Originally posted by: Zaap
I looked at the same case. It should work great- (I love the dual front fans compared to 1 on other cases) but one thing made me keep looking: it's
massive! Make sure your desk is really deep enough- the case is 25.5" deep, plus you need to contend with at least another 2" of clearance for rear panel wiring and airflow. To be safe- your desk should be 30" deep to have that case flush with the front rack and not backed into a wall- unless you're using angled cabinets that allow for a lot of rear clearance like professional workstations often have. IE:
like this.
Even at 23.6" the ARC 4U 600 hangs out the back of the cabinet. The 4U 500 model to me is the perfect length at 19" deep.
Yeah, I'm not too worried about the size. I actually bought a
door for my table, right from Home Depot

I was going to get the 30" model, but I think I ended up going with the 26" model instead. What I figure is, I don't want the back of the desk flush with the wall because then I can't easily route cables for the monitor and peripherals through the back to the rackmount case, so I'll have the desk forward a few inches, then build the stands a few inches deeper to accomodate that extra spacing. That way the legs will be flush with the wall, but I'll have a gap for easy wiring.
Home Depot has some really awesome prices for doors, only $25 - $30 a pop. Perfectly flat with no holes for a doorknob. Staples wanted like $200+ for a smaller table that didn't have any of the features I wanted, so I decided to roll my own! The door is smooth enough to write on paper too! My biggest gripe is that I only have room for my computer on my current desk, no room to do homework or reading/writing on it, so I wanted a really big desk for that.
I also wanted to have built-in filing cabinets and a built-in shelf for my computer components, so the left side will be the filing cabinet and the right side will just be a mini rack for the equipment. So, nothing too fancy, but very functional given the price and it will meet my needs perfectly!
Also I'm not crazy about the Norco's inflexible riser layout. It will take an ATX or eATX board just fine, but absolutely not a mATX. I like that the ARC cases allow for tons of different motherboard riser layouts. Shouldn't matter though if you're sticking with ATX.
That's what I thought too, but their homepage for the 470 says that MicroATX is supported:
http://www.norcotek.com/RPC-470.php
Also looking at the case from the rear, it looks to me like the middle of the case can take five 80mm fans, not four:
http://www.norcotek.com/produc...ges/flyer/rpc470_6.jpg
See the blank one on the left? So two 120mm front fans, five 80mm middle fans, and two 80mm rear fans. That's some serious airflow! :shocked:
Also I can throw a mini PSU for backup in there in the future when I get some bucks to upgrade to a crazy Core i7 system
If you don't want any ugly gaps where you have no equipment, don't forget to get blank panels for the unit space you want to fill. You might want a couple that are vented fan-mount units for additional cooling. It's not in the photo I posted, but I filled in the lower space with a 4Unit and a 2U blank panel for a completed look- plus the blanks strengthen the cabinet.
You can probably find tons of 19" rackmount gear on ebay or your local craigslist. Here in the entertainment capital of the universe used rack equipment is practically falling out of the sky.
One of the things I really want to do when I eventually get around to rackmounting my systems is some serious cable management. Depending on how you set up your desk, you can mount powerstrips vertically at the rear of the cabinet, and run really short power cables over to them- then only one normal length power cable needs to run to the UPS. Also, I want to rack mount my ethernet switches, router, etc and run all the wiring to a patchbay.
Ooh, didn't know they sold blanks! I was wondering how I was going to attack the ugly factor

Do the units with built-in fans have a standard power cable?
I am planning on picking up a rackmount UPS as well. I found one from Cyberpower (yeah, I know) for a fabulous price here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16842102006
Less than 1/2 the price of traditional rackmount UPS setups with better specs and 5-star ratings from 60 users. That's pretty crazy...CyberPower seems like they're starting to become a big player! Eventually I want to move to either a Core i7 rig or a dual-Nehalem setup, so this seems like a really good investment, then I can just toss in my current UPS to replace the dying one on my network
My eventual goal is:
1. Customized desk with rackmount equipment
2. Convert the home theater to rackmount (gaming PC, Plex HTPC, throw the gaming consoles into Norco 470's with custom cooling setups and mods and whatnot, rackmount UPS's)
3. Convert the network to rackmount (PFsense router, FreeNAS file server, rackmount Gigabit switch, etc.)
I've had my eye on this rig for the file server case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811152124
24 Hot Swap bays with dual 900w power supplies...nice 40TB RAID 6 server with 24 x 2TB drives! I'm still mulling over how to approach the NAS...I love FreeNAS, but ZFS support isn't coming for a long time, and WHS has pooling, so expansion as budget allows is cake, but I'm not real keen on using a Windows product for my home file server

I also really like the Norco RPC-4020 4U 20-bay rig for under $300:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811219021
Or even getting some 5-bay Hot Swap trays and just rolling my own, that'd be some cost savings over the super-expensive Supermicro 24-bay unit, but more work because of the fabrication involved. Ho-hum.
Also how do you feel about rackmounted keyboard, mouse, and monitor? I was thinking for my network rack (PFsense + FreeNAS), I could do one of these slide-out 1U keyboard/touchpads:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811997303
Then flush-mount an old VGA LCD above it and use a KVM to switch between it as needed. Although a simple sliding shelf would be much more cost-effective, plus in the 2 or 3 years I've been running FreeNAS I don't think I've EVER had to plug in a monitor and keyboard to do anything to it after I set it up initially. :heart: FreeNAS
If you can, please post pics when you get your desk setup. It'll be awesome to see how it turns out.
Will do!
