Routers & Other Networking Stuff

Intrinsic · 2026-10-15T07:29:13-0400

What are some good racks/enclosures that people are using? UI only has 12U and 42U and I’d like something more around 28U. Brand new home build and the network room is just at framing stage, so I can pick pretty much anything. Floor cabinet, wall, shelf, etc.

Mid Atlantic seems nice with some of their swivel out stuff. Strong / SnapOn, NavePoint. All those have come up in searching.

Quevy · 2026-10-15T08:55:56-0400

Intrinsic said:
What are some good racks/enclosures that people are using? UI only has 12U and 42U and I’d like something more around 28U. Brand new home build and the network room is just at framing stage, so I can pick pretty much anything. Floor cabinet, wall, shelf, etc.

Mid Atlantic seems nice with some of their swivel out stuff. Strong / SnapOn, NavePoint. All those have come up in searching.

I have a 24U and a 12U because of weight reasons. All my computers are in a rack and I run cables to my monitor and keyboard to my desk. That was the desk can stay clean. If you're putting it on concrete, 42u gives room to expand and add stuff like a ups. I've started using shelves instead of rails, as you can add non rack gear, and it's easier to take it stuff for maintenance. Make sure you have his ventilation, like a 32-40mm always on exhaust fan (to the outside of possible), to remove hot air from the area, and if you can put in a 200-230V outlet. It'll give you room if you want to put a beefy rig in the rack. The last two are things I wish I had thought of before the build, but now I'm spending 2k to have a contractor do it. An enclosed rack will give you better sound dampening, but if it's in a closet, I would go with just a frame because it's lighter, cheaper, and you can have interesting configuration. I have a cabinet, but I usually keep one of the side of doors off to access some of my ms-01mini servers. If you want to fit a 65-67 deep server, which is typically for many nas server cases, buy a rack that's at least 90cm - 1m deep of it's a cabinet and at least 65cm is it's a frame. You'll need space in the back for cabling and air flow. All the hot air will get trapped if you don't have guys cable management. I've been fighting with heat in my server rack since day one and have lost a couple hdds, a CPU, and an ms-01 to it. I would not make it as after thought. I have a sanwa because its rated to withstand earthquakes. I definitely wouldn't but one of the Chinese ones from ali Express. I heard sysracks are pretty decent on Amazon. I've also used a lot of startech products. They have really good build quality. I'd also check out rack studs to hang your ubiquiti gear. There are way better than cage nuts. Finally, if you're going to put have stuff in it, go with steel instead of aluminum.

Edit: also think of how you want your door to open if you want to go with a cabinet, some servers with rack ears will need the extra space to take out.

Intrinsic · 2026-10-15T13:23:28-0400

Quevy said:
I have a 24U and a 12U because of weight reasons. All my computers are in a rack and I run cables to my monitor and keyboard to my desk. That was the desk can stay clean. If you're putting it on concrete, 42u gives room to expand and add stuff like a ups. I've started using shelves instead of rails, as you can add non rack gear, and it's easier to take it stuff for maintenance. Make sure you have his ventilation, like a 32-40mm always on exhaust fan (to the outside of possible), to remove hot air from the area, and if you can put in a 200-230V outlet. It'll give you room if you want to put a beefy rig in the rack. The last two are things I wish I had thought of before the build, but now I'm spending 2k to have a contractor do it. An enclosed rack will give you better sound dampening, but if it's in a closet, I would go with just a frame because it's lighter, cheaper, and you can have interesting configuration. I have a cabinet, but I usually keep one of the side of doors off to access some of my ms-01mini servers. If you want to fit a 65-67 deep server, which is typically for many nas server cases, buy a rack that's at least 90cm - 1m deep of it's a cabinet and at least 65cm is it's a frame. You'll need space in the back for cabling and air flow. All the hot air will get trapped if you don't have guys cable management. I've been fighting with heat in my server rack since day one and have lost a couple hdds, a CPU, and an ms-01 to it. I would not make it as after thought. I have a sanwa because its rated to withstand earthquakes. I definitely wouldn't but one of the Chinese ones from ali Express. I heard sysracks are pretty decent on Amazon. I've also used a lot of startech products. They have really good build quality. I'd also check out rack studs to hang your ubiquiti gear. There are way better than cage nuts. Finally, if you're going to put have stuff in it, go with steel instead of aluminum.

