Intro / advice needed on managing noise

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kriegspiel

New Member
Dec 16, 2016
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Hello all - just joined these forums after lurking and reading the site intermittently over the past year. Mostly a software guy, although I've always had some power-hungry hardware lying around the home since my university days. I still have a couple of Silicon Graphics and Alpha workstations (O2/Octane2) from back then, but the gear that'd interest you folks is the following:

- 2U half-depth SGI/Rackable server w/ Tyan S7012 MB, 2x Xeon X5650 CPUs and 72GB RAM
- an old HP microserver that's begging for a FreeNAS installation

Given the noise and power consumption, I'm sorely tempted to ditch the (really loud) Rackable box and go the Xeon-D route - especially after reading the articles and threads here - but can't yet justify the outlay. I mostly use it to run CentOS VMs via KVM atop a simple Ubuntu LTS server install.

Would you folks have any advice or recommendations for reducing the noise level on this machine? I've put together a few desktop machines, but don't have much other DIY experience with servers of this type. Thanks.
 

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
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4U or desktop tower case and quieter fans will get you low noise. It might take you 30 min to assemble in a quieter system.

You should also look at the E5 line. Used they're cheap and they're low power
 
Dont suppose there's any way to use KVM type wiring to put it in another room? There's quiet PC options and then there's just the advantages of distance and walls between you - to even include 'noise control technology' from office buildings if the distance itself is not enough. Though that's more appropriate if you have lots of equipment instead of just one or two things to silence of course.
 

kriegspiel

New Member
Dec 16, 2016
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Ended up selling the 2U Rackable box and switching to a whisper-quiet ASRock Xeon D-1540 setup over the holiday break. Couldn't be happier with it. Thanks for the suggestions though!