Do you have a server rack? How big is your rack?

Would you ever consider doing an overview of power requirements? A general educational video on how to ensure power safety on home electrical circuits might be beneficial!

I bought the sysrack 18U open rack a little over a year ago. It was a a great unit. I just upgraded to their open 4 post 27U rack as I needed some more space. I use front and back space to maximize the space. The Canadian centre is very responsive and helpful.

This looks awesome!! Can't wait to see it filled up!

Thanks for the tutorial of this server rack! I've been eyeing one of these up and your video has definitely guided me in deciding against any other rack.

I never thought I'd see a fresh and new rack review video right when I was looking for a server rack for my basement homelab :)

I just managed to snag a Compaq 9000 series 42U rack in mint condition from a company trying to get rid of it. Your videos were a big part of the inspiration for trying to look for one. Keep making the great videos! I love the build / tour videos especially.

when the beeps went off on the front display, I totally had a PTSD moment and immediately checked my UPS... lol got me good Tim!

i got their 42U rack, and i REALLY love it. Going to pick up their deeper rack as the 32" depth wasn't deep enough so i can close the back of the enclosure lol live and learn i guess, first rack project and its a total blast. easier to build the rack than it was to terminate and run all the CAT6 cables in my attic

Tim, Thank you for doing this review! I currently have a Navepoint 9U Deluxe that I've had for 6 years. I've never turned on the fans in my unit as it's also in my basement. I've been looking at 32U - 42U racks and just found SysRacks before finding your review! This is GREAT! I hope to check out some of your other views prior to building out my rack to get additional ideas.

The new rack looks awesome, but it's missing something crucial: led strips

As a consultant at an MSP I get to see racks others have set up. Those top of rack fans are 99% of the time NEVER plugged in on the racks I inherit. Never understood why. I'm talking a sample size of hundreds here, across different clients and therefore different other MSPs or internal IT teams. My only thought is the fans may have been disconnected to either free up an outlet on a PDU or that the fans being non controlled were 100% and making too much noise. The latter hopefully sorted by this rack having a controller. Fun note. One client, a multi million defence company, used wooden shelving as their racking. Convinced them to put a rack in and spent a weekend moving a bunch of hosts and switches. Huge transformation and let them use the wooden shelves for storage rather than squeezing stuff between the live IT hardware as they'd been doing

Looking forward to seeing everything migrated into the new rack!

It's like you read my mind tim, I was just looking for a rack

The one thing I like to do with my server racks both business and home is placing the racks horizontal PDU and the rack switch towards the middle. it make wiring a little easier

Nice product and nice video, as always! What’s missing me is... the basement! 😁

Pretty sweet. I wish I had found something like this when I built my open rack.

I have a Sysracks 37U rack which _just barely_ rolls through a doorway. Best bang-for-the-buck server racks out there, imo.

Visiting Texas and micro center before 2023. Road Trip? Who's with me? Let's go!

Awesome rack Tim! I might consider getting one myself when I upgrade my 15U rack when I finally get a house. On another note, why would people make fun of you for RTFM? Kudos for encouraging people to do it!

I have a small 6u "Network Rack" that houses my core switches, firewalls, and ESXi hosts sitting on top of an OLD Dinosaur 24u Digital DEC Rack that houses edge switches, NAS, and other Storage servers, as well as the ESXi Lab I built for the kid to learn stuff on.

Sysracks makes such awesome stuff, but sadly they are too expensive for met to buy for my house. Maybe someday, I can dream 💭

Had no idea you were local until his video and you mentioned "Minnesota Basement"

I have a 42U APC rack that I got used from a local business that had built a larger server room and needed to empty out their old server room. It has side panels but I wish they were split like yours. They're the full height of the rack which makes them heavy and difficult to get back on.

3:44 - "Building the mainframe" But I thought you were running a bunch of servers in the rack!

As someone who's put more racks together than I care to admit, if you are worried about stabilizing the uprights you can lay it down, but make sure you have clearance to stand it up.

I wish there was sort of an in-between option instead of fully enclosed and open frame. I really like the flush front and easy access that an open frame rack gives you, but I would also really appreciate side panels. Buying enclosed and just not putting the door on is always an option, but it doesn't end up looking great.

Very nice rack. I wish the temp control unit was silver or black rather than 90’s hospital cream color

Hoping to order a Startech 18U rack soon to replace the homemade 9U wooden rack I am using now.

Love seeing NyyBeats in the background 🤩🤩

That's a really nice looking rack but the skin-tone beige plastic on the thermal control unit seems out of place. Otherwise that looks great! I didn't realize the sysracks came unassembled. That's actually pretty nice because other racks I've bought came fully assembled and then you have to get them shipped via freight and it's much harder to move them to their final install spot as a complete unit. Especially for a basement homelab.

