Why is no one making nice rackmount PC cases

[malawar]

Hi everyone,

To give you a bit of a background; I'm a music producer looking for a pc case that would fit in with the rest of my rack mounted gear.

 

Among many other advantages, a rack mounted pc case would allow people like me to:

 

1) Put my case in a soundproofed rack cabinet if I didn't want to see it - and most importantly hear it, and;

2) If it wasn't a loud system, have my case sit neatly in a rackmount where it could be within reach, looking nicer, and allowing for better cable management to peripherals such as keyboards and all, while;
3) Avoiding the big no-no of putting your pc on the floor (just don't like it)

 

At this point in time, it feels like my only options are:

 

1) Pull a Linus, and custom make my own case. This would take up quite a bit of resources, time, and effort to achieve. Might also be expensive?

2) Buy a sever case. Technically, yes, this isn't a problem; but I was surprised at the lack of options. It seems like the very few available options are made for industrial purposes (doi). Server cases just seem dull, and kind of take away from the fun and excitement that can go into building your own PC.

 

I was looking for a rack mounted case, that is based around the same production goals of most modern tower cases that you can get today:

 

- Relatively quiet should I choose to keep it within the same room (Be Quiet cases as reference?)

- Relatively modern and elegant in design, form, and function

- Won't have as many compatibility issues with new motherboards and components (I'm sure this isn't a problem with server racks. I think what I'm trying to communicate is modern cases available today are kind of more consumer based and user-friendly.)

 

I was hoping I'd find a more elegant solution. Something I can display in all of it's RGB glory. Or a stealthier - but still sexy - design for those who might choose to mount the case in a sound proofed cabinet.

 

I have a feeling there's a market for this kind of product. I'm positive there are people like me who are looking for a similar solution; I've read about there attempts or frustrations in forums. There seems to be a gap in the market for this kind of solution. I was wondering why no one picked up on it. It's definitely something that the pro-audio industry would definitely benefit from. This article shows a landslide towards PC based systems for audio in a survey conducted in 2016 and 2019. https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2019/2/7/pro-tools-users-abandoning-apple-mac-for-microsoft-windows-new-poll-shows-alarming-results

I also believe gamers could get in on rack mounted cases since there are tons of options to display them nicely.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

The short answer would be: because the intersection of people who need a rack mounted computer and people who cares about the looks and the ability to comfortably build consumer parts into it has two elements: Linus and you.

 

As you said,

5 minutes ago, malawar said:

It seems like the very few available options are made for industrial purposes (doi). 

and that includes music producers using rack mounted gear that don't need/want to have it on sight, and are busy enough to treat the computer part of their setup like any other piece of equipment: buy full PC from a supplier according to their hardware requirement, have in installed, called waranty/tech support if it ever goes wrong.

 

5 minutes ago, malawar said:

 

I have a feeling there's a market for this kind of product. I'm positive there are people like me who are looking for a similar solution; I've read about there attempts or frustrations in forums. 

There's always a market for everything, the question is its size. The people you find when searching for them are surely representative of other people who didn't post online but want this type of solution too. But, how many have you found and how many more are out there in total? And how disperse? Could you effectively market a case to all / a sufficiently high number of them? At which price?

 

While Linus got it custom-designed for him, to meet the needs of the exact hardware and mostly watercooling he wanted to put in it, you can find less customized cases in the same vein. They won't be cheap nor too varied, though, because the more you fragment a niche into even smaller markets, the higher the cost of production will get.

 

[WhitetailAni]

You could always spend more on a rack-mounted Mac Pro

 

Just to clarify - I am NOT one of the people who thinks Apple, Macs, and iDevices are above all other things. I only get Apple devices if I need their specific uses for something (e.g. reviving an old Mac to sell).

I just felt the need to remind everyone that you can spend more to get a rack mount edition.

 

Edit:

I guess you can't anymore?

[Senzelian]

The Silverstone RM42-502 is your best bet.

Just today I posted this in a different thread. It's so far the best modern rack-mountable case I found.

 

The only thing I don't really like about it, is that it still has 5.25" drive bays.

 

 

 

[malawar]

8 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

You could always spend more on a rack-mounted Mac Pro

Hell no! haha!

[WhitetailAni]

6 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

The only thing I don't really like about it, is that it still has 5.25" drive bays.

