Residental w/ rack; wiring question

[drvnbysound]

How is the equipment heat going to be managed in this room?

 
The design has changed slightly, and a couple of things are moving around. Anyhow, there really isn't going to be any more equipment in the room than one would usually have in a room these days, so nothing is being changed in terms of HVAC.
 
The rack will hold the following:

• AV Receiver
• 4x2 HDMI Matrix
• STB x 2
• PS3
• Xbox
• PC
• Modem
• Router

The idea for a rack wasn't because of an amount of equipment, but rather because the area in which it's being placed... and the ease of modular shelving to accommodate the equipment, as opposed to building something custom.

 

[drvnbysound]

I used raceway in my wiring room and put velcro straps in that.  Runs completely around the room and the enclosures top run up against it.  All the cable is neatly hidden and easy to get to.

 
For some reason I don't remember seeing this before...
 
While that sounds nice, the issue is that you say it "runs completely around the room".... and I'm working with a 2' x 5' closet.
 
Nonetheless, I've got it figured out for now. I'm going to tack a few boxes into place for rough-in this weekend (SMCs and speakers), and all of the wiring will be pulled next weekend after the electricians are done. If they are still on schedule, drywall will be put up on the 13th.

 

[wkearney99]

The design has changed slightly, and a couple of things are moving around. Anyhow, there really isn't going to be any more equipment in the room than one would usually have in a room these days, so nothing is being changed in terms of HVAC.

 
Except it's not in the room, it's in the closet. Are you planning on closing the doors?  If so then you'd really want to watch that you don't have things getting too hot.  
 
Don't underestimate the amount of heat all that gear will produce.  I've got an atom PC with LCD monitor, an inkjet printer and a couple of USB chargers in a 8x8 closet and if I close the door it'll bring the temp up a degree or two in just an hour or so.  And this is without the beast of a LJ8000 printer running (for that I *know* the closet needs to be open!).  At some point I do plan on knocking a register into the return that I know is inside an adjacent wall.  At least 'some' air would get pulled in under the door should it be closed. 

 

[wuench]

For some reason I don't remember seeing this before...
 
While that sounds nice, the issue is that you say it "runs completely around the room".... and I'm working with a 2' x 5' closet.
 
Nonetheless, I've got it figured out for now. I'm going to tack a few boxes into place for rough-in this weekend (SMCs and speakers), and all of the wiring will be pulled next weekend after the electricians are done. If they are still on schedule, drywall will be put up on the 13th.

 
Well you don't have to run it completely around the room, that just a bonus .  The point is that you can run raceway around the cabinet and mounting it to the wall you can enter it and hide the entry points.  If the wiring is in a cabinet you can enter the knockouts from the raceway.  If the wiring is on the front of the cabinet/rack like patch panels etc you can use fingered raceway.  I use both methods.  I have non-fingered running around the room, when it reaches my superpro and av racks I change to fingered.
 
For fingered, the panduit hinged fingered raceway is really nice as you don't end up with scratched up hands. We have started to use that now in our datacenters, it's panduit so you pay a premium but it is great to work with.  I wish I had know about them when I did my wiring room..
 
But glad you got it figured out, now you can move on to the fun stuff...

 

[Neurorad]

You'll need a temperature controlled fan in that closet, venting outside the closet.
 
A 24" deep MA RCS 18U rack with casters, I think, is too deep for that closet. Most of the bare bones 'skeleton racks' are 24" deep or deeper.
 
I think you'll need a small MA Slim5 preconfigured 5-29-CONFIG 20" deep rack.  I don't think you need sides.  Fan top won't help with heat buildup in the closet.
 
UPS may help with power outages - plug the modem, router, and AP into the UPS, so they may have continued internet access during a power outage; not for everybody.  Cable often goes out with power - may be worthless.  Extend the enclosure outlet to the rack UPS, using a power extender (Midlite male adapter, vs. pre-packaged Power Bridge or similar).

 

[drvnbysound]

You'll need a temperature controlled fan in that closet, venting outside the closet.
 
A 24" deep MA RCS 18U rack with casters, I think, is too deep for that closet. Most of the bare bones 'skeleton racks' are 24" deep or deeper.
 
I think you'll need a small MA Slim5 preconfigured 5-29-CONFIG 20" deep rack.  I don't think you need sides.  Fan top won't help with heat buildup in the closet.
 
UPS may help with power outages - plug the modem, router, and AP into the UPS, so they may have continued internet access during a power outage; not for everybody.  Cable often goes out with power - may be worthless.  Extend the enclosure outlet to the rack UPS, using a power extender (Midlite male adapter, vs. pre-packaged Power Bridge or similar).

