So the quarter rack came in, and it’s exactly as advertised. Good machining, the front and sides are both vented and removable. The removable hinges feel solid and not easily breakable. The front locking mechanism isn’t *great*, but that’s not a concern in my environment. It came with casters & leveling feet which were very solid and easy to install.
NOTE: The directions have you put the bolts on with the head of the bolt on the inside of the cage, however if you do this the casters can’t rotate freely. You should invert them, the opposite of the instructions. There are fan vents and cable ports that can be unscrewed from both the top and the bottom.
All of the existing gear that I have for the homelab fit onto the rails, so it’s spaced to the standard specifications (which has actually been an issue for me in the past, so YAY!).
I put it under my desk, but it’s looking a bit too big for the upstairs (that’s Kermit investigating), so I’ve also purchased a Linksys RE6500 range extender to put this into my basement. That way my rack will be completely mobile, just needing an outlet to be fully functional.
So far my list of parts is the following:
- SR12UB quarter rack
- Linksys RE6500 range extender
- CyberPower RackBar Surge rack mountable PDU
- HP V1910-16G 16 port Gig switch
- Synology 415+ NAS filled with Western Digital Blue 1TB 7200rpm SATA drives
Next homelab article will include the design layout and specs for the compute layer (once I’ve saved up to buy my servers!)