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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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 ....

[zanthor]

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.

[Nitro]

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).

[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