Two builds in 2U rack cases.

Today I'm going to be taking a look at this 2U case, which obviously I like so much I bought two of, and go over a couple builds that I've done in them. One being a router and one being a dedicated video capture PC. And I'm just going to go over the case a bit and maybe why you want a nice little 2U case on a on a rack and instead of a one U. I already did a video talking about why I don't particularly like one UU cases. And although I tried to put my router into that, I just cannot deal with them. This particular case, the KRI CK2380F, which is also sold under the name IPC2360F and probably others by other manufacturers. They all seem to be the exact same case. Is one of the few front IO to youu cases. Now, companies like Sligger and million others make really nice 2U cases. The problem is finding them where they have the IO on the front, which in my case is not absolutely required, but it was definitely something that I wanted. The advantage to this is that I have my network patch panel. I'll be able to patch into it and uh run HDMI and stuff through Keystone jacks and have access to all of this stuff. like I might need to plug in something or whatever and it's just convenient. In terms of IO, there's a simple power reset and status LEDs. And you get two USB typeA ports, USB 3.0 type A ports. And there's even a little cutout for a panel mount connector, which this will fit quite a few different connectors, like a serial connector, that sort of thing. I'm actually using it for HDMI on this one, but we'll get into that as I look at the specific builds. Moving along, we have standard IO shields, which you do not get with one U cases. They do not have the height to have a one uh standard IO shield, so they chop it off. It has four lowprofile PCI Express slot covers because it accepts both ITX and miniITX boards, not ATX though. Around back, it takes two 80 mm fans. Unlike a lot of 2U cases, these will accept the ATX power supply. So, you can put a full-size desktop power supply in these. As long as you don't stack them like this, if you do this, you'll kill the power supply cuz the air intake comes through the top and it'll just kill the power supply. So, whatever you do, do not put an ATX power supply in. If you're stacking it like this, if you have open space above it, like you have patch panels, no problem. In this particular setup, uh, for both of them, actually, I happen to have Flex ATX power supplies that were good enough and quiet. Normally, I stay away from them. They're commonly used in OneU cases. One of the reasons why I hate OneU cases is cuz they have to use Flex ATX power supplies that are often loud, but these two happen to be fine, so I'm going to use them. I've adapted them first from ATX down to SFX and then from SFX I 3D printed a little mounting bracket. There's also Ethernet on the back that is coupled in. So, you can have an uh an internal port that you just couple to the back of this. I'm not using it in this setup, but it's there. Can't comment on the rails for these. I didn't buy any. I don't really think I need rails for these computers just cuz they're not something I'd be opening up a lot. even if I did open them up because they're front IO, you have to disconnect everything to pull them out. And often, you know, like the reason why I want like rails other than like the weight of like a big hard drive NAS is uh just so I can get into stuff while it's running. The these ones since they're front IO, you'd have to disconnect everything before doing that. So, kind of defeats the purpose for me. So, I didn't bother getting rails. Plus, they're small, so it's, you know, it's not a big deal to move them around. Taking a look at the router build first cuz I think this is more in line what with what most people would be building in a rack mount case. It's a pretty simple build with just a motherboard. There's no external storage or anything like that. There's the Flex ATX power supply. I just 3D printed a little kind of stand for it just to give it a little more stability. You don't really need it. It'll stay on with the uh screws at the back. I've got a Gigabyte Q670MD3H motherboard in here, which is a bit of an unusual board. It's a Q series and it supports VPro, so you can use their own uh Intel's proprietary remote management software on this to basically function as like IPMI and remotely control PC. I don't need that. I have a Pi KVM hooked up to a four-way switch, so I can just control this normally uh with that. It's a nice feature to have. This particular board I chose because it had two M.2 slots and it had the PCI Express slots that I wanted like of the same the right physical length. It basically came out that this was the only option. When I when I was looking for boards, you know, you can use really any board you want. This particular one just happened to meet kind of the specific needs that I wanted. It also had two Ethernet ports that at the time I really wanted. I've kind of changed how I'm going to do my setup, so I don't think I'll need all the ports, but it's good that they're there. I've also got a PCI Express card, adding two more 2 and 1/2 gig ports. On the motherboard, it's a 1 gig and 2 1/2 gig. I wish they were both 2 and 1/2 gig, but they're not. But I can use the 1 gig for the WAN connection until I switch over to 2 GB fiber for my home connection. These are all based on the Intel chipsets. Uh, unfortunately, this is an older Intel 225 controller, which had a lot of problems, so we'll see how reliable this is. I might have to just use it for something that's 1 gig. Uh, this