Around here I have been building a lot of servers lately and really needed a rack to mount these up for building and testing. I looked at many different racks and at first I was just going to get an open frame rack, the price is not to bad for those but in the end I just didn't like they way they looked.
My usual thinking is go big or go home and I was actually thinking of getting a 72U size rack, but man those puppies are just so big I scaled back my thinking on size.
My requirements were at least 18U in size min. for what I am doing here, thats kind of an odd size and ended up looking at 25U size cabinets.
In my searching I came accross the StarTech RK2536BKF 25U 36in Knock-Down Server Rack Cabinet and this looked just the trick for what I needed. It looks very nice and would be good for any office type space that would not require a really tall rack. Now adays you can fit very powerful servers in much less space so this fits that very well.
Here is the manufactures website on this unit.
http://www.startech.com/Server-Manag...ters~RK2536BKF
I purchased mine from newegg as it had a better cost on it.
This unit did not come direct from newegg, rather they ship it from StarTech so really the price savings was worth it imo.
Shipping went very smooth and I was called by the shipping company to schedule a delivery date/time and they showed up right on time.
It comes on a palette, weighs ~160lbs so its no light weight cabinet. It does require assembly tho.
So here it is dropped off on my driveway.
Taking the top cover off I get my first look inside. Seems to be packed well enough with no signs if damage.
Now taking the top parts out I can see the second layer of materials.
Now the fun part of putting this together. I was a little confused at first thinking that it would start by building the bottom and then working up. But the first step is taking the two side pannels and bolting in the front and rear cross members. This was pretty easy and only took maybe 10 minutes.
The next step is to flip this over so the top is on the bottom. I used the shipping carton top box on the concrete to protect it from scratching. Now its time to bolt on the other two cross members, screw in the leveling feet and casters. A power drill/screw driver is highly recommended for mounting the casters
Now its flipped back over to finish with the top and bottom cover plates.
Top cover plate. As you can see there are locations to mount 6 fans which I need to get. This case does not come with the fans, which I wish it did.
The bottom plate which is really 3 pieces screws in very easy.
Time to install the doors. There is a door bearing that you install in a hole on the botton and in the door there is a spring loaded bearing. So you set the doot on the bottom bearing, pull back the spring loaded top bearing and align it up and release the spring. Pretty easy stuff actually.
Same thing goes for installing the front door.
And thats pretty much all there is to assembly. All in all it was pretty easy and didn't take that much time.
Both front and back doors have locks. The side pannels also have locks and two locking clips and the side pannels come off pretty easy. You can actually remove both front and back doors and both side pannels to strip the whole cabinet down to install servers, very nice.
Construction of the cabinet is very solid with easy access to anything inside if needed. Quality of the parts is very high and I rate this cabinet right up there with SuperMicro cases. Very, very good quality plus it looks very nice.
Here it is all finished up and this picture gives a little idea on how big this case is. I am happy I did not get the 72U size unit LOL.
Only thing left to do is give it a little clean up to get rid of packing dust etc.
Thanks for reading and enjoy
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