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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

In addition to wattage, my other concern for a home server was fan noise. If it's anywhere that I am, I really don't want to hear it. So I got these amazing Noctua fans and simply can't hear the server. (Updating language based on replies) A datacenter-like server probably isn't designed for that. So it wouldn't necessarily work out.

I have an 8 core i5. I bought Intel (18 months ago) because I didn't want to deal with any AMD incompatibility especially since I wanted to also run it as a gaming machine using VT-d. If I were doing it again, I'd definitely go with Ryzen.

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I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the home server fans and not working out. I’ve been using a noctua on my Xeon home server without and issues, and reconfigured the fan sensors and control using ipmi. There’s no problem making a quiet Xeon home server.

I’ve got four servers and two switches in my home office, noise is around 45dBA and with the door closed it’s inaudible. Total power draw idle is around 340W (3.1A measure by my PDU @ 110V).

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant something like a Rack mounted server designed for a datacenter. Would it become whisper quiet if you just replaced the fan? Is it that simple?

Replacing the fans on server systems is tricky, many “quiet” fans are such because they have a lower max RPM which will freak the hell out of your management controller. Also, there’s only so much optimization you can do to 40mm fans in a 1U chassis.

The fans in my 1U dell servers are fairly quiet when idle around 3600RPM. They make noise, you wouldn’t want to be sleeping or watching TV in the same room - but with the door to my office closed they can’t be heard in the hallway.

Ah I understand what they were getting at. If you're using a server motherboard in a regular 1-4u case this becomes a different issue entirely. I'm using a supermicro x9 with dual xeons in a upright enthoo pro case with it's own fans. You're right about the management controller freaking out because the IPMI threshold settings are expecting the supermicro 3 fan assembly instead of different case fans. Fortunately with some tweaking and ipmi tool you can effectively use fans that have a much larger or smaller range of acceptable RPMS without your management controller thinking the fans have gone down into lower non recoverable.

Right now my noctuas are running about 1000rpm and keeping the Xeons around 40c (under load this will increase with minimal db)

My solution was to take some spare Noctua low-noise adapters (basically inline resistors with fan connectors attached) and just drop the max fan speed. The fan controller can freak out all it wants, it can never go above about half rpms, and it still generates a noticeable breeze through the hotswap bays.

My CPU is a 7100 (ECC supported!) with a Noctua L9i so I never have problems there either. Power draw is a little high at about 70W with 8 3.5" drives spinning, but most of that is the HDDs (rule of thumb is 5W per drive) and the alternative would be spinning them down, which isn't ideal.

I think you meant an 8-core i7, there are no 8-core i5's.

Oops 6 core i5.

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