this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Not sure if anyone has done this before but… You’ve seen the IKEA Lack rack, well this one is made from an IKEA Eket. It’s made with 1in square dowels, and some washers between the dowels and rack rails to bridge the gap. The PDU is just a flush mount desk power strip with its sides trimmed. Overall goal with this project was to make the cheapest presentable 10” rack. Overall cost of the Eket, Dowel, screws, and vertical rails was around $50. IKEA recently dropped the price of the Eket by $5 so today it would be $45

Not much on it currently, just a managed 2.5G POE switch, U6 Enterprise and a MOCA adapter since my home isn’t wired with RJ45.

If anyone is genuinely interested in a parts list I’ll leave a comment below.

(Ignore the upside down rack shelf, the switch was too fat. I’ll have to make custom rack ears for it)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

this one is creat, maybe i build the same :D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that a fan and vent hood coming out of the top?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nope that’s my UniFi Access Point. I came up with using the Eket as a basis for the rack specifically so I could mount my AP there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice! Consider some set back adapters for your PDU, then you can make sure the PSUs don’t stick out. I used some in my slightly larger rack https://gist.github.com/scyto/76e94832927a89d977ea989da157e9dc I think they are useful to stop plugs getting snagged…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Woah that’s clever I’ll actually look into that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Am interested in all of the parts! What rack shelves and rails did you use? If you can give item names or links, it would be helpful!

Love this build!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks nice 👌 I was thinking of making the same thing for my switch, RPi and mini PCs, but I'll go with a metal frame.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I was actually inspired by this post and some posts on this subreddit to make a 10" rack for myself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is amazing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ben Shapiro hates one of your ports.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you sure it is not two ports?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

True.

I just thought how scared he is of a WAP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Really remedial question. I see this configuration a lot, and have never known what it is doing. What is this where you have device feeding directly in to a device right below it with a whole bunch of tiny cables? I'm guessing the thing at the top is router handling VLANs. And the thing below a switch. But I still don't get what this is doing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Top component seems a patch panel. What I don’t get is why a patch panel if they don’t have Ethernet/Cat5+ cabling.

since my home isn’t wired with RJ45

Seems like the patch panel & jumpers are just for extending in-room patch cables, to make it look cleaner. I suppose it might improve portability, with the patch panel effectively documenting where the device patch cables need to be connecting. (I’m assuming RJ45 coupler keystones.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It was definitely to make it cleaner overall. And yep the patch panel is just RJ45 keystones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This rack does not contain a router. In essence it pretty much just houses my access point. My router is in my basement. The top device is the MOCA adapter, which converts ethernet running through coax cables in my walls to RJ45. Then the it is plugged into the patch panel (specifically the port labelled "LAN"). A white patch cable then connects to my switch. Allowing for whatever devices connected to the switch to be connected to the network. All the other ports in my patch panel are devices specifically in my room. So stuff like my WAP, my PC, maybe a raspberry pi in the future, ect. ,ect. All of them connect to the switch via the patch panel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If anyone is genuinely interested in a parts list I’ll leave a comment below.

I am interested!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly...kinda cute.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Very cool and neat setup. Nicely done!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where did you buy the rack rails from?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago