We had this old Antec rackmount server at work collecting dust. I have a rack at my house with my network equipment on it already. So I thought it would be nice to rackmount my home server as well. Here's some modifications I had to do to make it work. My primary need were that it be relatively shallow as I don't have a lot of room behind the rack. And since I just have the one rack, I can't mount rails to hold a large heavy case. I probalby could have just bought a cheap shallow rackmount case but what fun is that?
This is the case before modification.
I had already removed all interior parts such as the drive cages and the fan
mounts. I have marked where I planned on cutting it which includes cutting
off part of the motherboard try so that the fans could fit there instead. I'm
showing where I planned on mounting the parts such as the PSU and hard drives.
Here's the final results with the parts
in place and running. I ended up using the oringal hard drive cage just moved towards
the front to make room for the PSU.
This is the new front of the case. The fan
mount bracket was in the middle of the case already. I just had to shift it farther back.
It acts as the structural front of the case. I cut off the actual front with the door and
front panel connectors and buttons and have that stuck to this. So the front still looks
the same when closed. The hole on the bottom left was meant for the PSU and drive cables
to route through. I used it to put my fan speed controller so I can adjust the fans if
needed without having to open up the whole case.
On the back, you can see the PSU mounting. I
cut out my own bracket from part of the remaining case that I wasn't using. I had to cut
out the existing fan mounting and some of the PCI slots to make room for this. It's held
in place with a couple of the existing screw points. But in the bottom left, I cut a slot
into the existing case that this bracket fits into. There's a small gap along the side
by the PCI slots but that's not a big deal. The fans are all intake so it's a possitive
pressure so the air will flow out from wherever it can.
This is it mounted on the rack. The final depth
is about 14" which is just enough to fit with the cables in the back. I had to use a right
and power cable as normal ones would stick out too far. But a normal VGA calbe can fit
back there just barely.