New Rack Installation

[Target]

Howdy all,

I'm about to wire up my first rack, and I was wondering if some experts might recommend the order in which things should be stacked. For consistency sake, lets say from the bottom up. I have the following components.

Denon 3805
Nuvo Essentia
Rack mountable server
Non mountable client PC (Old 700 MHz Dell)
GC 100
Mac Mini
Extron 100 Matrix Switch
24 Port mountable Gigabit Switch
Several External HDDs
Old DVD/VCR player
Wii
Wireless Router
Centralite control panel
Sage TV HD extender
HDHomerun
AprilAire 8811 Adaptor


To aid in this endeavor I have purchased 3 rack shelves. A vented 3U, a 2U, and a 1U. My assumptions and questions are as follows (Please correct me if wrong!)

1. The 1U shelf should go near the top, and house things such as the GC 100, external HDDs, and the mini.
2. The Denon goes on the 3U shelf, and nothign should stock on top of it.
3. I have no idea what order to put things in.
4. What kind of screws will I need?

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks,

Target

PS Everything will be controlled via CQC in case anyone was wondering.

 

[opie]

I'm no "rackmaster" but have built a few and read a little about it so I throw in my 2 cents and hopefully a few more experienced CTers will chime in and correct anything I'm doing wrong.

There are a lot of factors in building a rack so I will just point out some generalizations. A lot depends on the type of rack, the room it is in, the venting method of the equipment (front intake vs passive bottom to top) and finally if the rack has fans or not.

I put the hot and heavy stuff (generally amps) toward the bottom of the rack. You want to leave some room for air intake at the bottom. There are two benefits to this: 1) Heavier items lower will give the rack better stability and 2) The heat will rise from below and aid in forcing airflow upward and out the top. You want the top area somewhat sealed except for the fan if there is one. This will help avoid the fan short circuiting the airflow so I wouldn't put the 1U shelf too high.

Try to route power on one side and signals on the other.

Take a look at some of the articles at Middle Atlantic's site. There are a bunch of great white papers that go into more detail about this.

 

[CollinR]

I do same but backwards, power up one side, signals the other and hot stuff at the top. If it doesn't have fans add them at least to the top and put some kinda of filter medium on the ducts at the bottom. Hopefully your rack ia already setup for this, if not dryer sheets work decently and convert your rack into a mega air freshener. Might score ya c ouple more WAF points.