I know nothing about networking or security. What has helped me was going to the library and checking out any books they have on networking and security. I don’t actually read the books through, I scan them for terms I’m not familiar with and just read about those. It has helped me a lot more than trying to find it online or ask specific questions on forums. There’s so many books and info, I mean people go to college for this stuff. Even the “for dummy” books are a useful resource.

If I can find a good, cheap 4 bay nas that would be just as good. But I can’t seem to justify to myself to pay $200-$300 for a four bay nas when I can pay the same amount for other options that either have more storage or more compute. Don’t have much room or money, so most of my lab wears many hats, and I like to purchase tech that can fill as many holes as possible.

This is why I’m concerned about noise. I swapped the 40mm fans I have in my switches to noctuas, helped a bunch. Would hate to have this disk shelf I grab to be louder than my switches.

as of right this moment I run an R430 1U dell server, which is a dual socket server with 4 3.5 drive bays up front, averages about 90w. Just being a 1U enclosure and having those tiny fans it tends to get loud. Was looking into a 3U disk shelf as well, but have seen 40mm fans on the back of them. I have too many 40mm fans as it is, I don’t need to add more with more noise. I know a 2U or 3U server enclosure would have larger fans and be quieter, and if I get the same generation or newer, use the same or less power.

Ever since moving to a dell precision tower inside a rack, noise has been taken care of greatly. The 7920 has been an amazing homelab platform so far. Cut off and looking at selling my r430, way too loud with the small fans.

Need to add four drives pretty much immediately, but I like to future proof my builds, which is futile I know. I’ve considered a used commercial NAS but ones with four or more bays tend to be as much as my other options.

There are more deadlier things that are way less expensive I can buy at the local tracker supply with not even a second thought from the cashier. Let’s just limit the public from scary things like “3D printers”.

“We’ve done absolutely nothing, and nothing has changed, guess school shootings are the new norm, get used to it”

This isn’t even low hanging fruit. This is fruit that’s been on the ground rotting for a few months that no one is going to pick up and eat anyway. Let’s throw ineffective solutions at the problem and when they fail go, “weeeeell, since you can buy a 3d printer and a gun online, let’s just do background checks for internet access”

Was thinking of this. Even though I live in a metropolitan area, shops willing to make a thing that small, I’d be paying so much in hourly labor, not sure it would be an inexpensive solution. Would be a fantastic one, but I feel I would be out as much if not more than the router. At that point might as well just get a properly cooled one and save myself the future headaches.

Dozen of YouTube videos on it. Thanks for the idea, I’ll watch a few and see what happens.

Have tried thermal grizzly, arctic and noctua thermal pastes and a plethora of pads as well.

Polishing with finer and finer grit of sandpaper? I don’t want to used a chemical polish because it might stick around, right? Could use automotive sandpaper I guess… might give that a try.

Case is cool all over, 3d printed a shroud for a 120mm fan to blow down on it, even the spot directly over the slug is cool, which makes me think it’s that blasted aluminum puck that’s holding me back.

If I forgo the case, a vapor chamber with heat pipes would be perfect. I guess I could just zip tie a cooler on there, but was hoping for something less jankey. Finding copper in the right size is my preference, but that stuff gets expensive quick.

I’m currently using a dell precision t7920, can hold up to ten 3.5 drives, has too many pcie slots, dual Xeon silver cpus. I had it running for about a year now, 24/7, in my living room, it’s in my rack now, and you can’t even tell it’s there. The poweredge series might be different when it comes to fan curves, but I can’t imagine it would be too different.

Using this method, I assume it would be beneficial to get some fans at the top to help with ventilation? Or would natural convection be enough?

I have full mesh front and rear doors, and the top is just a metal grate. I’m just going to focus on the removable side panels, just to minimize some echo.

Lol this is exactly what I was trying to avoid.

At this point I might as well just use self tappers myself, not planning on moving much around… but nothing ever goes according to plan lol

All threads are the same. You can tell the holes that they used by the threads that are messed up. Looking up replacements, can only find 42u hight and cage nut…. APC wants $1200 for the set… only paid $200 for the rack.

I work in automotive, nuts and bolts are my job. Miss-threading because of laziness is unacceptable lol I’ve used everything in my bolt bins sae and metric…