Show me your RACK - Page 31

This is my first attempt at anything like this. There are some rough parts but for the most part I'm happy with how it turned out. Debating about making face plates but will decide on that later.



Rack is on wheels which will allow me to roll it out to access the back


Close up of the shelf. Drilled in some holes to allow for air to circulate as well as to run the cables.


Added the drywall. I'm sure there was 100 easier appoaches to cutting this but I took the most difficult way lol


Primed and ready to go.


Looks too much like a prison cell, back to primer it goes


That's better


It's Alive! Now to fix the mantle, adjust the tv and clean up the speaker wires.

Did you really have to paint the brick? I only ask because I have a huge lovely double sided brick fireplace in my living room/kitchen that some a-hole painted white years ago and now I have no way to unpaint it. /edit/ sorry i clearly have a pet peeve, but my brick isn't standard brick like that but is long, thin and burnt orange in color and matches the outside of the house and now my nice fireplace is white. Nice rack though.

Mine is a brick facade, only about half a centimeter thick. What I really wanted to do was to remove all the brick and replace it with stone from top to bottom but I wanted to keep the cost down, maybe it will be a future project.

I painted it because i wanted everything to blend as much as possible. I was originally going to paint the rack the same colour as the side wall but it turns out I threw away the paint can and didn't note the colour. Having the brick, then paint above it and beside would have looked weird to me with the rest of the room a third colour.

I actually removed 3 rows of brick from the top and lowered the mantle to make room for the tv

This is how it looked originally

nice rack

is that a gas burner or wood burner fireplace??

Definately looks like gas or propane.

Tasty,
Your AV rack looks great!, looks like your getting your flat panel above your fireplace just fine, should look fantastic! Good Job on your project!

I have a clear bias against painted brick. I plan on covering it all with rock facade. Painted brick just angers me. Brick facade angers me less. Apologies to all brick painters out there.

Thanks all, it was a fun project to do. Hopefully I will be inspired to do other projects around the house.

Yes Sniper it's a gas fireplace.

Chad thanks, can't wait to see your set up!

Hombre, no worries man everyone has their own preferences. If you look at TheaterChad's build thread you will see a very nice example of a stone facade fireplace with tv above. The brick look just didn't fit in my basement as the rest of the room is very modern and the fireplace stood out too much to me.

hmm, general practice fireplaces and electrical gear don't mix..

radiant heat gas fire and electrical gear shortens life of electrical gear..

1. I measured the temperature before starting this project below and several locations above the mantle (with fire on). There was no significant rise in temperature other then the overall room temp going up over time as the mantle does a good job in deflecting the heat from going straight up.

2. We don't use the fireplace all that often and only in the dead of winter. With that we will not have it on for too long anyways (minutes, not hours).

This is amazing. I'm so glad you posted this because I had a carpenter out today and was able to show him your design. Only difference is mine will be little wider and will have shelves all the way down. Thanks for sharing!

Hey everyone.

Here are a few pics of my rack in its before and current state. The rack itself is a Slim-5 knockoff and all of the shelves are home-built except for the PS3 shelf which is a Middle Atlantic RHS unit.
As most of you know, when a PS3 is rack mounted, it stick out quite a bit. Because of where my rack is located in the room, it can see a lot of traffic walking by, so I decided to recessed it into the wall to eliminate the possibly of anyone bumping into the PS3 or even any of the other components knobs.

Before:

Current:

Very nice! Very nice indeed.

Nice fit. Must have been a real hassle to get the drywall to fit that close to the rack.

Greg

Thanks guys.

Yeah, I knew doing it all in drywall and getting it nice, clean and tight to the rack would have been way beyond my DIY skills. So I trimmed out the recessed area is with poplar, then mudded and sanded the seam and painted the wood the same color as the wall.

Very clean installation, Brent.

I recently cut down a 2 post computer rack, framed it in, and attached it to the wall studs, flush with the stud face. I still have to drywall it over, but my simplistic plan is to use drywall edging, either J channel or U trim channel to give a clean edge and get pretty much the same look as you acheived.

The new rack location uses up a 2' wide by 4' deep niche, right outside the theater door. Since the niche is 23" narrow, I plan to run two surface mounted Unistrut rails down each side wall, and with bracketry attached, will give four post like support to heavy gear.

Looks great Brent! Where did you get the Slim-5 knockoff? I'd love to find a cheaper alternative that's similar. Also, what are your shelves made out of?

Thanks Tedd & Brad,

My original plan was pretty much the same as Tedd, but I was having a hard time finding a used server rack that wouldn’t cost as much as buying two single rails from MA.
In my search for someone that sold rack rails cheap, I found this rack at www.startech.com. Go to their website and in the search window, enter RK4320AV.

