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I bought a 2-unit Dell R730 server to crunch through a specific big data problem. I needed dozens of TBs of disk and hundreds of GB of memory. The cost of runni
by perrygeo 2y ago
I bought a 2-unit Dell R730 server to crunch through a specific big data problem. I needed dozens of TBs of disk and hundreds of GB of memory. The cost of running it in the cloud one time was $2000+. I figured why not spend that on hardware and use it forever?
Well I got everything set up, turned it on, and it sounded like a jet airplane taking off in my basement. I knew it was going to be loud but this was ridiculous. It was an obnoxious high-pitch whine and I could hear it through the walls and in all rooms of the house. Plus it idled at 100+ watts so it was an energy hog.
Needless to say, I crunched the data that needed crunching then turned it off. I rarely spin it back up. I had some vague ideas about water cooling to avoid the fan noise but that's on the back burner. For now it's just taking up space.
- more_corn 2y agoYou know you can turn the fans down right?
- perrygeo 2y agoTechnically, you can. You can also use no cooling at all. YOLO. Either way, you're gonna fry your silicon. If all 64 cores are fully utilized for days, you need the fan running full blast to avoid overheating.
- neverartful 2y agoI once bought an Apple XServe and had the same experience. I sometimes don't always learn my lesson though. Years later I bought a Dell tower server. It wasn't as bad as a rack server, but still too much heat and noise. It's been sitting unplugged in my office ever since with my stereo components sitting on top of it.
- louwrentius 2y agoI had some fun with a HP DL 380 G8 but it's also 110W idle or 75W with 25% reduced performance. The noise is is indeed bad, even with closed doors. I've replaced it (lab) with a KVM kluster of tinyminimicro machines (1L pc). Now I just need to throw away the G8.
- jmg_ 2y agoFWIW, I'm in a similar situation right now. I was able to massively decrease noise (and air flow) by switching to Noctua NF- A4x10 FLX fans. As long as my workloads aren't sustained temperatures are fine and noise has from gone ~70-80dB to ~40dB, with the power supply fans being the loudest part now. Upgrade took me an hour and cost $80 via Amazon.
- Wingy 2y agoHuh interesting, I have a T430 and an R710 in my bedroom and the noise of both doesn't bother me. I think it depends on the person.
- weddingbell 2y agoI used to suffer from GPU fan noise on my T640. I couldn't adjust it in idrac, I could force it with ipmitool, but I don't remember how...
- weddingbell 2y agoOh, I think it was something like this! I need to downgrade idrac. https://gist.github.com/slykar/f90ad596b18d5ab1eb1c66b2ccf51c54 https://gist.github.com/slykar/f90ad596b18d5ab1eb1c66b2ccf51...
- gtirloni 2y agoSimply adjust performance settings in the iDrac and they will be very silent when you're not crunching numbers.
- ahoka 2y agoHave you been to a server room before that? :)