When I bought mine from Sysracks, it came in five boxes which were well packaged. But then I opened all the boxes and 5 main parts were severely bent and scratched. I emailed them and they were apologetic and said they would send me new parts. Those came in the mail and were, again, severely scratched and bent. I emailed them a third time and the parts finally came in unbent but still badly scratched. After it was finally built (this back and forth took 3 weeks), the fan system beeps so incredibly loud and for no reason so I’ve had it unplugged until I find the time to rip the speaker piece out. I highly doubt I’d go with them again for my next rack even though the product in pictures looks really nice. Maybe by then they’ll get their act together.

Bought the 42u version a year ago. -The build quality is wonderful - Fans started to get noisy, it's crap -PDU Wire gauge is a bit thin BUT, for the hardware quality you get for this price, you can easily get about 12 fans + 2 pdus and you won't reach the price of the competition.

Nice rack! Needs more LED. 😊 I have a NavePoint 9U wall mounted that has served me well, but planning on something with way more U, on casters, and is full-depth. This one is glorious!

I remember putting together a full 42U, and it was easy... Did it all by myself in and 3 hrs. Just need a good metric ratchet set.

And that what I call an "ASMR" Video!

I've been interested in an enclosed rack, but do not know if it is right for what I need. I like the idea of it, but I never can quite see how all my cables running into the rack. I have about 48 cat 6 cables that need to come into the back of a couple of patch panels, bit it isn't clear to me where those cables run in an enclosure like this. Open rack is obvious, but would be nice if there was a video illustrating this.

I Have a 25u open rack. I love to have it enclosed but very pricy for new were as this one was a little under 200 new. I love to have fans to aid in pulling air though the rack also I like to have a filter system to filter the air to keep the servers and switches cleaner. Since the county side is very very dusty.

lol 03:54 "Building the mainframe" 🤣

Do you know if the fans are standard 3/4-pin that can be replaced while still being controlled by the front panel?

That rack is awesome!

It looks like that you can adjust the front and back rail on the unit. Do you know that the maximum distance that you can set between the front and rear rails? Thanks.

I bought a sysrack and the weight of 4 of my servers started to blend the metal of the post. So I went with the Dell Server Rack cabinet.

Dang I just got a Navepoint 25u rack, but this rack would be perfect. I wish Microcenter carried server racks and accessories

This is a nice server rack

I have 2 SysRacks a 37U in my server room and 18U in my office, they are great!

Looks like the rack I got, but with better ventilation at the top. Probably the same OEM in China as I see a lot of them with the same style.

serious thing on the microcenter. I just went thursday to pick up a INSANE bundle. 12700k with a $290 mobo. mobo drops down to a penny. and its a nice TUF gaming mobo. but they only do it if you ask about it in store. I can post my reciept if anyone doesnt believe me. and there were 3 other people in line with me buying the same bundle

7:47 fully closed back door + almost full glass front door = toasty rack? those fans at the top (mostly blocked by the top server) aren't going to cut it I fear with 32U of compute and storage :D might be ok for a homelab with normal workloads though, looks great at least! nice video, clear review 👍

Nice box, but where do the cables enter and leave from?

Deployed plenty of these, good enough for the cost. One warning though, never leave the full weight on casters, they are not specked to handle it and will break, there’s even a warning in the manual.

+1 I have the same rack in black and love it. The AC fans were a little loud for my situation as it's in a living space so I replaced them with Noctua industrial fans at 9V. Also added sound deadening material to the sides internally and to the front mesh on either side of the glass attached to a 3d printed raised platform as to not block the airflow. Would recommend out of 10. Just make sure you get the correct depth, originally I ordered the shorter depth version that didn't fit much of my gear.

I have the same one but 18U version from a few years ago, the rack itself is great, assembly can be done by 1 person, but it wasn't easy all the time. Because I don't have a basement, it's in my living room (I live in a flat) and the thermal management is a on/off system based on temp threshold, which mean it's either off, or the 110v fans are at 100%, and they are LOUD when you have them next to you all the time. I replaced the whole thing with a 5"1/2 fan controller meant for a computer (had to dremel a little bit to fit) + noctua NF12A, so it can extract the heat and be quiet. I also lined the panels with sound dampening foam panels, to reduce the servers hums. Overall, buying a rack new can be a little expensive, but would recommend, but not the temperature panel when it's not in the basement or in a soundproofed room.

Very nice! ❤❤

The only issue with this rack is the backdoor. It is solid no vent. hence all heat blown from the back will be accumulated & the only exit is the top fans which will overheat everything. I think it is best to operate without the backdoor allowing heat to be exited from the back this will lead to a more silent operation especially it is in your home "no security risk". My advice to contact vender & request a vented back door

Not bad Tim. Actually made me rethink my rack setup. Lets see how it comes out :) keep it up!