I almost couldn’t believe the price and figured when it arrived, I would see why it was so reasonable but there is nothing I can find wrong with this unit. I have say that I have never seen a Slim 5 in person, but this rack seems to be an almost exact copy and the RHS rack shelf for my PS3 fit perfectly.
The only problem I had was with the threaded holes on one of the rails. The rack screws weren’t going in easily but after I chased them with a tap, they were fine.

My shelves are very simple. I went to Lowes and bought some 2’x2’ plywood sheets and some sticks of aluminum angle. I cut the alum. angle to length, drilled a hole in each end and slipped the angle over the rack screws, then threaded a nut onto the back of each one to secure them. I cut the plywood to size and dropped them down in between the two angles (one in the front, and one on the back). I cut the shelves as large as I could so that they were tight against the aluminum so I had to notch each corner to clear the nuts. As far as color, I spray painted all of the plywood and the angle with Krylon Satin Black.

The only downside to this method is that since the shelf takes up the full depth of the rack, there is a lot wasted shelf space behind the shallower components. However after getting it done, I realized that if I drilled some strategically placed holes in the rear of the shelves, they could be used as a cost effective way of cable management.

I’ll take some more detailed pictures of one of the shelves this weekend.

That Startech with your shelves, coupled with Stormtrooper1015's DIY face plates, would equal one very nice, yet very inexpensive av rack.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1136907 post 62.

Looking forward to the pictures.

I was planning on doing some DIY aluminum faceplates like in the future. I wasn't aware of stormtrooper1015's leather wrapped faceplates. Now that is pretty neat. I may just have to re-think this a bit.

As promised, here are some pics and material list of the components I used to make my shelves.

¾ aluminum angle
½ plywood
Standard rack screws
10-32 nuts that I bought at the local hardware store
Krylon Satin Black spray paint

If anyone has anymore questions, let me know.

Close-up of the front and back side of the aluminum angle.





¾ aluminum angle



½ plywood

Anyone have a place that is selling the rack that Brent posted? I followed his link and it says unavailable.

http://us.startech.com/product/RK432...k-Down-AV-Rack

This is the rack. I just went to their website and entered the part number he mentioned. Hopefully this works for ya!

Liking this! Very stylish with the wood.

New rack that I just built for our LR system.

Brent, 123Easy and Mr. Goodcat....all amazing set ups and design!

Bent, was wondering if you found your PS3 got hot with the faceplate on it? I'm debating about faceplates but that little PS3 kicks up ALOT of heat.

Thanks BT.

I know what you mean, these first Gen. PS3's do get pretty warm.

Previous to this, I had it located in an entertainment center in the living room and even with the back panel fully cut-out; its cooling fan would kick on high after being in use for only a short time.

Now that I have it in the rack even with the faceplate on, it has much more room to breath on the back and sides and is running noticeable cooler. I've had it running for several hours at a time and still the cooling fan has stayed in its normal speed range and so far I have yet to hear it kick on high speed.

Well, I have been wanting to do this for a looooonnng time...not really finished with my other projects, but I needed to clear my head and do something I wanted to do....
my old ratty setup:






Hole cut:







A must have!!!!




fitting everything together temporarily:





Test fit! (it's actually backwards in the hole for now, those braces will be on the back...inside the Mechanical room...)


Annnnddddd...VOILA!

Well...Equipment is in...had a few of these glass shelves with beveled edges from when we moved in...perfect size for a coupe doors, soooo...





ohhh the pretty lights!!!



Update...finally got everything just about where I wanted... (In between honeydo's)
backing board on...


also (must be to my honeydo's completions...) Wifey splurged for our anniversary...AAANNNNNNNDDDD!!!!!....

VOILA'!!!!!!!!



Oh yeah! New receiver !!!!!



To Do:
cable management on the back.
Re-wire plug, inside mechanical room, block off hole in wall

I think this should be a relatively easy question to answer (read dumb question). I have a MA Slim 5 rack that I want to mount a shelf in to place a new Onkyo TX-NR3007. The unit weighs 55.1 lbs and measures 17 1/8" x 7 13/16" x 18 1/4. It looks like I have 2 options - a front mount universal shelf like the U3V or a front to back shelf like the SH-5A. My concern is the U3V is only 15" deep which looks like it will be to short for the 18" piece of equipment. Is there another front mount shelf I could use? If not then the SH-5A will be the shelf of choice. If so, then I don't understand how to mount it. I see that it mounts to the side but I'm not sure which screws to buy.

For 55 lbs I'd go with the SH-5A. Indeed, that's what I'm using for my amp and power conditioner. Good news - the shelf comes with the screws you'll need. The screws goes into the holes on the side of the posts, if memory serves me right - similar to how the posts are attached to the base and top.

/Anders