After admiring other peoples racks for so long 
, I finally decided to get my own. I first bought the 2U case for a HTPC and then decided to change everything over to rack cases. I bought the 4U case mainly for storage, but right now it houses my storage drives and is also my main desktop till I can get another case to house the desktop hardware. The rack frame came from rackframe.com. It was priced good and the stuff is very well built and easy to assemble. I then bought the plexiglass and bought a dremel to cut it. I mostly just used the little saw blades for all of the cuts except the fan holes For that I used the sheet rock drill bit. I figured I need a nice battery backup for this stuff and luckily I work at Best Buy and the only rackmounted thing in the store was a nice 900 watt 2U UPS and it had a $75 mailin rebate around the same time I needed it. My original goal was to have no cables on the outside, so I could unplug the rack and move it around and not worry about cables, but that seemed like a lot of work, so I just left a slot in the back for the cables to go in. I also bought a 1U patch panel for the network connections since i have my 8 port gigabit switch inside the rack. I also added a rail slide for the 4U case, since that is my main machine and its easier to access with the rails. So, there ya go, a semi-homemade rack enclosure with up to 14U of rackspace. Here are the pictures, let me know what you think.
The first two are from the back showing the 120 mm exhaust fans and the patch panel.
Back 1
Back 2
The next two are from the front with the UPS on top, my web/email server in the middle, and the storage machine on the bottom. I also have a rheostat controlling the 2 intake 120 mm fans on the bottom and the 2 fans in the back.
Front
Close Up Front
Jonny
, I finally decided to get my own. I first bought the 2U case for a HTPC and then decided to change everything over to rack cases. I bought the 4U case mainly for storage, but right now it houses my storage drives and is also my main desktop till I can get another case to house the desktop hardware. The rack frame came from rackframe.com. It was priced good and the stuff is very well built and easy to assemble. I then bought the plexiglass and bought a dremel to cut it. I mostly just used the little saw blades for all of the cuts except the fan holes For that I used the sheet rock drill bit. I figured I need a nice battery backup for this stuff and luckily I work at Best Buy and the only rackmounted thing in the store was a nice 900 watt 2U UPS and it had a $75 mailin rebate around the same time I needed it. My original goal was to have no cables on the outside, so I could unplug the rack and move it around and not worry about cables, but that seemed like a lot of work, so I just left a slot in the back for the cables to go in. I also bought a 1U patch panel for the network connections since i have my 8 port gigabit switch inside the rack. I also added a rail slide for the 4U case, since that is my main machine and its easier to access with the rails. So, there ya go, a semi-homemade rack enclosure with up to 14U of rackspace. Here are the pictures, let me know what you think.The first two are from the back showing the 120 mm exhaust fans and the patch panel.
Back 1
Back 2
The next two are from the front with the UPS on top, my web/email server in the middle, and the storage machine on the bottom. I also have a rheostat controlling the 2 intake 120 mm fans on the bottom and the 2 fans in the back.
Front
Close Up Front
Jonny
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