1u Double Intel NUC Rack

3 Intel NUCs in 3u is kind of cool, don't get me wrong, but what if I said you could fit six NUCs in the same space?  And all it takes is shucking them from their stock cases and a little M3 hardware?

Once you take the NUC out of the case and remove the SATA connector - just start taking out the obvious screws and it'll come apart eventually.  The shelf definitely fits 7mm SSDs and probably 9mm drives, 15mm enterprise drives would make the whole stack too tall.  And you probably don't want to use spinning disks in here.  The ventilation isn't any worse than the stock case, but it's plastic and not metal, so your mileage may vary.  On the other hand you might have a 140mm fan at the back of your rack drawing air over everything, I'm not your boss.

Pause for a second here and insert M3 nuts into the bottom of the shelf - I have a bit of slop here so it should be tight enough that it doesn't fall out while not risking cracking your print by being too tight.  The SCAD files are included and only slightly awful to manage - I think the union/difference/union/intersection/difference stack got away from me a bit, but it works.  Screw 20mm M3 standoffs into the nuts, leaving female threads at the top of the standoffs.

Then you'll need to screw the drive into the bottom of the shelf with M3 hardware, I have a cheap set from Amazon and I used the M3x4 hardware out of that. 

Once the 2.5" drive is attached to the shelf, slip the buttons that are included into the appropriate front panel holes.  If you print them in something vaguely transparent-ish (for FDM, anyway), they do a nice job of piping the light through to the front, and you can press the power button to turn things on and off like a real case.  I have a variety of sizes here, ranging from 100% interference fit to 0.5mm smaller diameter.  I took the time to print mine at extra fine 0.08mm layer height, it tends to limit how much the layer lines interfere with the front panel's payer lines, but you know your printer better than I do.

Then you'll need to wiggle the NUC headphone jack into the front of the shelf and adjust it until the mounting standoffs are clear.  Then use more M3 hardware to attach the motherboard to the standoffs.

You can either power the NUC with the 19v DC power bricks (ew, so many bricks) or you can use the Mean Well 12v 1u rack model in this file and maybe the washers?  (The smallest M4 hardware the local hardware store had was 6mm long, and the case is only ~1mm thick, and the datasheet says “3mm max”, so this all depends on whether you live somewhere with a real hardware selection or not.)  

That's right, Intel NUCs (at least the ones I've used, NUC8i3BEH and NUC8i5BEH) are perfectly happy at 12v.  5.5mm x 2.5mm center positive jacks, although at this point I'm assuming you know which end of a soldering iron to hold and are comfortable with electricial work.  I will disclaim all knowledge if your system blows up or your house burns down.  Who knows, maybe the voltage regulators aren't happy at 12v, but figure 10 in section 2.2.2 of the Intel NUC 8 technical product specifications document says the input range is 12v - 19v, so I'm trusting Intel here.

These files are probably functional out of the box for similar model years, and I think the standoff and board spacing didn't change a whole heck of a lot over time so it's probably compatible with other NUCs as well, but you might need to tweak the front panel connectors.  The SCAD file is fairly well documented, but if you make it work with a NUC7 or NUC9, post a remix and let me know.