3 ms·

It should be closer to 85W on load. And it's incredibly silent on even a low end cooler. I rarely get above 50° Celcius.

deng 4mo ago
OK, then you're in luck. I had a bunch of old 1U rack servers and even in the next room it was too annoying to run them (they had a bunch of 40mm fans which always ran at full speed, because in a server room, no one can hear you scream).
- jansommer 4mo ago
  Could it just be really bad cooling? Looking at 9800X3D, it seems like it's running in a similar range wrt TDP unless you really push the 9800X3D. I'm comparing with desktop cpu's because that's what my workload is. cpu governor is set to performance (no schedutil). No audible change in fan speed during heavy compilation or gaming (very silent humming), and i don't have any fans beside cheap intake, cpu and exhaust fans (1 each) + an excessive amount of dust.
  - deng 4mo ago
    These servers had no fan control whatsoever, they always ran full blast. That's not untypical for rack servers, because as written: they are designed for server rooms, and you're supposed to wear ear protection there anyway... Yes, I could've modified them, but I ditched them because running them simply made no sense (especially the high idle power consumption was ridiculous).
- irusensei 4mo ago
  Small fans need to spin faster so these can be very high pitch even if you stuff some Noctua 40mm fans into it.
- jabroni_salad 4mo ago
  Yeah, 1u is gonna do that. Get something that can accommodate a big tower air cooler such as the Hyper 212 and your airflow will be quieter than the disks. I don't run it anymore but my old server was a dual xeon (with two of those coolers crammed in) and I rarely heard a peep out of it.
consp 4mo ago
Only when you remove it from the original server or enable low fan mode (if available). Most 1U/2U cases will happily blow at full speed well over 90db. You likely need to replace the flow-through server chassis system with an active "normal" cooler to achieve a bit of silence. 85W might be about right. My old server CPU is in the same ballpark and compiling kernels it reached about 90w in power usage. If you want to keep it running: idle is not very low power unless you have one of the "low power" L versions, keep that in mind.
- tjoff 4mo ago
  Get a 4U case, many options if you want to combine it with a NAS. Not hard to cool and keep somewhat quiet. If you can store it in a closet or something that helps too. Well, you can use it for lots of other things as well. Compared to the cloud you can probably save up to buy a new server every month. And don't underestimate the gains of having something to experiment on and play with.
ciupicri 4mo ago
85W for the whole system?! The specifications for the CPU mention a TDP of 85W [1]. [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/92986/intel-xeon-processor-e52620-v4-20m-cache-2-10-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/92986/i...
- actionfromafar 4mo ago
  But for LLM work the CPU is mostly idle, waiting for new data - so the CPU itself might not pull much power at all.

deng 4mo ago

OK, then you're in luck. I had a bunch of old 1U rack servers and even in the next room it was too annoying to run them (they had a bunch of 40mm fans which always ran at full speed, because in a server room, no one can hear you scream).

jansommer 4mo ago
Could it just be really bad cooling? Looking at 9800X3D, it seems like it's running in a similar range wrt TDP unless you really push the 9800X3D. I'm comparing with desktop cpu's because that's what my workload is. cpu governor is set to performance (no schedutil). No audible change in fan speed during heavy compilation or gaming (very silent humming), and i don't have any fans beside cheap intake, cpu and exhaust fans (1 each) + an excessive amount of dust.
- deng 4mo ago
  These servers had no fan control whatsoever, they always ran full blast. That's not untypical for rack servers, because as written: they are designed for server rooms, and you're supposed to wear ear protection there anyway... Yes, I could've modified them, but I ditched them because running them simply made no sense (especially the high idle power consumption was ridiculous).
irusensei 4mo ago
Small fans need to spin faster so these can be very high pitch even if you stuff some Noctua 40mm fans into it.
jabroni_salad 4mo ago
Yeah, 1u is gonna do that. Get something that can accommodate a big tower air cooler such as the Hyper 212 and your airflow will be quieter than the disks. I don't run it anymore but my old server was a dual xeon (with two of those coolers crammed in) and I rarely heard a peep out of it.

consp 4mo ago

Only when you remove it from the original server or enable low fan mode (if available). Most 1U/2U cases will happily blow at full speed well over 90db. You likely need to replace the flow-through server chassis system with an active "normal" cooler to achieve a bit of silence. 85W might be about right. My old server CPU is in the same ballpark and compiling kernels it reached about 90w in power usage. If you want to keep it running: idle is not very low power unless you have one of the "low power" L versions, keep that in mind.

tjoff 4mo ago
Get a 4U case, many options if you want to combine it with a NAS. Not hard to cool and keep somewhat quiet. If you can store it in a closet or something that helps too. Well, you can use it for lots of other things as well. Compared to the cloud you can probably save up to buy a new server every month. And don't underestimate the gains of having something to experiment on and play with.

ciupicri 4mo ago

85W for the whole system?! The specifications for the CPU mention a TDP of 85W [1]. [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/92986/intel-xeon-processor-e52620-v4-20m-cache-2-10-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/92986/i...

actionfromafar 4mo ago
But for LLM work the CPU is mostly idle, waiting for new data - so the CPU itself might not pull much power at all.