Multi use home office

Well I am finally getting round to it recently I decided to upgrade my home office come gaming come home cinema room to try and clean up and hide some of the clutter and geeky stuff that seems to loiter around on my desktop and get in the way most of the time.

Whoa what a nice rack ... ( to rack or not to rack? )
No it's not what you think, Well maybe it's geek p0rn! I have a choice of building in a removable or a fixed racking system but the cost of the removable / rail mounted setups is far to high and could be put to better use elsewhere, so I have chosen to go with a fixed rack mount option 24U depending on space constraints.

Initial design

There are three 'zones' in this room, gaming, desktop and cinema. So both the desktop and gaming zones are displayed below.

The gaming zone
This is to the right of the server rack closet and has shelving above suitable for dvd / blueray box dimensions and an opening below to accommodate a 32" monitor / hdtv. With a decent a/v setup I should be able to switch the output of the console to either the Projector or the HDTV with out the need to be swapping cables more on this below.

The desktop zone
This zone is to the right side of the room and has the majority of shelving above it which can accommodate from top large ring binder folders, books, and external usb devices on the lower shelf. The table top will also incorporate some belkin usb hubs linked back to the server rack closet.

For consideration

Noise & Heat

Currently the noise level is far too high and heat will be an issue when I group the two main cases in close proximity.

Simple options
Fan extract heat through to existing external vent.
Add air intake fans at base of the server rack.

Complicated, costly options
Liquid cooling. (closed, less messy)
Air conditioning. (expensive)

Green thoughts.
Could use a small wind turbine and or photo voltaic solar cells to power some of this equipment, merits further investigation some grants are probably available too.

Audio visual

I have two existing monitors and am in need of more screen real-estate so I am thinking of adding a third monitor in the future ( after the upgrade when budget allows ) so I need a monitor stand that can accommodate two 24" monitors and scale to accommodate three 24" monitors. Finding a stand for two 24" monitors was fairly simple with ergotrons LX series stands but no where could I find a solution to hold 3 of these Until I stumbled upon an entry on the ergotron blog where I found that ergotron make a 55" extension bar which would be capable of holding 3 24" monitors in theory ( I intend to test this theory later )

The A/V equipment that will also be encased in the rack is an xbox360, Happaug HD-PVR 7.1 (tbd) Audio processor & amp ps3 or blueray player.

Networking

I am upgrading from two GB Ethernet belkin desktop switches to a 24 port 1u DGS-1224T GB switch. Other hardware currently in use is a linksys-cisco adsl2+ modem + a pc-engines alix board running custom software. I will be installing a second wan connection and will switching the software for pfsense.

Backup power
I have two MCE 900Watt UPS backups and am intending to incorporate dedicated outlets into the new setup.

Cable management
I have been looking for quite some time for an ultimate cable management system yet to find one that's a must have and doesn't break the bank. I have found some nice recessed usb hubs from belkin. Some cable tidy ideas ...

split a four inch pipe into an arc and use it to hold up / route cables under the table top (cheep and cheerful)

Resources

http://blogs.ergotron.com/blog/category/video-gaming/

Images