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Billy bookshelves as a retro motherboard "rack"
- Kenji 8mo agoNice fire safety and grounding. Wood is ideal for both. They should build data centers like this.
- wongarsu 8mo agoHow exactly do you envision this going wrong? The rack itself won't hold electrostatic charge, and if the devices themselves want to be grounded they can be grounded through their power supply And wood isn't that easy to get to burn unless you turn it into small particles first
- tokai 8mo agoThat shelf is more glue and fire retardant than it is wood. Its also really bad as a book shelf so it might still be superior in this role than the intended one.
- avian 8mo agoAs a current user of the said item of furniture I'm curious what makes it really bad as a book shelf. It's a shelf and in the past few years it has not yet failed at holding my books.
- tokai 8mo agoThe shelves will start to sag substantially if you fill them.
- Ekaros 8mo agoCan't say I can observe this with a few years old ones. Even with shelves having reasonable amount of magazines or bigger books.
- shagie 8mo agoIt depends on the loading. If you've got it 9-12" high apart and are putting paperbacks on there... that shouldn't be a problem. However, when the shelf becomes multiples of that, then people start putting hardcover volumes or laying the book flat and stacking them high within the shelf. It won't necessarily fail, but it can substantially sag with heavier loads. This is an issue for boardgammers who are after larger and heavier shelf spaces which is why the Kallax shelving is much preferred. I'll also note that Ivar shelving is solid wood rather than particleboard.
- relaxing 8mo agoI once worked in a hardware lab that used wire shelving for holding arrays of running machines, and a bad ground running through one chassis caused anyone who touched the shelf to get shocked by something very close to line voltage. I’m more worried about heat dissipation though.
- pch00 8mo agoI really don't want to be too much of a downer, but is this really just an HN post about someone putting something on a shelf?
- GJim 8mo agoYou're not wrong. How in gods name this article made it to the front page of HN is a mystery.
- pwg 8mo agoBecause enough readers upvoted it to cause it to appear there.
- relaxing 8mo agoAny ideas on that mystery, then? Since you’ve got your finger on the pulse around here.
- pwg 8mo agoThere's no mystery. The way any story makes the front page is enough users upvote it from the "new" page for it to appear there. So the answer to the question of "how did it make it there" is exactly what I said, enough upvoted it that it made it to the front page. As to "why" those folks upvoted it, well, on that I have no idea.
- relaxing 8mo agoNo I already knew you have no idea, that’s no mystery.
- GJim 8mo agoYou <-----> The Point.
- iso1631 8mo ago16 points in 2 hours?
- jl6 8mo agoWhat you’re really here for is the Lack Rack: https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack
- nerdjon 8mo agoI keep wanting to build this but I have seen people talking online that they changed the legs and they are now hollow and not really suitable for this. That has made me very cautious to use this for any serious amount of mounting. Edit: Apparently there is a section on that page about it, but does not give a ton of confidence that it won’t give me a lot of issues.
- Arubis 8mo agoThe tops of the posts are still solid. You could mount a single rack unit and be okay, but fully populating lack legs is not recommended. Cute way to hide a network switch, though.
- ralferoo 8mo agoI have an old Lack (20 years) and while I've never used it as a rack, it'd just been retired from under the TV as I got a new one with a wider base. I notice that even though it's never been moved much, it doesn't feel very stable any more and I wouldn't trust it with a rack of heavy equipment, especially with HDDs that could suffer catastrophic failure if they fell. That said, attaching brackets would sure up the legs a bit. Ideally you'd want to attack brackets at the back as well I guess. I also had a Billy sat next to it, and did similar to this (but again not racked), with all of my AV gear inside. The door was great, it'd make any status lights diffuse and so they wouldn't interrupt watching a film in the dark (and my old Sky box used to have annoying blue LEDs with an animation when playing back a recorded show), but at the same time remote controls still worked through the glass. Literally best of both worlds. I cut a big hole in the back for cables, which also served well for airflow. I considered adding a fan, but never needed it. I suspect there would be issues with negative pressure doing that though.
- retired 8mo ago
- layer8 8mo agoReminds me of the LACK that is commonly used for server racks: https://www.google.com/search?udm=web&q=lack+rack https://www.google.com/search?udm=web&q=lack+rack
- ralferoo 8mo agoOne really good alternative to racks is a flight case with integrated 4U / 8U rack. They're meant for musicians transporting audio equipment, so can be a lot expensive, but they're nice with front and rear panels that pop off, and are very portable. The bigger ones (12U and 16U) often come with wheels too which is nice.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoThe mobo collectors are going to have to fight the vinyl enthusiasts for IKEA's Billy shipments.
- jonlucc 8mo agoAre Billy deep enough for vinyl? It looks to me like they're only 11.75" deep, not 13.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoYeah, looks like the KALLAX is preferred, the BILLY does leave a bit of album hanging out. (Although I don't believe you need all of 13" for an album sleeve—perhaps closer to 12½". Still overhang though.)
- netsharc 8mo agoThere's a version of Billy that is deeper (39cm = 15.35in), but maybe only in some regions: https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-90401932/ https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-90401932/
- dylan604 8mo agoI've mentioned this before, but my first CoLo server was from a friend that built servers for a good sized hosting company back in the late 90s. He built it from spare parts but had no case for it. He hung the mother board against a dry erase board from the mounting holes with zip ties. He had a PSU sitting on his workbench with cables feeding up to the mobo. IIRC, the hard drive was suspended on the wall as well. In that vein, anything can be a "rack" if you squint at it hard enough and maybe tilt your head a bit.
- NoSalt 8mo agoGreat idea, but my Billy's are all full with my LEGO builds. :-D
- BeetleB 8mo agoBilly bookshelves are well known for their hackability. Just Google "billy hacks". See for example: https://ikeahackers.net/2025/06/billy-bookcase-hacks.html https://ikeahackers.net/2025/06/billy-bookcase-hacks.html
- ARandomerDude 8mo agoI’m a pretty mid around the house DIYer, and I commend the ingenuity. But will never understand someone going to the expense and hassle of buying a Billy and converting it into built-ins. Someone who can do the conversion is also capable of adding their own shelves at a fraction of the cost, and the product would be far more sturdy.
- BeetleB 8mo agoAre you sure about the cost? Billy's are fairly cheap.
- zem 8mo agoikea furniture is surprisingly bimodal, either it's cheaply made stuff that doesn't last or it's startlingly solid and cleanly designed for a great price. don't think I've ever gotten something that was just okay.