card uses the newer Intel 226 Mark 5, which is the most reliable version of it. However, from what I've read, they're still unreliable. I personally have not run into any issues. My uh current router is a uh topon uh small form factor router motherboard computer thing and uh it has many of them on it and I have not run into any issues all with most of them running at 2 and 1/2 gig. It seems to be kind of random with 2 and 1/2 gig Ethernet if you're looking into it. Honestly, either Realtech or Intel seem to be just as bad. So it it kind of just doesn't matter at this point I don't think with 2 and 1/2 gig if you're looking for 2 and 1/2 gig because even though you know everyone goes oh the drivers for real tech are terrible. Yeah well the Intel chips are unstable so we'll take your pick. This motherboard takes DDR5. I've got 32 gigs of DDR5 in here. just some standard crucial memory and an Intel 13500T CPU which is a low power version of a 13500. If you're looking for a processor specifically for the Q 670 series, make sure you get the 500 or higher if you want to use the remote management. If you get something lower than this, the VRO will not function without a 500 or higher. So, just keep that in mind. Again, if you're not using it, doesn't matter. I'm using a 2U vapor chamber cooler from Cooler Guys. I've stuck a Noctua fan on it. I'm not 100% sure if it's going to be enough. The fan that it ships with is very powerful and very loud, but I'm trying to avoid too much noise since this is a router. It's going to be on 24/7. If I have to switch it to the other fan and just limit its speed to something a bit more powerful than this, maybe, but I doubt it. It It should be okay. The 80 mm fans that come with the case are actually pretty decent. They do not move a lot of air. Neither do these Noctuas to be honest, but uh they're a bit quieter and nicer and more reliable. Basically, once I'm done shooting this video, I'm going to just pop the SSDs into this and go from there. I'm running Proxmox on my router currently and it's running a couple VMs, Open Sense and Home Assistant right now. I might migrate more to this system as a VM system and possibly switch my TRNA system back to being just True NAS. Right now, it's also running Proxmox and it has a couple different VMs on it, but we'll see. I might change it up and simplify things to just have one Proxmox system. But overall, very easy to build in. It will take two 3 and 1/2 in drives. They don't get any air flow in their configuration. So, I might like just kind of screw in a fan somewhere here just to get some air flow. It also takes 2 and 1/2 in drives. However, with the 2 and 1/2 in drives, they only put screw mounts for two of them. Why didn't they just put one every few millimeters? So, you can put like 10 of them in here. I don't know. It seems like a waste. You can make this into a really nice uh all flash NAS if you wanted to. Um, you still can, you know, you can mod it and just stick SSDs anywhere really. So, uh, it's possible. It would be nice if they just drilled enough holes for you to install as many SSDs as you want. These particular cases don't come with power supplies, so you have to bring your own. Like I said, lots of variance in what you can use. All the way down to flex ATX like I'm using or up to full size ATX as long as you're not blocking the top. Looking at the capture PC, which I think is a much more unusual style of build, but this kind of just shows off how versatile a 2U case is as long as you can get low profile versions of whatever cards you need. Again, I'm using a Flex ATX power supply. This one's a bit more powerful. It's 310 watts. The other one was 150, but that isn't pulling like at most like 90 watts of power. I'm using the same cooler, although I do have a weaker CPU. I think this is a 12400 or maybe a 12600. I can't remember. I basically just need a system with Intel quicks sync. It meets the requirements. Again, I've swapped out the fan, the rear fans. However, because this is a lot more packed in this case with testing, I may need to swap them out for beefier fans and just live with noise. Since this system isn't on 24/7, it's not a huge deal. This system has one goal, which is to be able to record video from two sources. I want HDMI in for my camera that I'm using now to film myself if I need to. And I have a 4K 60 capture card here that I will use for screen capture. So, that's my setup. And I have 10 gig Ethernet and a video card. Although, this is kind of optional with quicksync. And I don't know if I'll keep this or replace it with a beefier one in the future. Kind of have a dream of being able to edit video with Da Vinci Resolve on this. So I might put a bigger video card in here one day. But in the meantime, this is just a half dead Nvidia 1050 Ti. This 10 gig card is kind of interesting because it's not actually in a slot. It's just taking up one of the spaces. It's not actually plugged into the motherboard. You can see there's a cable running down here to an M.2 slot. That way I had enough PCI Express lanes because Intel desktop boards and AMD don't have enough PCI Express lanes for these kind of weird scenarios where you need 4X for capture card, 4x for a nick, and then you want a GPU as well. So, it gets a little difficult. I've given up one of the two M.2 slots for a converter that lets me plug in this nick, which is an older X520, which they're not super efficient, but it gets 10 gig and it's good enough. The system's not on all the time. It doesn't matter how efficient it is. I've wedged in a little knock to a fan uh 40 millimeter just to get some