can cook units higher in the rack if you aren't careful.

That said - everyone jumping on the enterprise bandwagons off their rocker... a UPS for gaming systems is a bit overkill, one that will drive them for 15 minutes is REALLY overkill.

I already have UPS for my gaming systems. Not overkill at all imo. We get power flashes here a few times a month and one well timed outage is all it takes to corrupt a hard drive(yes, it happened to me before).
06-02-2009, 03:40 PM
Lax

I am also a big fan of having a UPS, mostly for the AVR feature so that a brownout or two here and there doesn't screw me. That and having a minute or two during an outage to shut down the PC instead of the power just cutting is a big help, especially if you're in the middle of something more important at the time