Tower of Crunching Power
What do you do when you see a whole load of rack mount cases headed to the trash?


The word was out: The recyclers were onsite to remove a decommissioned system.
The word was given: Management told us we could scavenge anything we wanted.

We had to move fast, this stuff was heading out the door. I didn't have my truck at work so anything I was going to grab had to fit in the trunk of my car. Amazing how much stuff you can cram into a trunk when you are on a mission. I managed to acquire 6 4U rack mount cases with full extension glides. It would have been nice to grab one of the equipment racks too but there was no way it was going to fit in my Buick...

...My little farm had been growing quite nicely but my workspace was really getting cluttered and cabling was a mess, something needed to be done. I had been considering putting most of my boxen into a rack and the newly 'found' rack mounts would make this a reality.



The cases held what were basically AT server boards with Pentium III 550 CPUs onboard. With a little experimentation and my trusty Dremel tool I found these could easily be modified to accept an ATX motherboard.
I cut the back panel with a cutting wheel so it will accept an ATX I/O plate and used sheet metal to cover the upper part of the card slots. I had to drill new holes for the board mounts and of course change the power switch out with a momentary contact switch for the ATX softpower. That's about it! A couple hours work and the old AT cases could now accept contemporary hardware.





I moved a couple systems to the 'new' cases, had a couple of new builds and stacked the systems next to my desk. Things looked a lot cleaner in my work area but cabling was still a mess. If I needed to work on a system towards the bottom of the stack everything needed to be shut down.
I NEEDED an equipment rack!
Although a full height 42U rack will fit in my basement there was not enough ceiling height to tip one upright. No problem I thought, I just need to pick up a 30U rack. I spent weeks looking for one short enough to fit, checking online and local dealers and recyclers. The only units I could find were new and way out of my desired price range...

...I'll just have to build one! My design was simplicity itself; I used two 32" solid core exterior doors for the basic structure. The 32" width would be deep enough for my rack mounts and leave enough room to mount APC 500VA UPS units along the back.
I cut the doors the correct height and used the excess material for the top and bottom of the cabinet. One minus in using the solid core doors is weight, this sucker's heavy! I attached heavy duty casters to allow one person to move the cabinet when necessary. To make sure everything would line up in the future if I decided to rearrange equipment I went with manufactured rack rails. I used full hole 10/32 tapped rack rail manufactured by Penn Elcom. The cabinet was finished off with two coats of tung oil to highlight the wood grain and keep dirt from getting embedded in the wood.
 The rack cabinet project turned out rather nice and most importantly is functional. I am now glad that I was unable to find a used rack for my crunchers. The wood construction looks nicer and I think deadens sound more than a steel cabinet would have.

It's even square!
Corner joints were made with PL400 construction adhesive and five 4" #10 screws, angle braces were added for additional rigidity.
Rack rails and server glides installed.
A couple of coats of tung oil to make it look nice!
My boxen are in their new home. System temps even dropped a couple degrees, possibly because they can no longer pull in the warm air from their own exhaust.

The small 1U plate near the top of the cabinet provides a front connection to power and my KVM switch for working on other systems.

Sitting on the top is an inexpensive indoor/outdoor thermometer used to monitor ambient room & internal rack temperatures.
Backside
(Photo before Cruncher-04 & Cruncher-05 builds)
Switches:
Netgear 24 port 10/100Mps Ethernet switch Model: FS524
Compaq 8 port KVM switch Model:106-1502


The UPS units are APC 500VA Model: BE500R
Not real big but they are inexpensive and have enough backup power to get my boxen through 99% of any power problems and enable graceful shutdown of the OS for the other 1%.
Cruncher-03's baby picture.
Cruncher-04's baby picture.
Cruncher-05's baby picture.
Cruncher-06's baby picture.

System Specs:


Cruncher-01
ECS 661FX-M7 v1.1 Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 630 Prescott 3.0GHz Processor
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP


Cruncher-02
Intel D845GVAD2 Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 1.8 GHz Processor
SpecTeck 512MB DDR 133 PC2100
Western Digital 10GB ATA66 Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows 2000 Pro


Cruncher-03
ASUS P5LD2-VM Motherboard
Intel Pentium D 950 Presler 3.4GHz Dual Core Processor
CORSAIR XMS2 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 675 (PC2 5400)
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 Edition


Cruncher-04
Intel DG965SS Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Processor
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (4 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 Edition


Cruncher-05
Intel DG965SS Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Processor
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (4 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 Edition


Cruncher-06
Intel DG965SS Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Processor
Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 677 (PC2 5300)
Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 Edition