I love scrolling through the r/homelab subreddit, seeing what equipment people are using and how they store it. However, living in a fairly small apartment with a single awkwardly shaped cupboard where my internet comes in, a full-size rack is not an option for me. Now I could run an ethernet from this cupboard to a rack next to my desk, but to be frank, I don’t want a loud and hot rack in my workspace.
The rack
So, this small cupboard… Its L shaped with a shelf at the top and step to one side at the bottom. The power and internet outlets are located at the back, near the bottom, and there’s a fuse box also located in here on the left. This leaves me with roughly 60cm of depth and a mere 37cm of width to work with.
After much head scratching and searching around, I finally found a solution. A 6U 400mm (16") deep audio rack that I could flip on its side and mount some caster wheels on to the bottom of. This way I can easily wheel the rack out for any maintenance. It was reasonably priced at £35 on eBay from a seller that does a variety of sizes, all aimed at audio gear.
This means I can fit a short depth 3U server chassis, along with a patch panel, router and switch into the rack. And as a bonus, the 10" SOHO rack I already own fits nicely on top, perfect for housing smaller gear such as my UPS, Raspberry Pis and backup NAS.
With an open back, air can flow from front to rear, as well as allowing for cabling to be easily bundled and routed.
One of the main factors driving this change in my homelab was the upgrade to the Unifi Dream Machine Pro and Unifi Switch 16 PoE. They needed to be housed somewhere, and my previous shelving wasn’t going to cut it. But this did mean moving my server from a tower desktop case (Fractal Define) to a smaller 3U chassis. It needed to have space for a 5.25" Blu-ray reader and 6+ 3.5" HDD bays.
The server chassis
The short depth market in the UK is somewhat limited, and so I settled on a LogicCase chassis with 3x 5.25" and 8x 3.5" bays, however with my mATX motherboard, only six of the 3.5" bays are accessible.
Now I’ll be honest, I’ve built in a lot of desktop cases over the years, some small and others larger. However, this was probably the worst case I’ve worked with. While the exterior finish is fine, the interior leaves much to be desired.
To start, the edges on the metal are still somewhat sharp, despite being deburred. The front intake fans are filtered with a strip of foam and leave approximately 1mm of clearance to the hard drives mounted directly behind them. And speaking of the hard drives, with normal sized sticks of RAM, no heatsinks or packaging, there’s about 1mm clearance between the top of the RAM and the bottom of the hard drives.
To cap it off, my CPU heatsink, a be quite Shadow Rock LP, was too big, leaving no room to connect SATA and power to the hard drives. So I switched to a Noctua NH-L9x65.
Having put it all together, it’s a little tight and airflow isn’t great. But it all fitted together, albeit with some changes, and there’s room for me to add two more drives in the hard drive mount, plus I could fill the two remaining 5.25" bays with another two drives if needbe.
Putting it all together
Finally, with the rack built, populated and cable managed, it fits perfectly. The casters proved themselves instantly useful after I plugged everything in, wheeled it back and realised I hadn’t switched the power supply on. I was able to pull it out, flick the switch and wheel it back within seconds.
The result leaves my cupboard much cleaner and tidier, with everything being a great deal more accessible. Well worth the upgrade.
Full Parts List
From top to bottom, left to right:
- 10" SOHO 8U Mini Cabnet
- 6U 19" Rack 400mm Deep
- H&S 4 Castor Wheels Heavy Duty 50mm
- Unifi Patch Panel
- RJ45 Keystone Jack
- Unifi Switch 16 PoE
- Unifi Dream Machine Pro
- 3U Short Depth Chasis
Home server parts:
- CPU - Intel i7-10700
- Motherboard - MSI MAG B560M MORTAR
- RAM – Crucial 16GB DDR 3200MHz CL22
- CPU cooler - Noctua NH-L9x65
- NVME SSD – Samsung 980 Pro 2TB
- HDD – 2x IronWolf Pro NAS 6TB
- HDD – 2x Exos X16 Pro 12TB
- Power supply - be quiet! Pure Power 11 400W CM
- Blu-ray reader - ASUS BW-16D1HT
- Network card – Intel I350-T4
- HBA card - IBM SAS HBA M5110 (In IT Mode)
- Front fans – be quiet! Pure Wings 2 80mm PWM
- Rear fans – Noctua NF-A6x25 PWM
- OS - Unraid
