At a previous apartment, I managed to convince my wife we needed a giant server rack, so I started looking on Craigslist and eBay for one.
I really wanted an SGI server rack because I thought it looked cool, and because I found them historically very interesting, but sadly those appear to have a bit of a collectors' market and are too expensive. Instead, I ended up buying a Sun Microsystems rack, which to be fair is also pretty cool historically.
I would love to buy a broken SGI machine and put some modern hardware in there, just for the aesthetic. Maybe someday.
I would love to buy a broken SGI machine and put some modern hardware in there, just for the aesthetic. Maybe someday.
The closest you can easily get is the 230/330/550 cases which are strait up ATX. I have a 550 case with a threadripper in it. The only issue was I had to modify the 750W PSU to fit in the case by replacing the IEC inlet with a short pigtail cord.
Unfortunately I cant find the pics of the build at the moment. It's a stock SGI 550 case so nothing special done to the case. I replaced the PIII Dual Xeon board with an Asus Threadripper board w/ 1920x CPU, 32GB ECC RAM, Radeon Pro W5700, 1TB NVMe, 10Gb NIC. Daily driver running Void Linux Musl.
The mod to the PSU was needed because the IEC inlet was practically at the edge of the PSU housing which is partly obstructed by the edge of the SGI case. I could have modded the case by cutting the steel but I didn't want to cut up a unique case when the PSU is easier to replace. So I opened the supply, unscrewed the IEC inlet, de-soldered the leads from the inlet to the board then soldered in a length of 18 AWG cord. I covered the IEC inlet with a piece of 16 gauge (~1.2mm) aluminum with a 16mm hole for a cable gland and two screw holes for mounting with machine screws and nuts. The cord is secured by a metal cable gland and terminates to an in-line IEC socket. NOTE: I did replace the X and Y caps across the factory inlet with new ones I soldered to the PSU board with the cord.
Comments
At a previous apartment, I managed to convince my wife we needed a giant server rack, so I started looking on Craigslist and eBay for one.
I really wanted an SGI server rack because I thought it looked cool, and because I found them historically very interesting, but sadly those appear to have a bit of a collectors' market and are too expensive. Instead, I ended up buying a Sun Microsystems rack, which to be fair is also pretty cool historically.
I would love to buy a broken SGI machine and put some modern hardware in there, just for the aesthetic. Maybe someday.
The closest you can easily get is the 230/330/550 cases which are strait up ATX. I have a 550 case with a threadripper in it. The only issue was I had to modify the 750W PSU to fit in the case by replacing the IEC inlet with a short pigtail cord.
Would you mind sharing a picture?
Unfortunately I cant find the pics of the build at the moment. It's a stock SGI 550 case so nothing special done to the case. I replaced the PIII Dual Xeon board with an Asus Threadripper board w/ 1920x CPU, 32GB ECC RAM, Radeon Pro W5700, 1TB NVMe, 10Gb NIC. Daily driver running Void Linux Musl.
The mod to the PSU was needed because the IEC inlet was practically at the edge of the PSU housing which is partly obstructed by the edge of the SGI case. I could have modded the case by cutting the steel but I didn't want to cut up a unique case when the PSU is easier to replace. So I opened the supply, unscrewed the IEC inlet, de-soldered the leads from the inlet to the board then soldered in a length of 18 AWG cord. I covered the IEC inlet with a piece of 16 gauge (~1.2mm) aluminum with a 16mm hole for a cable gland and two screw holes for mounting with machine screws and nuts. The cord is secured by a metal cable gland and terminates to an in-line IEC socket. NOTE: I did replace the X and Y caps across the factory inlet with new ones I soldered to the PSU board with the cord.
The old Sun Ultra 24's make cool looking PC cases as well