alt.hn

3/1/2026 at 8:24:31 AM

Billy bookshelves as a retro motherboard "rack"

 https://rubenerd.com/billy-bookcase-as-a-retro-motherboard-rack/

by ingve

3/5/2026 at 3:12:54 PM

I'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.

by dylan604

3/5/2026 at 4:05:32 PM

Your friend founded OVH?

by cm2187

3/5/2026 at 1:33:39 PM

What you’re really here for is the Lack Rack:

https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack

by jl6

3/5/2026 at 3:10:07 PM

LackRack is cute in that it works and fits, but the real home datacenter is wire shelving - one of THOSE bad boys can support hundreds of pounds AND have good airflow (and sneaky cable routing!).

by bombcar

3/5/2026 at 5:40:07 PM

If you trawl auction sites for business liquidations, you can also usually pick up an actual rack for pennies on the dollar.

It doesn't even have to be a tech business; most random offices have a small rack in a closet somewhere with some networking equipment on it, and the whole thing usually sells as one lot to anyone with $50 and a screwdriver to remove the equipment from the site.

by saalweachter

3/5/2026 at 5:49:35 PM

They're not hard to find as you say (you can even find them at scrap yards and such) - though then you can find the fun of getting the right mounting hardware to actually PUT things in the rack (and you get to learn the difference between telco racks (very common) and server racks (somewhat less common).

by bombcar

3/5/2026 at 7:23:44 PM

If you've accidentally purchased a telco rack it won't be ideal, but modifying it into a server rack is going to yield a better rack than a coffee table or bookshelf.

by saalweachter

3/5/2026 at 8:36:32 PM

Yeah for a lot of things these days I actually prefer a telco rack, as you’re unlikely to be shelving giant rack mount chassis and UPS as much as you used to.

by bombcar

3/5/2026 at 1:39:25 PM

I 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.

by nerdjon

3/5/2026 at 5:19:27 PM

I swear every year that passes it sounds more plausible that IKEA has a bunch of people chewing on wood and putting it together into furniture like they were building wasp nests. Their stuff makes frickin' papier-mâché look like a steel girder in comparison.

by marginalia_nu

3/5/2026 at 2:58:10 PM

I 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.

by ralferoo

3/5/2026 at 5:28:49 PM

The wide LACK (90x55) has a lower weight rating than the square one (55x55). 20 versus 25 kilogram.

by retired

3/5/2026 at 1:47:27 PM

The 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.

by Arubis

3/5/2026 at 9:51:15 PM

ikea 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.

by zem

3/5/2026 at 3:03:49 PM

One 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.

by ralferoo

3/5/2026 at 1:29:45 PM

I 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?

by pch00

3/5/2026 at 5:01:55 PM

Well, you know how messy most hackers are..... my mom would like this article.

by chairmansteve

3/5/2026 at 1:40:22 PM

You're not wrong.

How in gods name this article made it to the front page of HN is a mystery.

by GJim

3/5/2026 at 1:51:00 PM

Because enough readers upvoted it to cause it to appear there.

by pwg

3/5/2026 at 3:02:18 PM

16 points in 2 hours?

by iso1631

3/5/2026 at 4:35:41 PM

What can I say, I'm a Billy simp, there's one just behind me as I'm writing this comment and for about a year now I've been forcing myself to buy a new one to put it on the right-side of my current desk (sometimes I'm too lazy for my own good, as in this case). So just seeing Billy in the title and as the actual subject of the blog-post made me upvote the submission, apparently I'm not alone in this.

by paganel

3/5/2026 at 2:39:03 PM

Any ideas on that mystery, then? Since you’ve got your finger on the pulse around here.

by relaxing

3/5/2026 at 9:04:05 PM

There'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.

by pwg

3/5/2026 at 2:55:56 PM

You <-----> The Point.

by GJim

3/5/2026 at 5:08:51 PM

Literally today I was thinking about how to organize all my out of date computers in my room, and thinking about building a cabinet or shelves.

Oddly poignant. I can't be the only one.

by jvanderbot

3/5/2026 at 2:45:57 PM

Bots are in to stuff like this.

by criddell

3/5/2026 at 4:43:27 PM

Hey at least it's not Yet Another Fucking LLM Article.

by coldpie

3/5/2026 at 3:55:48 PM

If the 486es were running OpenClaw then everyone would be losing their minds.

by kotaKat

3/5/2026 at 1:58:45 PM

I mean, you can probably reduce any HN article to something that doesnt sound worthy of being on here if you want

by voidUpdate

3/5/2026 at 3:54:41 PM

This article proactively saves you the time and effort to reduce. It is really just that. Man realizes his object fits on shelf.

by close04

3/5/2026 at 2:36:01 PM

Sure, but this truly is just about putting a motherboard on a shelf.

They couldn’t even be bothered to get a good photo of it ffs.

by relaxing

3/5/2026 at 2:54:15 PM

[dead]

by tabemonooo

3/5/2026 at 4:39:09 PM

Billy bookshelves are well known for their hackability. Just Google "billy hacks".

See for example:

https://ikeahackers.net/2025/06/billy-bookcase-hacks.html

by BeetleB

3/5/2026 at 5:49:53 PM

I’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.

by ARandomerDude

3/5/2026 at 3:21:55 PM

Great idea, but my Billy's are all full with my LEGO builds. :-D

by NoSalt

3/5/2026 at 3:08:06 PM

The mobo collectors are going to have to fight the vinyl enthusiasts for IKEA's Billy shipments.

by JKCalhoun

3/5/2026 at 3:20:15 PM

Are Billy deep enough for vinyl? It looks to me like they're only 11.75" deep, not 13.

by jonlucc

3/5/2026 at 6:16:14 PM

Yeah, 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.)

by JKCalhoun

3/5/2026 at 12:53:58 PM

Nice fire safety and grounding. Wood is ideal for both. They should build data centers like this.

by Kenji

3/5/2026 at 1:26:21 PM

How 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

by wongarsu

3/5/2026 at 2:43:29 PM

I 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.

by relaxing

3/5/2026 at 1:27:23 PM

That 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.

by tokai

3/5/2026 at 1:35:55 PM

As 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.

by avian

3/5/2026 at 3:04:25 PM

It 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.

by shagie

3/5/2026 at 2:00:35 PM

The shelves will start to sag substantially if you fill them.

by tokai

3/5/2026 at 2:58:41 PM

Can't say I can observe this with a few years old ones. Even with shelves having reasonable amount of magazines or bigger books.

by Ekaros