Singing Potatoes
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Monday, 4 August 2008
You can't spell "gouge" without 'U'.
Condescending Linux user

The thought struck me the other day that it might be nice to stick most of my computers into rackmount cases, so as to free up some leg room under my desks. Newegg has some at pretty reasonable prices. But then I started looking for racks to put them in.

¡Ay caramba! Those things are expensive! The cheapest one I found after looking through five sites was about $1700 for a bare-bones 14U frame. No walls, no door, no top - just the rack frame itself. Since that seemed like a lot of money for a glorified Erector Set, I wondered if I could build one, so I googled for the specs. And nestled in the Wikipedia entry on rack units, I found the line: Professional audio and video gear often comes with rack mount options and use the same measurement specifications.

What a price difference. A basic 20U rack - no door or back, but solid sides, top and bottom - goes for about $200 from a music supply site. "Pizza box" servers are a bit deeper than audio gear, but as long as the rack is backless, that shouldn't be an issue.

The moral of the story: corporations with large data centers tend to have much more money than musicians do, so their equipment is priced accordingly.


Posted by godfrey (link)
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