quiet rack mount cases e.g. water cooled or 5U, 140mm fans

[pocock]

I've had a few discussions with people about Talos II and Talos II Lite, mainly based on the recommendations in my recent blog post

One topic that comes up is that some people are space conscious and while the Fractal case is really nice and easy to use for this platform, you need to be able to access it from both sides because the HDDs / SSDs are under the motherboard and any case for the Talos II is going to be big anyway.

One of the ideas emerging from these discussions is building a small rack that can be positioned in the home or office like a chest of drawers or coffee table.  For example, such a rack could be shared between some engineers on a support desk.  A decent UPS can go in the bottom and the Talos II mounted in a large 5U case.  PDUs, network switches, etc can all be mounted on a shelf or rack mounted.  As it is not for data center, 4U to 6U for the workstation chassis is quite acceptable.

As it would combine well with other components, like a rack UPS, it suddenly starts to help save space rather than using more space.

Has anybody had experience with any server chassis between 4U - 6U that has large 140mm quiet fans and accepts regular fanless PSU?

Even if it is not so big, has anybody had any experience making a rack case operate quietly with water cooling?

[MPC7500]

The biggest fans I found is 120mm.
And q66 made a water-cooling modification on his POWER8 server.

[pocock]

Many of the cases on that page have 120mm fans combined with some smaller fans.  I don't feel that will give the same quiet as a 140mm fan.

The only chassis with all 120mm appears to be a GPU mining chassis, it may be suitable but from the pictures it looks like the GPU slots obstruct the space for the POWER9 heatsinks

[MPC7500]

For a Talos-II would pick a DunePro.

[pocock]

Dune Pro is definitely an interesting alternative to the Fractal cases for tower users but it doesn't solve the rack problem in this thread.

In Switzerland, the building code says every house has to be built with a bunker.  People buy large rack mount UPSs, like the APC 1500VA or bigger and want to match them with something like Talos II in a small rack.  That is why I started this thread.  Sorry if I'm not able to idenify individual users but if you want to see the bunkers there are plenty of them, people who like hiking or motorbikes visit the mountain bunkers on weekends in summer.

[MPC7500]

I see. Someone on Twitter made a DIY rack case out of wood.

[JollyRoger]

Hey guys,

I can do some sheet metal design and CAD if you guys want, if I have enough spare time. I thought I'd chime in on this.