 

So?

Maybe OP needs something that goes in a front bay.

I personally need 4 5.25" front bays (floppy, Zip, optical, blu-ray).

Floppy and Zip for erasing old floppies from various places (found a school assignment once), 2 optical drives for burning audio CDs (thank you Nissan for sticking with optical drives for so long) and watching my copy of the entire Harry Potter movie collection on Blu-Ray.

Plus it makes it easy to transfer files to my 98 tower.

[Senzelian]

5 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

So?

If there weren't any 5.25" drive bays, I'd be able to put another fan in there.

I thought that was pretty obvious.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Senzelian said:

If there weren't any 5.25" drive bays, I'd be able to put another fan in there.

I thought that was pretty obvious.

See if the cage is removable and stick another fan in there.

 

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

See if the cage is removable and stick another fan in there.

The I/O is in the way and there aren't any available screwholes. Mounting them to the removeable 5,25" covers isn't a good option.

[WhitetailAni]

53 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Mounting them to the removeable 5,25" covers isn't a good option.

No, the cage. The part that holds the drives.

The thing where you slide in the thing and then stick screws through the holes to secure the thing so it doesn't fall out of the thing.

Very descriptive, I know. 

[geo3]

They do make general purpose shelving for racks. You could just put a normal horizontal case on that.

[Senzelian]

11 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

No, the cage. The part that holds the drives.

The thing where you slide in the thing and then stick screws through the holes to secure the thing so it doesn't fall out of the thing.

Very descriptive, I know. 

Yeah I get that.
I still need to mount the fan to something and the I/O would still be in the way of that fan.

 

Here, this is what I mean.
Next to the drive cage is the I/O and even if the drive cage is removed, the opening is not large enough for a fan. 

 

And even if the fan would fit, I wouldn't want to screw it into these removeable 5.25" panels:

[WhitetailAni]

80mm fans.

They exist.

And so does hot glue.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, Senzelian said:

The only thing I don't really like about it, is that it still has 5.25" drive bays.

On the other hand, I don't buy cases without 5.25 bays 

 

2 hours ago, ragnarok0273 said:

So?

I personally need 4 5.25" front bays (floppy, Zip, optical, blu-ray).

 

 

 

I my case, optical/old drives are what I use my 5.25 bays the least for. Some are indeed bluray drives, but most are HDD hot-plugs and various front panels.

38 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

80mm fans.

They exist.

And so does hot glue.

I don't think anyone will get into more craftsman modding for an unnecessary fan - a thrid fan in that chassis would just serve a symmetry OCD purpose  

 

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I my case, optical/old drives are what I use my 5.25 bays the least for. Some are indeed bluray drives, but most are HDD hot-plugs and various front panels.

My case's front I/O is 4x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA, 1x front audio (headphone/microphone jacks).

I found a front bay adapter from 5.25" to 3.5", which I'm going to put my floppy drive in so I have front USB 3.

I have no need of anything else on the front - I have a total of 1 USB-C device and I don't use it (USB-C to audio combo jack).

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

My case's front I/O is 4x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA, 1x front audio (headphone/microphone jacks).

I found a front bay adapter from 5.25" to 3.5", which I'm going to put my floppy drive in so I have front USB 3.

I have no need of anything else on the front - I have a total of 1 USB-C device and I don't use it (USB-C to audio combo jack).

I don't use I/O fron panels, but fan controller and monitoring, like this:

Spoiler

 

 

People overestimate the usefulness of software control/monitoring, particularly when you can't be sure if the computer will be working properly when said monitoring is to take place, or which OS you will be rining on it  

[malawar]

Are there any people or companies that help design and create custom cases?

 

At this rate I would even consider creating something from scratch or trying to mod a case.

 

2 hours ago, Senzelian said:

The Silverstone RM42-502

I do think it's the best one out there too. Might also be a good starting point for a mod.

[malawar]

2 hours ago, geo3 said:

They do make general purpose shelving for racks. You could just put a normal horizontal case on that.

This might actually be a good idea. I was just looking at the Core P3 from Thermaltake. It can be placed 3 different ways including a "desktop" setup. I'll measure later and find out if it fits into a shelf rack/cabinet! The curved glass can be used as a "top cover".

 

 

[thrasher_565]

57 minutes ago, malawar said:

This might actually be a good idea. I was just looking at the Core P3 from Thermaltake. It can be placed 3 different ways including a "desktop" setup. I'll measure later and find out if it fits into a shelf rack/cabinet! The curved glass can be used as a "top cover".

 

 

the o11 fist in a rack.

[PineyCreek]

1 hour ago, malawar said:

This might actually be a good idea. I was just looking at the Core P3 from Thermaltake. It can be placed 3 different ways including a "desktop" setup. I'll measure later and find out if it fits into a shelf rack/cabinet! The curved glass can be used as a "top cover".

 

 

Just be sure to check the weight of your build vs the weight-rating of whatever shelving you're putting in your rack.

[thrasher_565]

im building a console in a rack. i was going tp put my 011 air at the bottom and use the pc as an emulator but my main build the i been working on for like 3 years.... will have 2 pcs in it all ready and i just got a kvm to switch duel monitors from 2 pcs so a 3 pc would i gess be hooked to the tv. i just got 6 shelfs off amazon on sale for $40 for 2. they are short should work for a console. i got an 8 hdmi switcher just need an rack mount switch. also going to cut and mount keystone to the back to have all the controller pots come out and the plan is to have all orange cables...maybe some rgb.

Edited November 8, 2020 by thrasher_565

[malawar]

On 11/8/2020 at 7:55 AM, thrasher_565 said:

the o11 fist in a rack.

The dimensions are perfect and it can even fit an EATX mobo if I wanted to expand at some point. I'm a bit sad that the core P3 won't fit though, that thing looks sick.

[malawar]

On 11/8/2020 at 8:02 AM, thrasher_565 said:

im building a console in a rack. i was going tp put my 011 air at the bottom and use the pc as an emulator but my main build the i been working on for like 3 years.... will have 2 pcs in it all ready and i just got a kvm to switch duel monitors from 2 pcs so a 3 pc would i gess be hooked to the tv. i just got 6 shelfs off amazon on sale for $40 for 2. they are short should work for a console. i got an 8 hdmi switcher just need an rack mount switch. also going to cut and mount keystone to the back to have all the controller pots come out and the plan is to have all orange cables...maybe some rgb.

Sounds like a nice rig.




with LOTS of RGB haha!

[Chionele]

I've been lately looking into racks as well because I've come to the conclusion that once my current 2-bay NAS fills up it simply makes most sense to just build another PC instead of upgrading the NAS itself, because essentially for the price of 6-8-bay NAS I could buy a 12-bay chassis with all internals and even slap few new drives in there as well. The problem I ran into was not that there wasn't rackmount case options available - it's that they're not available where I live. Both Silverstone and Rosewill have some nice, low-cost options with quite a nice amount of customizability out of the box, but sadly they seem to kinda be US-only so the price will at least double when importing one, but that's really starting to look like a cost of doing business with this project.

 

I did look into user server hardware just for the chassis, but at least here that's not a one-click-online type of thing and would probably require better contacts. Seems to be much easier in Europe, but sadly for the time being doing a little trip to Europe is not really in the books.

[malawar]

On 11/13/2020 at 3:56 PM, Chionele said:

I've been lately looking into racks as well because I've come to the conclusion that once my current 2-bay NAS fills up it simply makes most sense to just build another PC instead of upgrading the NAS itself, because essentially for the price of 6-8-bay NAS I could buy a 12-bay chassis with all internals and even slap few new drives in there as well. The problem I ran into was not that there wasn't rackmount case options available - it's that they're not available where I live. Both Silverstone and Rosewill have some nice, low-cost options with quite a nice amount of customizability out of the box, but sadly they seem to kinda be US-only so the price will at least double when importing one, but that's really starting to look like a cost of doing business with this project.

 

I did look into user server hardware just for the chassis, but at least here that's not a one-click-online type of thing and would probably require better contacts. Seems to be much easier in Europe, but sadly for the time being doing a little trip to Europe is not really in the books.

The options really are limited. Have you tried going through some of the Chinese options? Ali express and all. While searching for rackmount cases I found that a lot of the cases that were sold are just imported from china and sometimes just marked up and rebranded.

You might find some cheaper options there - though reliability might be a concern?