Acoustically quiet Supermicro disk arrays: Is a solution other than SM 836/846/847 feasible?

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ullbeking

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Jul 28, 2017
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Hello all,

I'll make this short and sweet, because I think the question has been asked many times before.

A quiet (minimal noise from fans and HDD vibration) rack chassis for a disk array... is this possible without too much difficulty?

Should I simply search the archives here, and Google? It is my understanding that you can do a lot with an 846 and little fan optimization. I have also heard opinions that it's best not to mess around too much with the stock SM setup.

Are there other rack chassis that I should look at?

I'm currently investigating consumer and tower chassis, where the options seem to be much broader.

Kindly appreciated,

@ullbeking
 

kapone

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May 23, 2015
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You can have quiet and low density arrays or have high density arrays and noisy.

Gotta pick one or the other.

Yes, you can tinker with fan settings, curves, Noctua etc etc, in the end, it's gonna boil down to temps and reliability. I personally consider anything over mid to high 30s (degree C) disk temps as a longevity killer. I want to set up my disks/arrays and not think about them until a disk fails. The chassis/fans/power supplies etc etc need to be rock solid stable. And they are..unless you start tinkering with them... :)
 
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ullbeking

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Jul 28, 2017
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You can have quiet and low density arrays or have high density arrays and noisy.

Gotta pick one or the other.

Yes, you can tinker with fan settings, curves, Noctua etc etc, in the end, it's gonna boil down to temps and reliability. I personally consider anything over mid to high 30s (degree C) disk temps as a longevity killer. I want to set up my disks/arrays and not think about them until a disk fails. The chassis/fans/power supplies etc etc need to be rock solid stable. And they are..unless you start tinkering with them... :)
Right, that's kinda what I'm thinking...

You pay a premium price for Supermicro and everything is supposed to just work, because this is premium hardware. Unless your project is a pure experiment, it seems to me that it's just not such a good idea to tinker with the fans too much. Maybe, if you are very experienced with this hardware and you know exactly what you are doing, you could get away with it, but I'm not that person.

There are plenty of other (cheaper) chassis options on the marker that allow for quiet operation. Currently I'm researching Nanoxia Deep Silence series, which is looking very interesting.
 

Spartacus

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What speed/type of disks? What kind of workload will it be? The norco 4224/4220/4216 comes to mind for low rpm disks, but its alot lower build quality than the supermicros. Inversely its alot less work to get them reasonably quiet as they make a 120mm fan wall option for it (you gotta get good quiet fans that still have decent static pressure, plus 2x 80mm for the exhaust). Additionally it uses a regular PSU so no jet engines there either.
 

ullbeking

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What speed/type of disks?
WD Red in the case of SATA. I also have quite a few WD Re/Re4/Gold series SAS HDD's.

What kind of workload will it be?
Archival, storage, accessing, recording, transcoding, and playback of multimedia data, especially audio and music.

The norco 4224/4220/4216 comes to mind for low rpm disks, but its alot lower build quality than the supermicros.
It's occurred to me that if I'm investing in SM then it's not a great idea to mess around with them. (It's one of those things that was nagging me in the back of my head all along.)

What do you classify as "low rpm" disks?

Inversely its alot less work to get them reasonably quiet as they make a 120mm fan wall option for it (you gotta get good quiet fans that still have decent static pressure, plus 2x 80mm for the exhaust). Additionally it uses a regular PSU so no jet engines there either.
Yes, I forgot about the pressure, which is the main thing that somebody else who is knowledgeable about this hardware reminded me of... Maybe Norco is good if I just want to tinker, but then what's the point of that? Like I mentioned above, there are high-grade consumer chassis that are build for low-noise...

There are also Supermicro chassis, primarily towers, that are built for low noise, and I will investigate those too.[/QUOTE]
 

Spartacus

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1) WD pro or WD red regular? (pro is 7200 rpm)
2) Archive usage/media playback should be fine
3) Theres no reason you cant mess with the supermicro, its not nearly as hcl reliant as dell, hpe, or similar brands.
Low rpm is 5400-5900 rpm drives (such as the wd red regular, and most other archive class drive)
They generally generate less heat and be cooled easier with lower rpm/pressure fans which are in turn quieter.
4) I'm looking at the norco 4224 myself with some cougar 120mm fans and noctua 80mm (noise is the # factor to me and I don't really wanna mod a SM to hell).
Let me know what you find, I'm interested too, but the norco to me seems the best bet so far (I have a half rack enclosure though)

I did find a neat 4u bezel a guy made on his build for a supermicro chassis here: Building a NAS
SC846 Fan Bezel - Download Free 3D model by jro (@jro)

It'd cost about $180 to have it printed though :S.
At the end of the day when I caled it out the SM cost quite a bit more and is alot more work for the level of noise I wanted compared to the Norco, my use case is solely archive/media playback for low home usage though.
 
