6.2 The sysadmin round
After the Neo-Braun round (6.1) I asked for five very techy, sysadmin-style designs.
The look comes from the server room. Matte charcoal PETG, safety orange on anything you touch (handles, ejectors, tabs, the mains cover), hex vent grilles, socket-head screws on show, a label-maker label and a status light on every node, and the little LCD as the management display. The rule was the same as before, though: every grille, handle, label and light has to have a job.
Three of the five are new layouts, and two reuse the insides of A2 and B2 (5).
S1 Mini Rack
A real 10 inch rack, five units high. The front posts have the proper 10 inch hole pattern, so I could put a bought switch or patch panel in it later. The air goes front to back like a real server room: each shelf draws through its front and lets the air out into a shared plenum at the back. It's the steadiest of the upright designs so far at 7.2 N, but it uses the most filament, about 1.1 kg, and its 254 mm side panels only fit corner to corner on the bed. Claude's pick.
S2 Blade Chassis
B2's boards as five blades that slide in from the front, each with an orange tab, between a management module on top and a base underneath. The blowers move up into the top module and pull the air up through the blades. The smallest of the five, 158 × 143 × 202 mm.
S3 Five-Bay NAS
A2 dressed as a five-bay NAS: each tray becomes a bay with its own label and light, and the control bay moves up to the top. It's the tallest of the round at 293 mm, and the easiest to tip.
S4 2U Server
A low box, 89 mm high, with the boards standing in a row under a clear lid like memory modules. It's by far the steadiest thing in the project (14.3 N to tip it), but it lies flat, and my brief said upright. So this one needs my yes before it's allowed.
S5 DIN Cabinet
Laid out like an electrical panel: each board clips to a DIN rail on a printed carrier, there's a slotted wire duct, the mains is under an orange cover, and a clear front is held on with thumb screws. Everything is on show. The catch is that the power supply sits upstream of the boards, so it warms their air by about 2 K.
The numbers
| S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | S5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inside | New, a 10 inch rack | B2 | A2 | New | New, a DIN rail |
| Size, W × D × H (mm) | 260 × 183 × 234 | 158 × 143 × 202 | 142 × 179 × 293 | 254 × 214 × 89 | 228 × 122 × 194 |
| Push at the top to tip it | 7.2 N | 4.8 N | 4.6 N | 14.3 N | 4.8 N |
| Mass, of which printed | 2.41, 1.06 kg | 1.52, 0.51 kg | 1.93, 0.91 kg | 1.46, 0.38 kg | 1.66, 0.53 kg |
Honest kit
This round is honest in a way the Neo-Braun one couldn't be. The screws are on show because you undo them, the labels say which node is which, and each status light tells me something. S1 especially: a rack that takes real rack kit is more than a costume.