Have you considered putting your kids up for adoption?
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2026
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What a horrible thing to suggest.
Sell them and use the money for more equipment.
I believe raised beds for kids have a lot of space beneath them for putting servers. Just make sure they can't pull the plugs 😜
Keeps 'em nice and warm too.
Reddit == Evil, but if you're looking for ideas there's an entire subreddit dedicated to this. Tons of ideas, links to 3d prints, and more:
Yeah, they have a great wiki, it's how I found my stuff.
A (friend with a) 3D printer is essential. Stuff is fucking expensive on Etsy etc.
I've ordered a few parts from jlcpbc printed recently, the prices were beyond reasonable. (Things that I wanted a resin print for to reduce layer problems)
It may help that they have a $10 off coupon, and I stayed really close to that.
One of the three subreddits I still visit.
Digitus has a lot to offer for 10" Racks. I use a lot of their Basic stuff for my Racks. AS a Server I am a fan of Mini-PC's. They are (imho) good enough for SOHO users. For storage an off the shelf NAS is small enough to fit inside the Rack. I did not find a good option yet for a TrueNAS solution (maybe one of the NAS solutions where you flash your own operating system?).
From my 10" homelab:
- Enclosing: Digitus 10" 9HE Wandgehäuse. But today I would get the 12HE version of it (my Homelab expanded beyond the available space)
- Patchfield: Digitus 10" 12 Port LSA Patchpanel Weiß. There are also keystone version if you prefer them. I did go for this because it is cheaper and I only need RJ45.
- Power connector: DIGITUS 10 Zoll Steckdosenleiste. it has 4 sockjets and a switch. I am using 2 of them.
- Shelfs for Servers, etc.: Digitus 10" Fachboden. I use them to keep my Mini-PC's and router in the Rack.
- Router: Draytek Vigor2927 it just fits on a shelf and all Ports are accessible. It is connected to a Fibre-Modem, so it just being a router is good enough for me.
- Switch: ALLNET Switch smart managed 16 Port Gigabit. Unfortunately I could not find an option including PoE (that is reasonably priced...) so I went for this managed Switch and an extra PoE Switch.
- PoE Switch: YuanLey 11 Port Gigabit PoE Switch, 8 PoE+ Port 1000 Mbit/s, 2 Gigabit Uplink, 1 SFP Port, 120W 802.3af/at. It is not directly obvious from the product page. But the 2 included Rackmount ears work for a 10" Rack.
- Mini-PC as Server: HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Desktop-Mini-PC . You can get these on the used market for cheap. Look if you can find one with an i5-8500T (KabyLake architecture). These chips have very good Transcoding qualities (Quicksync)
- NAS: I use a Synology DS-918+. It fits on a shelf isnide the Rack. but due to Space limitations (9HE instead of 12HE) it is now stacked on top of my Rack.
I don't know where you are located. So maybe you need to check if these are available to you.
I’m having trouble translating how big your cabinet is ….. given the list of equipment similar to yours (nas, switch, router, ports), how many mini-pc’s fit?
My cabinet currently is 9HE high and it can fit 2 mini-pc's easily and all the rest. Just the NAS does not fit into it. For that I would need at least 12HE.
Thanks
Are pi’s or other single board computers options for you? My home lab runs on a handful of pi’s a dying mac mini (I am looking at replacing the thing with a better computer) and a Flint 2, running OpenWRT. I have a Rock 5 or something like that but have never been able to figure it out.
I’m currently running on a pi4 and a HP Elitedesk, those should be fine. Just need to tidy up everything else because I have to target a higher wife acceptance factor
It's a bit hard to justify a 3d printer for a single project, but if you think you'll use it for other projects then that's the way I would go. I just finished putting together a bit of a Frankenstein 10" rack based around these https://www.printables.com/model/1564648-rail-with-integrated-caps-for-10-inch-rack-system https://www.printables.com/model/1173672-10-mini-rack-all-3d-printable
Biggest callout would be to make sure the printers you're looking at have a large enough bed size to print the model you land on. The original one I was planning on printing couldn't fit on my printer.