How Gearome checks a plan

One verdict, taken apart

The rule, the two figures, and where each figure came from.

Put a Synology RS422+ in the StarTech 12U two-post wall rack and the planner says this:

The rule

Too deep for this rack. Equipment deeper than the rack's mountable depth does not fit. Mountable depth is the room from the front rail back to whatever stops equipment: a back panel, a rear door or the wall.

The equipment

12.9 inches (328 mm), the depth of the Synology RS422+. Read from the Synology datasheet (PDF) ↗, captured August 19, 2026.

The rack

11.9 inches (303 mm), its mountable depth. Read from the StarTech datasheet (PDF) ↗, captured July 21, 2026. The rack itself is 12.0 inches (305 mm) deep, but that is not the figure the fit depends on.

The verdict

The Synology RS422+ is 1.0 inches deeper than the room the rack has. The figures prove it does not fit, so this is a Conflict.

Both figures are in the manufacturers' own documents, so you can check them yourself. Every check below works the same way.

The three checks

Fit, weight and power: the three questions to settle before you order.

Each check compares a figure for your equipment with a figure for what holds or powers it. Each way a check can fail has a name, in bold below. The planner prints that name with both figures.

Fit: does it go in?

Fit has three parts: rack units, depth and mounting. A rack is measured in rack units (U), counted from the bottom. Each item on the rails takes a run of whole U.

• Overlaps another item. Two items claim the same U.
• No room left. An item runs past the rack's top U.
• Too deep for this rack. The equipment is deeper than the rack's mountable depth, as in the example above.
• Rear rail can't reach this equipment. Its rail kit needs the rails closer together than the rack's rails can go.
• Not made to be rack-mounted. It is on the rails, but it has no rack ears or rail kit.

Rail span is the distance between the front rail and the rear rail. A rack's rail span is how far apart its rails can be set. An item's is the spacing its rail kit accepts. Where a rack's rails adjust, each item is checked at the setting that suits it best.

Equipment on a shelf is checked against the shelf. An item is too deep for what it rests on when it is deeper than the clear area of the shelf. A shelf is more side by side than it is wide when the widths of the items on it add up to more than that area's width.

Weight: will it hold?

A weight capacity is the weight a rack or a shelf is rated to carry. We check against the weight capacity the manufacturer publishes, for the conditions they state.

• Too heavy for this rack. Everything the rack holds weighs more than its weight capacity.
• Holding more than it is rated for. What rests on a shelf weighs more than the shelf's weight capacity.

What a rack holds is what is on its rails, its frame, its shelves, its roof and its floor. Each shelf's own weight counts too. Equipment standing beside the rack does not count, and nor does the rack's own weight.

A weight capacity can depend on how the rack is used. These are its load conditions: on the floor or on a wall, and stationary or rolling on its casters. The StarTech 12U enclosed rack is rated for 1763.7 lb (800 kg) standing still, but only 330.7 lb (150 kg) when moved with equipment in it. Both figures are from the StarTech manual (PDF) ↗, captured October 11, 2026.

Until your plan says how the rack is used, every weight capacity applies. At or under the lowest, the check passes. Over the highest, it is a Conflict. Between the two, it is Unconfirmed until you answer.

Every one of the 86 racks in the catalog has a weight capacity. 21 of them have a separate one for rolling.

Power: is there enough power?

Peak draw is the most power the manufacturer says an item uses. Your power budget is what the plan's PDUs (power strips) and UPSs (battery backups) can supply between them.

• Over the power budget. The plan's total peak draw is more than its power budget.

A UPS feeding a PDU is worth the smaller of the two. Separate chains add up. We add no headroom: a total exactly at the budget passes. A plan with no PDU or UPS has no budget, so its power is not checked. Idle draw is shown, but not checked.

Three verdicts

It is a Conflict, it is Unconfirmed, or it passes.

Conflict

The figures prove the check fails, as with the Synology RS422+ above. A Conflict is never a guess at the cautious end of a range.

Unconfirmed

The figures cannot settle it. That happens for one of three reasons:

• a figure the check needs is missing;
• the figures give a range, and the limit falls inside it;
• the answer turns on something the plan does not say, such as whether the rack will roll.

Put a Dell PowerEdge R240 in the StarTech 12U wall cabinet. Its rails span up to 20.0 inches (508 mm), but we don't have how much room it has behind the rear rail.

In the planner, the bar above the drawing holds the plan's Fit, Weight and Power figures. Beside them is a button that opens the Checks panel. For this plan the button shows a question mark and 1, the number of items unconfirmed: 1. The panel it opens reads:

Rack units and mounting settle, so they read Checked. Depth names the rack first, as the cause, then the Dell PowerEdge R240 it leaves unsettled. Power reads Not checked, because this plan has no PDU or UPS to check against. An Unconfirmed is not a milder Conflict: the Dell PowerEdge R240 may fit, and the figures cannot say either way.

We don't have every depth figure for 34 of the 86 racks in the catalog. The same happens when we don't have an item's own depth, weight or peak draw.

Passes

A check that passes shows nothing on the item: no tick and no green. The Checks panel says which checks settled instead.

Put the same Synology RS422+ in the Tecmojo 12U wall cabinet, with a StarTech 1U PDU above it. The two weigh 13.4 lb, against the cabinet's 110.2 lb (50 kg) weight capacity. The NAS's peak draw is 38 W, and the PDU's output capacity is 1440 W.

Every check settles, so the button above the drawing shows a tick and the panel reads:

Without the PDU, Power would read Not checked: the plan would have no power budget to check against.

Where the figures come from

From the manufacturer's own documents.

The catalog holds 198 products. Every figure in it was read from a document its manufacturer publishes. Between them, the product pages link 277 documents: 154 datasheets, 51 product pages, 51 manuals, 20 drawings and 1 FAQ.

Each product page links the documents its figures were read from, with the day we captured each one. A document after the first says which figures it provides. A capture date says when we read the document. The manufacturer may have changed it since.

Where no document we have states a figure, the record leaves it out. The product page shows no row for it, or — W for a power draw. A check that needs it is Unconfirmed.

The catalog is as of October 12, 2026, the newest day we read a document behind one of its figures. The oldest reading is from July 17, 2026.

The catalog is small: 134 of its 198 products are StarTech.

Catalog and Custom items

The label says who measured the item.

Catalog

Figures read from the manufacturer's documents. They are the same for everyone, and the product page links the documents.

Custom

Figures entered by hand, by whoever built the plan. No document stands behind them, so nobody else can check them.

Equipment missing from the catalog can be added as a Custom item. Both kinds are checked by the same rules. A verdict on a Custom item is only as good as the measurement entered.

What Gearome does not check

Anything outside the three checks above.

Weight, past the weight capacity

• How the weight is spread in the rack, and whether it can tip.
• Whether a wall, and the fasteners in it, can hold a wall-mounted rack.
• Whether the floor can carry a loaded rack.
• The weight each slide rail kit is rated for.

Power, past the budget

• How many outlets there are, or which item plugs into which.
• How long a UPS can run, or its VA rating.

Everything else

• Airflow, heat and noise.
• Cables, network ports and PoE.
• Whether every item can use the same rail setting at once.
• A shelf's width, against an item whose width we don't have. That item is left out of the sum without a verdict.

Not covered at all: 10-inch racks, and network details such as IP addresses and VLANs. Those belong in a documentation tool once you own the equipment. Gearome shows no prices yet.