I have been using a 4u rack mount case that was probably designed in the 90’s and built in 2008. Given my success in creating an aluminum SFF for my youngest I have decided that I am foolish enough to build a case for myself.
My goal is to fit a full ATX with room for full sized (or stupid oversized) graphics card, water cooling, redundant power supply and fit in a 3RU form factor.
Why 3RU? because my rack is running out of room and 3 RU looks better than 4 RU IMO. Density is sexy.
Next I modified it to fit a 240mm Radiator into it, but it was very tight in space. This pic was just prior to cutting out the old HD cage to shove my radiator into it.
other way around! I have had my gaming PC in a full sized rack in my basement connected over fiber optic display port for years! Only difference is he had a custom proto-case rackmount while I had an off the shelf 4 RU. Now I am building a full custom 3 RU and upgrading my water cooling to this decade.
That was a direct die water cooled Athlon 64 on a DFI Lanparty motherboard. I took a Lan-li knock off aluminum case did a window mod (a new concept 20 years ago). I also modded in a 2nd screen for Win Amp visualizations and hacked the thermo couple readout from a Koolance case into it.
That wonderful glow is from cathode tubes, and hand wired orange LEDs on the fans.
To this day I use the heatspreader from that CPU as a key chain!
Course the last big mod like that I did I took a Dell Dimension XPS apart and put a Dimension 670 board in it, swapped out the coolers for some double towers, and played with gpu mods on it
Hi Log, I’d like to ask you and @infinitevalence about the whole optical cable extension setup/idea.
Does it need a pci card in the machine, then optical to the monitor, or do you have to go through a KVM?
And just long USB cables to the peripherals? or a optical to to a hub, then all hanging off that?
and just a single monitor?
I saw a vid of LTT doing optical thunderbolt (iirc) to a hub, and monitor/mouse/keyboard off that, but would require thunderbolt, which at the time meant intel CPU / apple
There are lots of options, and so far mine have been rock solid. Mine run from my basement, through a 2" conduit into my attic, across my house in the attic, and then down an exterior wall. Its about 100’ cable feet.
For USB things are less good. Your options are $$$$ or $, so either you spend $1000 on a fiber USB 3 extender or you spend $5 on cheap USB 2.0 over CATx extenders. I opted for the CATx extenders.
I have a local KVM at my desk because I wanted my work laptop accessible to the same monitor/keyboard/mouse, but you could probably do it in reverse with the KVM remote and only pull 1 set of extenders to your desk unlike my 3 sets.
You could also do KVM to KVM where you have a KVM in the rack extended to your KVM at your desk and just use different hot keys to change them or some other type of software switch depending on the types of KVM you use.
This is the only reliable USB extender I know of that can do USB 3.0+
Looks like they have a new product that is under $800!
Crikey, nothing needed to boost it, or convert the video signal? just plug in as a normal (very long) cable? That is pretty darn good. and a couple for $100 or less, not too dear either.
Thanks man! that seems a lot less hassle and faff that I was expecting
I thought optical would require a card to convert and boost and stuff.
I’ll make a separate post about a various of options later this week, but I use this DisplayPort cable and for usb connectivity I use an Extron USB extender plus (2.0/1.1 only) from eBay which doesn’t require it’s own line, it’s compatible with an existing network and switches (which is rare). The extron is plugged into the sfp+/RJ45 switch in the garage, runs over OM4 fiber to my room and then is converted back to RJ45.
So basically I have two fiber cables run to my room. Though these days you could likely do a single 24 fiber MPO that supports everything when split with various DisplayPort sfp+ extenders rather than a dedicated cable. Though when DP 2.0 (80 gbps) comes out and extenders for that finally become affordable, It’ll likely require the entire 24 fiber MPO (100 gbps).
