This is post 3 in the series (next: Dell Trigger, previous: Features).
Quite often, I like to start my projects with a case selection. Since I have quite a few hardware projects under my belt, I also have a fair idea of how much space things are going to take. Despite this, in reality, I sort-of overlap the selection of case with the selection of the largest components; in this case, power supplies. I will cover power supplies in a future blog post; suffice it to say that I determined 200 mm of case depth would suffice.
Based on that, I wanted a 19" 1U rack case with a depth of 200-250mm. The width and height were fully determined by the 1U factor, while the depth was selected as not to interfere with other components. For power supply health, I also wanted to have some cooling slots.
Representative of a cheap case was AliExpress Lang Lang coming in at only $32. It's made of aluminium, has slots, and gets offered in depths of 200mm (1), 250mm (4), and 300mm (3). However, the specification is a bit unclear as to the rear panel. One picture makes it seem as though it's predrilled, but on another, it seems to be one-piece. I find this case to be as close as it gets match to my requirements.
Even cheaper variant is AliExpress Tokban at $28. It has no slots, but that's not an issue since drilling aluminium is not an issue. And it already has power supply input cutout, so that's a bonus. On the negative side, its dimensions seem to be higher than 1U would allow. There is a high possibility this is just a typo. Also, considering I need 2 AC inputs, I'm missing a second cutout.
All other cases I found on AliExpress were just a variant of these two.
My other source is always DigiKey and I started my search by filtering on basic case properties.
The cheapest case I found comes at $34 in form of Bud Industries PRM-14460. This one is 200 mm deep and already has some mounting options inside. I am not as worried about structural stability since it will sit on top of UPS, but structural supports inside do fragment the internal space a bit.
Another interesting case is Hammond RM1U1908VBK, but I try not to even look at it too hard due to its high price of $158. Yes, it's built better than any other case in this list, but the premium cost doesn't justify it for this project. That said, for some other projects, this might be a really nice option, so I'm placing it as an alternative here.
At this time, I am leaning toward a plastic option with Bud Industries PRM-14460
since plastic seems the most promising material to mount an OLED screen. If mounting stuff inside proves to be much of a challenge, my backup option is AliExpress Lang Lang since it allows for more freedom when it comes to mounting and it also has a deeper 250mm option.