Alright, its time to talk about the rack design itself and how it can help/hinder your wire management. I think a big portion of a good looking, serviceable wired rack is have the right parts and pieces in the right places.

Lacer Bars: Round or "L"? Straight or Inset?

I was working on one today a Slim5, 26" (first 26" that I've done, usually 20"), I have the L shaped Lacer bars (which I typically prefer) but this time we have with a 2" or a 4" inset. This was nice to get the cables closer to the equipment. My problem is bringing the wires up and down (vertically) in the rack.

In a small system, there isn't much and the wiring can be strapped to the rear rack rail. If you are using the Inset lacer bars, they are in the way. What do you do? Do you run them on the front of the lacer bars, starting to take up the middle?

What do you use for vertical cable management in a rack?

What parts (tools) do you spec in every rack that helps to make everyone more serviceable and better managed?


Here are some pics, they are terrible, the lighting was bad and taken with iPhone (which is usually actually half way decent but these suck).




I put the router and modem on a shelf and put a vented blank panel over the front that can easily be taken off if for some reason you need to see. There is a APC G5BLK dedicated to the 4 network pieces (modem, router, switch, wap) so the client can easily reboot the entire network by pressing a button on the front.




This shows the lacer bars and the two vertical power strips that I'm using. Bottom strip is for in the High Current of another APC dedicated for the AVR and two Velodyne Sub Amps. The vertical strip above it plus into the AV portion of the APC and is for the Denon Bluray, AppleTV, RTI XP8, Zektor 8x8 and 2 cable boxes. I started bringing the speaker wires and network LAN cables in but must not of taken a pic.




Another terrible pic, but shows the inset lacers.







I have at minimum 20 Cat 6 cables to bring in plus at least 15 Speakers wires and component and an HDMI to the rack. Plus if they end up putting a 12 channel amp in, thats 6 more 14-4 wires to bring down (unless they end up in a 2nd rack). I'm struggling mainly with vertical management.

Also, the network gear is so shallow, I almost wanted to mount on the back of the rack, but didn't .

I've only ever done Slim5, AXS and SRSR. Do the other racks have some features that make them more desirable for cable management? If so, what?