Edit: also think of how you want your door to open if you want to go with a cabinet, some servers with rack ears will need the extra space to take out.

Just got back from doing the HVAC walkthrough at the house and there's enough room overhead to add a vent so that should be manageable. It is also close enough that we talked about running a small exhaust and we could hit the outside. It is going in the closet marked Audio which is pretty small. The exterior wall is there to the right outside the master bath. It is on concrete so I could mount a 48U open rack and have plenty of space.

It is silly to say we didn't play this through completely. 2'-4" x 3-11" is really small, but originally the Hidey Hole area beside it was going to be required for the depth of the fireplace or drop-in electric fireplace, and we nixed that idea. I could probably tell the framers tomorrow to make the space larger than 3-11". We're no longer doing a Murphy Door there and instead will just do regular recessed shelving, but that means we don't need the entire 5'-4". That would let me put a rack in there uhh horizontally, so the equipment is facing "south" and not towards the door.

Here you go, ChatGPT it:

Quevy · 2026-10-15T14:20:22-0400

Intrinsic said:
Just got back from doing the HVAC walkthrough at the house and there's enough room overhead to add a vent so that should be manageable. It is also close enough that we talked about running a small exhaust and we could hit the outside. It is going in the closet marked Audio which is pretty small. The exterior wall is there to the right outside the master bath. It is on concrete so I could mount a 48U open rack and have plenty of space.

It is silly to say we didn't play this through completely. 2'-4" x 3-11" is really small, but originally the Hidey Hole area beside it was going to be required for the depth of the fireplace or drop-in electric fireplace, and we nixed that idea. I could probably tell the framers tomorrow to make the space larger than 3-11". We're no longer doing a Murphy Door there and instead will just do regular recessed shelving, but that means we don't need the entire 5'-4". That would let me put a rack in there uhh horizontally, so the equipment is facing "south" and not towards the door.

View attachment 643884

Here you go, ChatGPT it:

View attachment 643888

That looks workable. I would change a few things.

You'll want to leave some space behind the rack for running cable and airflow. If you can give yourself a little more space, plan for a 1m rack. Those are very common. You can easily find used ones. A typical nas chase will be a tight for a 800m deep rack. I have this one: Super Huge Storage 24 Bays 4U Hotswap Rack NVR NAS Server Chassis in my 900mm rack, and it feel just right given all the cabling you have to do in the back. In hindsight, I wish I had gotten something like this: 24 Bay 4U Server Chassis, Hot Swap HDD Rack, which would have been better at keeping my hdds cool. You can probably get rid of them easily too as they are pretty standard. I have 90cm rack which was probably twice as expensive as a 1m rack, but my office is small and I need every inch (or cm haha). I'd keep a little gap at the bottom of the door so cool air can come in. Actually if you can get a vent to pump in cool air in the closet some how, that would be awesome. You just want to make sure it's far from the exhaust, so it doesn't get sucked out.

If you can give yourself some room on the sides of the rack that would be great so you can get behind the rack. You'll have to go back there for unhooking servers and doing cable management. You'll also need space for yourself and any servers you want to take out. I think the deepest consumer server case I've seen about 67cm. So you'll need space for that and yourself in there. If you plan to take the server rack out for cleaning under and behind, you'll want doors big enough to move it out as well. Keeping the area around your sever will go a long way towards keeping your equipment healthy.

One thing I'll say is that you'll never regret having too much space in your server room, but you will regret having too little. Oh yeah, see if you can have them install a fan in the exhaust vent. I'm wasn't sure if that was implied in what you said with respect to the vent. They aren't expensive, but they can be critical for removing heat. If you buy decent fans, I wouldn't worry too much about the noise in your setup.

Intrinsic · 2026-10-15T14:47:59-0400

Quevy said:
That looks workable. I would change a few things.