air circulation here because it's kind of closed off. This motherboard is an Asus Tough Gaming B760M plus Wi-Fi 6D4 from my previous capture PC. I've got a couple sticks of RAM in here. They're uh I think they're 16 gig sticks or 8 gig sticks. I don't need a ton of RAM on this. It's just enough to run OBS. At the time, this motherboard wasn't super expensive, and I think it's still decently priced. I mean, it does use DDR4, which I don't want to invest in at this point, but since I have some DDR4, I don't see any reason to change all of it out yet. It does have 2 1/2 gig networking on board, which is nice, and integrated IO shield and stuff like that. So, it's a nice board if you have DDR4. I wouldn't recommend it if you don't. One unusual thing I've done with this setup is I have a USBC motherboard header here and I've converted that into a normal USB 3.0 typeA port and then I have an extension running off that internally to this Elgato CamLink 4K which only does 4K 30 which means I don't really want to use it for screen capture. So, what I'll be using this for is probably 108060 capture from my camera to do a little picture and picture as opposed to doing 4K on it because 30 frames no good. No good these days. That runs to an internal panel mount HDMI connector which comes out here at the back of the case. So, you can just plug in an HDMI cable here to get your 4K 30 and then you can plug in an HDMI cable on this end to get your 4K 60 and they'll record at the same time. motherboard has your standard array of ports, lots of USB, all that kind of stuff. The front IO means I can plug in stuff if I need to. Overall, I don't really have any complaints about the cases. Two kind of unusual builds in it, although we'll see about the cooling in this one. I might need to go back to higher speed fans, but that's just the the territory with rack mount stuff. I've get this rack mounted finally. have had these on my desk for a long time and I'd really like to get them in service as opposed to taking up space on my desk. Okay, so full disclosure, I filmed this video a long time ago, a couple months ago by now, and I've already pulled the capture PC out and put it into a 4U case. I've already ordered another 4U case for my router build. Now, to be clear, these cases are good. The two UU cases, I do like them and I would keep them if not for the fact that now I actually have a lot more space in my rack. I can use a bigger case. My kind of design goals for the capture PC have changed. Now it's more of an editing station and I want to be able to put a GPU into my case for my VM machine because I want to at least experiment at the time for replacing local and I'd like to replace some cloud stuff like Amazon Echo with something local which needs a GPU for AI stuff. Kind of need a bigger case. Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with these cases. They're really good. Even though when I finished building it, the the whole front IO thing, I didn't like it in my setup. It's just like an aesthetic thing. There's nothing wrong with it. It's really convenient to use aesthetically. Looking at my rack, it just bothered me. What are you going to do? I made a mistake. I I didn't need these cases. I don't want you to see a video in the future where I'm rebuilding both of these systems into something else and think that I don't like these cases. They are good cases. They're wellmade. I just didn't like them in my setup. I get mad. >> What happens?

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeterBrockie IG (rarely tech related): https://www.instagram.com/peterbrockie/ Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Stuff used in this video: Although I used Intel boards in this video, I'd probably go AM5 if I were making it today. KRI 2U CK2380F case: https://amzn.to/46G7voc (alternate model: https://amzn.to/468mh7g) 4U SilverStone RM44 case (At end of video): https://amzn.to/3VPWwSX Coolerguys 2U cooler: https://amzn.to/467WwUz Motherboard (router): GIGABYTE Q670M D3H https://amzn.to/4nuJcPJ Motherboard (cap PC): Asus TUF GAMING B760M-PLUS WIFI D4 https://amzn.to/4nwGgCb CPU (similar): https://amzn.to/4psXsKK Elgato 4k USB (this one seems to do 4k60 now): https://amzn.to/4ny4axa PCIe 4k60 (discontinued?): https://amzn.to/4nzYGSA (different model: https://amzn.to/46ab6uO) Dual Intel 226 2.5g PCIe card: https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_onUMOGt M.2 10g NIC: https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_okZcoy1 Recommended SFX PSUs. I would go SFX because they're quieter than most FlexATX and unlike ATX can be stacked without cutting off air: https://amzn.to/4mpqUi1 Current Filming Equipment: Sony FX30: https://amzn.to/3uTmAzb Sony A7IV: https://amzn.to/3uqGsdT Sony FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G lens: https://amzn.to/3JjOdI5 Sony FE 35mm f/1.4 GM lens: https://amzn.to/3ootA4e Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 G Macro lens: https://amzn.to/3bFBVYD SmallRig RC 220D video light: https://amzn.to/3E2ZomO SmallRig RC 120D video light: https://amzn.to/3YIzoXg RGB Video Light: https://amzn.to/3eqVGGs (not my exact light, but similar) Desview R6 monitor: https://amzn.to/34CfKUI AmScope ME300TZA-2L Trinocular Metallurgical Microscope: https://amzn.to/355bIkd DaVinci Resolve: https://amzn.to/3gm2fLR Buy me a cup of earl grey: Bitcoin: bc1qf5yzmguzxmx7wmal36ancfvqf34ge08juvtnfk Ethereum: 0x1B2df497F1c3bDa4b952Bd3cE266Ccf9D3d6cc30 Chia: xch1qtmtxej0tz2c82wj45mu5ncsu4s6z7nageec44qmc0p4dqexdv7s4a4rlg Ravencoin: RKtLSABkqdFHBSL2ntb1pdC3PVEuc8Dt2Q Raptoreum: RSECAdkYjcrGh7BogBYjXdB3oaThYdyFxA