I got one of their 27u ones at a 24” depth but man in spite of the screws being tight the door alignment is way off (big gap toward the upper left) and if I twist it at the top it aligns correctly but because the screws are as tight as I can get them it just won’t hold properly like yours does

Tim, With all of those locks. How many keys do you get with this ? And, will this hold a Dell Poweredge server...length and width ?

What was that you had playing on the TV in the background?? Looked like some streamer playing around on the decks?

Nice rack !! Good build !!

Great video! I have an enclosed rack that I'm not using at the moment because I got it for free when I bought an old server from a friends dad but it's not big enough for what I need. Any chance you'll be selling your old one? 😉

Hesitating between 42U vs 32U hmmm. which one, great internet?

Have a 25U Rack myself.

How many time can we get Tim to say Gray/Great LOL All jokes aside, that's an amazing rack! Thanks for the review!!

Actually the fan will try to go towards the set temperature, but can obviously only produce cold air

Are you running this gear on a dedicated power circuit? If so, how big is the circuit? I assume it's somewhere between 15A and 30A?

I just got one of their open racks

congratulazioni ^___^

He is baa haaack .....

Temp control unit? Hmmm home assistant? Node red? Graphana?

Would a simple spacer (like a block of wood) work good enough to raise the gap between the casters and the bottom of the rack enough to allow the vacuum robot? It seems like an easier solution. 🤔

Hi Tim, your Proxmox videos are really helpful, but one thing I have yet to see discussed (unless you did but I haven't seen it) is do you store your vms in the same disk as your Proxmox host? I have a optiplex 5060 so I have an m.2 holding proxmox and vms, and 2 enterprise SSDs Raid1 for TrueNAS storage.

I bought a 15U rack from Sysracks (PR 15.900, I think) and none of my servers (just standard Rosewill 4u cases and a generic 24-bay 4u) would fit past the pillars in the front. After a bunch of emails, measuring and photos they refunded me ~25% of the cost of the rack and basically said "those servers won't fit this model, glhf". Yeah, standard 19" rack components don't fit in it for some reason. :P Obviously this isn't the case with all their products, but it makes me hesitant about buying anything else from them.

what's that wooden shed/cabin you have at the back? :D

it looks like that's a solid rear door so your only exhaust is the top fans....??

Wait a min 2nd hand said ankeny... ARE YOU IN IOWA?

since its 42U, now you can summon Wendel Level1 to appear from the rack 🤣

excellent review, Im considering one now.. Still like it?

Why not have a full rack in you’re basement which is most server rooms are for sound and near a window . Surprised it took you so long to get a full server rack tbh, the first thing I bought was a rolling 32-U audio server rack and converted to computer server rack :) congrats on moving up to the big leagues;)

what kind of fans are in the top? 12V DC? or are they AC?

I have the same rack in an 18u.

Don't feel bad about reading instructions, superman reads the manual.

Good build. Who are you listening to in the background? Better be real Techno :p

YES

IT is one of the few industries where you can get away with saying things like "Nice rack" or "show us your rack" 🤣🤣

one side point - why does anyone make fun of anyone for reading the instructions? not only is it prudent to do so, as there might be some specific hitch with that particular model of gear that's crucial to be aware of, but you also got a new toy - you wouldn't want to miss out on any of the features of it because you didn't even know it was there, would you? Instruction manuals are awesome (provided they are well written of course).

Who is DJ'ing on the TV behind you?

🐱‍🏍🐱‍🏍

I purchased a 37u model based on what I saw in this video and boy, was that a mistake. The included assembly instructions were the worst I have encountered for any product, ever. Zero detail in images for bolt placement (though a few instances where bolts are illustrated, I noticed at least one case where there was no physical way to place a bolt as shown), and major assembly steps were omitted. It appears they also use the exact same assembly guide booklet across multiple models, so the illustrations did not match what I was actually assembling. I am dumbfounded that any self respecting manufacturer would ship a product with an assembly guide that was so poorly written. It's as if it was written and QA'd by people that have never actually read an assembly guide or actually assembled anything. Further, once assembled, no amount of tweaking the included latch and lock assembly for the doors seems to allow the latch to align properly to 'catch' the frame and keep the doors latched shut, so I'm going to need to figure out a workaround for this. Kicking myself for not just spending a few hundred dollars more to buy a rack from an established brand with a good reputation.

No Sysrack promotion code?

Sweet! What model rack is this?

Are you going to do a video when you swop it all over from one rack to the other one

The red pin stripes are tacky. Can they be peeled off easily?

Why do you have plants in your cellar?

Is energy cheap in your region? Your energy consumption seems very high.

living overseas, my rack is like a half U

I have a 42u that I’m getting for chris

why are racks so expensive!?

I bought a their small version of this a bit ago. The instructions that came with it were only 3 pages long, basically only included pictures, and just weren’t helpful at all.

Hello