What's the noise level like for this machine?
Anyone replace fans to quiet it down?
For comparison, my SC846 with SQ (silent) PSUs and all fans IPMI turned down to 0% duty cycle is about the limit of noise she can bare in the rack under the stairs.
Its pretty typical "1U loud". And I don't think there's much you can do about it without replacing parts. On mine, which had a pretty old UEFI/BIOS version, there's only a simple fan duty setting. I set mine on the lowest (30%) and it was still the loudest thing I owned. IPMI (at least on mine) didn't allow changes to fan settings other than thresholds.
Mine came with 6x40mm Delta FFB0412UHN fans, which max out at 18,500RPM and 62.4 db each. So, even at 30% duty cycle they are pretty loud. On top of that the power supply fan isn't all that quiet either.
I've set mine up to be very quiet, but I did a lot of modifications using parts I already had in the "spare parts bin" so it didn't cost me anything extra. This included a different PSU and much quieter fans. But, I've got 2.5" drives in mine and a 20w TDP E3-1220L CPU with an active heatsink. It idles at less than 30 watts and maxes out at a little over 60w. So, I felt safe trading out the fans for quieter ones that move a lot less air. But, If it was loaded up with 3.5" disks and a quad core CPU under the included passive heatsink, it would probably cook itself in the weak airflow.
How are you guys mounting the HD's? Did you find the brackets somewhere?
This one doesn't use brackets. It uses rubber grommets and "shoulder screws". Something like this (picture is just for illustration, I have no idea if this particular one works). 4 of those on the bottom of the 3.5" drive and then it slides into keyed slots in the chassis.
But, I found that purpose made drive mounting screws like that are pretty expensive, and this was a definite "budget" build. So for mine, I bought a pack of 100 of these for $14 and some plain screws, which I threaded in until they just began to compress the rubber. Worked fine.
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