Specifications, Availability and Pricing

Before we dive in, I want to tell you what a U is. The U in 4U is unit. Each unit is 1.5"� tall so a 1U server is 1.5"� tall. This is an important measurement in the server world because when you buy rack space in a datacenter you buy it in 1U increments. Since we aren't buying space outside of our office we aren't too worried about limiting our unit height, we have 42 to work with right now... well we did... that whole addition thing makes the racks fill up fast.

Most of us know Antec from its popular computer cases and most of us at one point or another have owned an Antec case. Antec also has a popular line of rackmount cases that come in several unit heights.

The features list above is for the Take-4 =650, Antec's largest case in this category. This case ships with a 650 watt power supply, but you can still find vanilla Take-4 cases in the wild without the power supply included. Since we're running an Intel Extreme Edition processor and a power hungry motherboard we opted for the standard Take-4 without the power supply.

The case ships with dual optical drive bays, six 3.5"� HDD bays (two internal and four external) and a handful of front connection ports (2x USB 2.0 and 1x Firewire). The Take-4 also ships with all of the fan slots filled, one 120mm and one 92mm. Both fans come from Antec's TriCool line that has three selectable fan speed settings.