I Mounted a Homelab Under My Desk
I was inspired to design a mini rack system for my raspberry pi cluster. In true me form, I went overboard and ordered too many parts so I ended up creating 2 different racks.
The first one for my pi cluster and the other for my other switch and my Nvidia DGX Spark. I want to thank this page for so much inspiration. I went with two Black DeskPi RackMate T1 Rackmounts (8U). I have a Secret Lab Magnus Pro desk so I ended up mounting these using 2 Premium PC Mounts for an incredible under desk look.
Parts List (Top to Bottom)
Rack 1 (Silver Screws)
Front
2U Unifi USW Pro XG8 POE Switch in a custom printed mount by Calculated MFG
1U DeskPi Blank Panel (included with rack)
2U DeskPi Vented Blank Panel to cover the DGX Spark
0.5U DeskPi Brush Panel
1U DeskPi Blank Panel (included with rack) covering the front a Tripp Lite 600VA Mini Desktop UPS
Back
1U DeskPi Blank Panel (included with rack)
1U DeskPi Blank Panel (included with rack)
1U DeskPi Rack Shelf to hold my power ricks for the switch and the DGX Spark’s power supply
1U 40mm 3d Printed Fan Panel that holds 5 colored USB Fans that I spliced together into 1 USB Cord (I looked for a premade option but didn’t find one)
1U DeskPi Rack Shelf to hold my DGX Spark.
2U Tripp Lite 600VA Mini Desktop UPS mentioned above.
0.5U Back of the Heavy Duty Rack Shelf mentioned above.
Rack 2 (Black Screws)
Front
1U Unifi USW Pro XG8 POE Switch powered off the other unifi switch running over ethernet through my cable manager in my desk in a custom printed mount by Calculated MFG
0.5U DeskPi Brush Panel
2U 4x 16GB Raspberry Pi’s running a Waveshare POE Hat and a Sunfounder Dual NVMe Raft with a 1TB WD NVMe and a Hailo 8 AI CoProcessor mounted in a DeskPi PCIE NVMe Board Mount for Raspberry Pi 5. I ended up modding this a little just because of the Hat and Raft I used.
2U DeskPi 84 inch touch screen 1280x400. I haven’t configured this yet but have plans to show network stats on it from the Pi Cluster.
1U DeskPi Blank Panel (included with rack) covering the front a Tripp Lite 350VA Mini Desktop UPS
Back
1U DeskPi Blank Panel (included with rack)
1U 40mm 3d Printed Fan Panel that holds 5 colored USB Fans that I spliced together into 1 USB Cord (I looked for a premade option but didn’t find one) - I didn’t have this one installed when I took the photos but it’s just like the other one in the other rack except it has black screws.
1U DeskPi Vented Blank Panel hiding my Sunfounder Pironman 5 with 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 and 1TB WD NVMe
2U Tripp Lite 350VA Mini Desktop UPS mentioned above.
0.5U Back of the Heavy Duty Rack Shelf mentioned above.
All in all this was a fun little project that I went wayyyyyyy over budget on. I’m running K3s on my Ubuntu Linux Cluster of 5 Raspberry Pi’s and using the DGX Spark for AI testing and model building. I’d love any suggestions and am happy to answer anyones questions.