I have a server rack with my homelab and really nice Eaton UPS. I'd like to mount my workstation PC in that rack to free up space near my desk, and so the workstation can be protected by the UPS. It can also be kind of noisy when the fans spin up, too...


Is there any reliable way to mount the workstation in the rack, then connect to some kind of Thunderbolt hub that would be on my desk (which would handle the connections to my monitor and other peripherals)?

Linus tech tips has a video about that, think he had some optically connected hub.

Thunderbolt is medium agnostic.
meaning you can get a fiber optic thunderbolt cable in just about any length.

some will run fiber along side a copper power connection, some will just be fiber and provide data only.
The magic of thunderbolt is, the magic is all done on each end of the connector.

Those TB3 over fiber cables are expensive (around $400 for 10m~33ft).

You could look into HDMI/USB over (insert medium here) extenders that have a sender and receiver.   Here's an example that only does USB2.0 and DP1.2.