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ullbeking

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1) WD pro or WD red regular? (pro is 7200 rpm)
WD Red regular.

If I were to be in the market for the WD Red Pro, then I wouldn't know whether to choose between it and the WD Gold (or whatever it's called now).

2) Archive usage/media playback should be fine
Sure. My concern, as will emerge, is the overall architecture.

3) Theres no reason you cant mess with the supermicro, its not nearly as hcl reliant as dell, hpe, or similar brands.
I think there is if you don't know what you're doing or looking to retain its resale value. Nevermind, that's just me being picky ;-)

Low rpm is 5400-5900 rpm drives (such as the wd red regular, and most other archive class drive)
They generally generate less heat and be cooled easier with lower rpm/pressure fans which are in turn quieter.
The reminder of the heat generated by high speed drives reminds me that low RPM HDD's will be preferable if I'm trying to build a quiet NAS... not only for the noise generated by the HDD itself... but also for the noise generated by the fans that will inevitably have to cool it.

4) I'm looking at the norco 4224 myself with some cougar 120mm fans and noctua 80mm (noise is the # factor to me and I don't really wanna mod a SM to hell).
Let me know what you find, I'm interested too, but the norco to me seems the best bet so far (I have a half rack enclosure though)
If I were to actually modify the chassis itself, I would rather purchase a cheaper but nearly-as-good 4U chassis like the Norco 4224. It's a medium-priority experiment considering that I've found other solutions in the meantime.

When you say you want to know what I've found... that is different chassis that are designed to be quiet, e.g., Fractal Design or some of the Supermicro tower cases. I'm exploring these before I start modding.

I did find a neat 4u bezel a guy made on his build for a supermicro chassis here: Building a NAS
SC846 Fan Bezel - Download Free 3D model by jro (@jro)

It'd cost about $180 to have it printed though :S.
This is to replace the existing fans with large, quieter ones?

At the end of the day when I caled it out the SM cost quite a bit more and is alot more work for the level of noise I wanted compared to the Norco, my use case is solely archive/media playback for low home usage though.
Yes, I'm looking to build a multimedia, especially audio, archiving, management, and playback system for data that is important and needs to be kept indefinitely. This is not so I can store box sets of The Wire that one might download from a p2p service (I haven't even seen The Wire, incidentally).
 

Spartacus

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May 27, 2019
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The reminder of the heat generated by high speed drives reminds me that low RPM HDD's will be preferable if I'm trying to build a quiet NAS... not only for the noise generated by the HDD itself... but also for the noise generated by the fans that will inevitably have to cool it.
Correct, your best bang for buck is doing the WD white drive shucking if you're familiar with that, you can get 8TB for about $130, or 10TB for about $160 (plus tax). They're WD red regular comparable just with less warranty (so quiet and runs cooler).
If I were to actually modify the chassis itself, I would rather purchase a cheaper but nearly-as-good 4U chassis like the Norco 4224. It's a medium-priority experiment considering that I've found other solutions in the meantime.
Thats where I'm at as well, theres actually very little modding to do since Norco themselves make the larger sized fan wall, the extent of it is unscrewing the old one and putting in the new one then replacing the fans. The PSU and CPU coolers are whatever standard ones you want to use.
When you say you want to know what I've found... that is different chassis that are designed to be quiet, e.g., Fractal Design or some of the Supermicro tower cases. I'm exploring these before I start modding.
Gotcha, my project I'm looking for 24 bays not 12-15 so those are a bit small for me.
This is to replace the existing fans with large, quieter ones?
So the supermicro chassis are alot tighter on airflow specs, hence why they have alot higher rpm and static pressure fans, by adding 3 more in the front you're effectively getting a push/pull config so you get better cooling (also a neat opportunity to add dust filters easily just costly).