Just checking lest I miss something: in Raspberry Pi chassis supporting multiple boards, the only sensible power distribution option is really to use the PoE HAT and wire all the RPis to a PoE switch — did I get that right?
I build a custom PI cluster chassis. Does not use PoE for power, since that is inefficient and expensive. Compared to doing building it in to the design directly. Essential 12V power bus and point of load regulation.
@xahteiwi haha. What's your usecase / trying to do. More than happy to chat more about stuff.
@intrbiz I'd just like to have a reasonably neat solution to house, power, and connect about 2-4 rPi 3 and 4 modules. I don't even plan to turn them into a cluster, I just no longer want to have a bunch of little rPi boxes flying about the house that run Home Assistant, Nextcloud, Pi-hole etc.
@hikhvar suggested the Turing Pi which looks like a good fit, though unfortunately a matching case doesn't appear to be available yet:
@xahteiwi @intrbiz if it's just about ordering them nicely, maybe this case [1] combined with a single powerful USB Power supply with multiple ports is enough. According to the pictures, the case has enough space to route power USB cables.
[1] https://thepihut.com/products/8-slot-cloudlet-cluster-case
I own a cloudlet case.
There is enough room below for a PoE router, which is the reason for the recommendation. If using wifi networking, an Anker ps also fits comfortably below.
The custom power system in that rack unit would be fabulous in cloulet case, especially with a small controller & thermal monitoring the units.
I paid for a design mod at C4Labs for 3x Noctua 25s; supposedly anyone can order it that way from them now.
@ascherbaum realistically at most 96 into 2U, needing 4x 10Gbe uplinks. So like 1920 per rack with ToR switches for interconnect.
That's also ~960W per 2U.
@intrbiz Switches is a whole different topic, and power is always outsourced ;-)
@intrbiz Even though it's overkill for my needs, that looks extraordinarily cool!