You'll want to leave some space behind the rack for running cable and airflow. If you can give yourself a little more space, plan for a 1m rack. Those are very common. You can easily find used ones. A typical nas chase will be a tight for a 800m deep rack. I have this one: Super Huge Storage 24 Bays 4U Hotswap Rack NVR NAS Server Chassis in my 900mm rack, and it feel just right given all the cabling you have to do in the back. In hindsight, I wish I had gotten something like this: 24 Bay 4U Server Chassis, Hot Swap HDD Rack, which would have been better at keeping my hdds cool. You can probably get rid of them easily too as they are pretty standard. I have 90cm rack which was probably twice as expensive as a 1m rack, but my office is small and I need every inch (or cm haha). I'd keep a little gap at the bottom of the door so cool air can come in. Actually if you can get a vent to pump in cool air in the closet some how, that would be awesome. You just want to make sure it's far from the exhaust, so it doesn't get sucked out.

If you can give yourself some room on the sides of the rack that would be great so you can get behind the rack. You'll have to go back there for unhooking servers and doing cable management. You'll also need space for yourself and any servers you want to take out. I think the deepest consumer server case I've seen about 67cm. So you'll need space for that and yourself in there. If you plan to take the server rack out for cleaning under and behind, you'll want doors big enough to move it out as well. Keeping the area around your sever will go a long way towards keeping your equipment healthy.

One thing I'll say is that you'll never regret having too much space in your server room, but you will regret having too little. Oh yeah, see if you can have them install a fan in the exhaust vent. I'm wasn't sure if that was implied in what you said with respect to the vent. They aren't expensive, but they can be critical for removing heat. If you buy decent fans, I wouldn't worry too much about the noise in your setup.

We're doing our full electrical walk tomorrow starting at 8am but I'll ask him if we can just do this. That'll give me probably 8" of extra space in there. And cheaper to do it now.

The HVAC guy confirmed it'll be a full supply vent in there so not just the exhaust. The fan the builder and I were talking about before would kick on with a thermal switch when heat got too much and just shoot it outside. But, if HVAC guys can get a full supply to the room may as well have them do that.

Quevy · 2026-10-15T16:55:01-0400

Intrinsic said:
We're doing our full electrical walk tomorrow starting at 8am but I'll ask him if we can just do this. That'll give me probably 8" of extra space in there. And cheaper to do it now.

The HVAC guy confirmed it'll be a full supply vent in there so not just the exhaust. The fan the builder and I were talking about before would kick on with a thermal switch when heat got too much and just shoot it outside. But, if HVAC guys can get a full supply to the room may as well have them do that.

View attachment 643895

That will definitely work to keep the room cool. It will cause your to burn a lot of electricity to cool the room if you are just pumping cold air into the room. I had a situation where I put a Pro Xg 8, flex 2.5g Poe, and an Asustor 4 bay nas in my 3rd floor closet. With only that, the entire walk in closet would get uncomfortably hot. One thing that helped was to make a ventilation hole next to equipment going into the neighboring room. I put in a 120mm fan to exhaust the hot air out. It made a world of difference. So in the worst case scenario, you can do that. If you can have it blow out somehow, that would be best.

Even with the additional 8", you'll mostly have to pull the rack out to server maintenance. You might be better off with a wider entrance than adding the extra space.

When I go back to Japan, I'll post some pictures of my set up.

Intrinsic · 2026-10-15T17:57:18-0400

Quevy said:
That will definitely work to keep the room cool. It will cause your to burn a lot of electricity to cool the room if you are just pumping cold air into the room. I had a situation where I put a Pro Xg 8, flex 2.5g Poe, and an Asustor 4 bay nas in my 3rd floor closet. With only that, the entire walk in closet would get uncomfortably hot. One thing that helped was to make a ventilation hole next to equipment going into the neighboring room. I put in a 120mm fan to exhaust the hot air out. It made a world of difference. So in the worst case scenario, you can do that. If you can have it blow out somehow, that would be best.

Even with the additional 8", you'll mostly have to pull the rack out to server maintenance. You might be better off with a wider entrance than adding the extra space.

When I go back to Japan, I'll post some pictures of my set up.

I feel you but interior doors and everything are a bigger ask than just “make this one wider,” you know? I mean we could, but then every other closet door is 2-4’ x 8’ except this one. We’ve already ordered them bc there’s a 2-3 month lead time, it’s already framed out and there’s a corresponding closet mirrored on the other side so I’d have to move two so everything is still symmetrical. Haha gives me anxiety trying to have that conversation with builder. I’ll talk to goon tomorrow morning though.

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Routers & Other Networking Stuff

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