 
I found and suggested that rack earlier this week; haven't heard anything back with regard to it. I recommended and suggested the UPS for the gear, and the owner said he wasn't worried about it...
 
I have mine wired with the Midlite adapters and all of my gear is on UPS.

 

[drvnbysound]

Except it's not in the room, it's in the closet. Are you planning on closing the doors?  If so then you'd really want to watch that you don't have things getting too hot.  
 
Don't underestimate the amount of heat all that gear will produce.  I've got an atom PC with LCD monitor, an inkjet printer and a couple of USB chargers in a 8x8 closet and if I close the door it'll bring the temp up a degree or two in just an hour or so.  And this is without the beast of a LJ8000 printer running (for that I *know* the closet needs to be open!).  At some point I do plan on knocking a register into the return that I know is inside an adjacent wall.  At least 'some' air would get pulled in under the door should it be closed. 

 
I'm not planning on opening or closing them... not my home. I've made recommendations, and that's all I can do.
 
WRT to heat... I've got (3) Mid-tower PCs that have run beside me for the past 12-18 months. I'm definitely aware of the heat that they can generate

 

[tmbrown97]

I have a walk-in closet that's a bit bigger than that (his/hers closets - mine is smaller but has all the gear) - according to the plans I just pulled up, the room is 7' x 12'.  All I have in there is an enterprise router, 24-ports of fanless netgear switchports (16 and an 8 port netgear), an HP MediaSmart WHS, and my M1 and associated accessories; that room gets HOT (sometimes 10 degrees warmer than the adjacent bath suite).  In the winter I close the heater vent; in the summer I generally leave the door open a bit and obviously leave the A/C vent open.  It's amazing how quick the heat builds up.  I need to either switch to louvered doors or add a vent to the adjacent hallway.

 

[wkearney99]

WRT to heat... I've got (3) Mid-tower PCs that have run beside me for the past 12-18 months. I'm definitely aware of the heat that they can generate

 
Heh, I'm reminded of a situation from quite a while ago.  I had a Sun 3 workstation at home.  I was seated directly in front of it while getting it configured.  The amount of heat it was putting out was quite comfy given the 100+ year old farm house I had at the time.  So warm in fact that I didn't notice the furnace had crapped out until I got up and moved away from the beast.  The rest of the house was pretty darned cold, the furnace must've been out for at least 5 hours, in the dead of winter.  Thankfully it was just a matter of cleaning/resetting the igniter.  
 
I think folks underestimate just how much power all this stuff consumes and how readily it converts that into heat.  And that consumption at idle is considerably less than when being actively used.  Amps can start pumping out a lot of heat when you crank up the volume.  So playing an active game on a console with sound pushed out at a decent volume to the speakers, while the PC is doing something 'in the background' like downloading or transcoding videos, can really push out a lot of heat.  
 
Which might go unnoticed until one or more of the components in the closet starts acting flaky due to being overheated.  And it's that intermittent flakiness that can get maddeningly difficult (and expensive) to have debugged.  The problem 'goes away' for the technician coming to fix it because the home owner left the closet open to help, thus hiding the temperature problem.
 
One suggestion when you've got any kind of place that would benefit from temperature monitoring is get a thermometer that tracks both high and low temps.  I've been using these in my refrigerators and on the boat:
http://www.amazon.com/ACU_RITE-Refrigerator-Wireless-Thermometer-00986/dp/B004QJVU78/
 
The nice part is the display receiver tracks both the highest and lowest temps it's detected.  That way I can tell on the boat during winter if the cabin or engine room has ever dropped below 41F (the temp at which a heater should kick in).  Or if the stand-up chest freezer has ever risen above the 2F setting (because of the door being left open).
 
I mention this because it's handy to use a device like this to monitor a new setup to learn just how warm it might actually be getting when everything is set up and closed up to look pretty. 

 

[pete_c]

Watching to see methodologies / racks utilized; mostly because I have had a couple of similiar requests just in the last two weeks.
 
Here I built a "paper" and "printer" closet using a walk in closet off of my home office.  It is not ventilated and has a solid core door to it.  That said I configured with a few printers and one small switch.  The printers go to sleep and the ambient room temperature never really changes too much.
 
On another endeavor relating to the house in Florida; I went to one closet inside one room and just installed two cans and put everything in the two cans (literally).
 
The closet is not ventilated.  Its been now over some 6-7 years the same and all is still functioning.  I know I am pushing it a bit as the can has an antenna amplifier, FIOS box, small network switch in it plus all of the house cable terminations going to it.
 
Relating to the list above (equipment); personally here had to adjust ventilation for the MM receiver as it was getting a bit warm when being utilized in customized small piece of wood furniture. 
 
PC wise have gone to using a tiny Aopen Digital Engine.  Its really not too power hungry and very quiet.