Looks a bit tacky not having the fans/drives lined up vertically, but in the end a good idea, probably cheaper than buying a secondhand commercial rackmount 'structure' and some 2U cases.
Personally I would've used 120mm fans, as in my opinion anything under that is a waste of power for the ratio of air:noise they produce.
Great so far, fans I dont think are a "major" problem, but maybe getting all the same grills for them would make it more universal. Also try masking the drives to all the same colour or something, other than that it is a great job.
cool. i really dig your homebuilt rack. i'd have mental plans of making my own for ages but never got around to it. how noisy is it? that's my cheif concern, wanting to make it as silent as possible. did you consider using a central air conditioning type design? i.e. have a large, slow (quiet), high CFM fan on the bottom shelf (think 8" deskfan) doing all the cooling, filtering.
another idea i had was to have a shelf for a battery UPS, so that i could unplug from power, move rack somewhere else and plug back in without losing power.
another idea is to get a cheap 15"LCD and mount it on the rack, use wireless network and only require a powercord.
nice job again.
RESPONSE:The noisest thing I can hear is the hard drive for my smoothwall. if that PC
is off, it is pretty quiet. (its about x3 louder with that drive on - you
might know the sound of a winey HD as it is going out :) )
its a noticable difference than the 5 separate PCs with all their noises. now
the noise can only escape out the back - which is open due to the cables
coming out the back. if I'd made the rack deeper i would have had room to
put cables behind the shelfs and still be inside the rack enclosure
dimensions.
i've seen small refigerators that people covert into PC 'racks'. that might be
a good way to keep it quiet and cool :)
i thought about using a liquid cooling solution, but abandoned that due to
costs, and space. i would have had to have a cooling tower next to the
rack-tower. i had not thought of a big fan like you suggested. i'm not sure
it would have worked for me due to the size of the shelves - which basically
slice the tower into separate horizontal chambers of air - there is really no
place for vertical air movement.
i also was goinig to use a rack mounted UPS, but I messed up my inner
dimensions :( and could not use anything rack mounted for 19" dimensions.
I do have 2 UPS hooked up that I can unplug and move with the tower.
My goal was to have all cables that are external go through the 2 UPS.
I'll have to post up my 'cow' PC. My youngest kid's PC is painted like a cow,
with a cow 'hat-head' and feet to hold the tower off the ground ;)
