5 ms·

Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heatin

Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating

rokkamokka 4mo ago
Couldn't imagine living with the ~55dBA noise literally all the time
skybrian 4mo ago
It sounds like with this liquid cooling, they won’t need the fans?
- michaelt 4mo ago
  Some systems use liquid cooling for the GPU and CPU, but air cooling for the PSU, RAM and SSDs. With that said, by the standards of industrial sites data centres are quiet, low traffic and smell free. An industrial area that can’t build a data centre certainly can’t build a steelworks or oil refinery or leather tannery.
- zie 4mo ago
  They almost certainly need fans on the outside of the building to cool the 55C water back down to 45C. But correct, no fans on the servers themselves or even in the building. Except perhaps for the humans, so they can stand to work inside the building, when needed.
- energy123 4mo ago
  The humming are the gas turbines which also damages your health.
- stubish 4mo ago
  If the outdoor temperature is cool enough (maybe 30C?), you just pipe the liquid outside through a large enough loop or heat exchanger to get it back down to under 45C. Even better if you can put the loop in a lake and dump the heat there (maybe not better from an ecological POV though). The pumps moving all that liquid becomes the noisiest component.
xattt 4mo ago
Noise is a design choice and could likely be legislated away. Reject heat is different than heating from greenhouse gas effects that are “heating the planet”. No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs.
- dgellow 4mo ago
  > No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs. In the US
  - xattt 4mo ago
    Now do heat pumps in the winter.
- bethekidyouwant 4mo ago
  Data centres aren’t loud it’s the gas power generating stations next to them that are loud.
- Marsymars 4mo ago
  > No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs. I find their noise pretty obnoxious. Out of respect for my neighbours, when I get around to installing one, I'll be getting the absolute quietest model available.
amluto 4mo ago
I’ve been to datacenters, but not the huuuge ones people seem to talk about in the context of AI. They are noisy inside (due to air cooling, which is largely avoided by the tech in the OP), but they’re entirely unremarkable outside compared to any other commercial or industrial building. Computers are not inherently loud, nor is power conversion. Power plants are all over, even in populated areas. They’re not so bad either (except perhaps coal). There is no fundamental reason that datacenters need to be especially unpleasant to their neighbors.
- wolvoleo 4mo ago
  It depends a lot on things like geology and some people are a lot more sensitive. It is really an issue. I don't have any datacenters near me but I can hear some heavy hums from the washing machine 3 floors up when it put my head on my pillow, for some reason it just propagates through the building physically. When I walk around I don't hear it. Datacenter noise can be the same. IMO they should be put away from habitation, there's no reason for them to be near there anyway
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    > IMO they should be put away from habitation, there's no reason for them to be near there anyway I agree, but that's a hard problem (in the US anyway). Unless you're plopping data centers in the middle of national parks, or in the middle of the desert where water is going to be a problem, you are nearly always going to be within some small mile radius of civilization. Plus the cost of trenching new fiber out in the middle of nowhere. The same reasons humans want to concentrate in a particular area (access to jobs, infrastructure) are the same things that data centers need. Once water-less cooling tech like this improves then yeah, just plopping them in the middle of the unpopulated desert becomes viable (assuming you can get the fiber out there and latency is tolerable), so long as they generate their own power.
    - dgoldstein0 4mo ago
      The climate requirements to run at this hotter temperature still probably means it'll require more active cooling in the desert during daytime /summers. Assuming we're talking about hotter desert environments like US southwest. That might make your proposal not as economical. Imo we should just solve the problems with data centers being near cities. Manage/regulate the noise and any waste (heat included, it shouldn't drastically impact the neighbors) and make them pay for any utility capacity/reliability upgrades needed. If this article is right and water usage can be nearly eliminated then it seems like the rest should be solvable? Especially if we can take the extra heat and use it for local power or heating needs.
tucnak 4mo ago
> the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating So what, winters would be no more? Snow will disappear, no more ice-men and christmas trees, and subzero conditions in general, too?
- reaperducer 4mo ago
  And no more food. Or at least not enough of it to feed very many people. You do eat, don't you?
  - SamPatt 4mo ago
    As the earth has warmed over the last century, has food production increased or decreased? If production increased (dramatically) while temperatures increased in the past, could this trend continue?
  - tucnak 4mo ago
    Christmas food?
abc42 4mo ago
Coldest month average temperature where I live is around -7C, with peaks of -35C. Climate change is not going to increase that average, more like decrease. Typically, of course, electricity price is the highest during that month too. I think we are going to need heating.
joe_mamba 4mo ago
>Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming I don't live next to one but I'd take constant humming over the constant stop/go traffic noise, honking, squeaky brakes, slamming doors and revving engines I now have on my western side of the apartment, thanks to the unemployment office the city opened on my street not too long ago. So how come constant humming is somehow an illegal nuisance, but we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine? My parents apartment have constant humming anyway thanks to the HVAC system on the roof of the nearby supermarket and white/brown noise is far more tolerable and easy to tune out than traffic noises.
- energy123 4mo ago
  More noise categories should be illegal or fined in dense areas, not less
  - joe_mamba 4mo ago
    Agree, but data centers are no inside dense areas though.
    - energy123 4mo ago
      They're being built in the US next to people's houses with gas turbines https://xcancel.com/BrianEntin/status/2067930868191035474?s=20 https://xcancel.com/BrianEntin/status/2067930868191035474?s=...
      - joe_mamba 4mo ago
        To me that only makes clear that gas turbines are the noise issues, no data centers. Surely there exists data centers that work off the main power grid and don't have a natural gas turbine as their own power source.
- drnick1 4mo ago
  > we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine? For one, there tends to be little traffic at night when most people want quiet in order to sleep. Driving is also something (nearly) everyone does and benefits directly from, so negative externalities are easier to accept. It is much harder to accept a new source of noise near your home you haven't asked for and don't directly benefit from.
arjie 4mo ago
Do you? I live at 4th and Brannan and there was one just off 3rd and Brannan in San Francisco. It was shut down when hosting.com sold it off but I didn't notice it while walking by then and I don't notice it while walking by now. My GPUs at Hurricane Electric in Fremont are also completely unnoticeable outside the building. Inside, when I'm working at the cabinets it's obviously deafening. Outside you wouldn't even know. Realistically, the predominant sounds at my home are from the traffic on the Bay Bridge so it's nice when there's congestion because it's quiet. Honestly, I wish there were more urban datacenters. It's getting quite annoying having to make a 1 hr trek to Fremont every time I want to rack a new server.
- toast0 4mo ago
  > Honestly, I wish there were more urban datacenters. There's a lot of them in high rise buildings... but they come with high rise rent.
  - arjie 4mo ago
    Imagine if one of the amenities in a high-end residential building could be a cabinet haha! That would be amazing. Doesn't make economic sense, but I'd love it. Would love to explain that to my wife. "I know that one has the pool, but we can rack my servers in this one if we live there".
    - jrnichols 4mo ago
      Something here about water usage, a small data center, and a swimming pool. Combining the three may either be awesome or tragic! I like this idea. A small cage in an apartment complex would be a huge selling point. Or even a La La Land on the corner, urban DC in the back. Winning across the board.
      - jmalicki 4mo ago
        > water usage, a small data center, and a swimming pool Swimming pool? The cooling can be for a hot tub!
SamPatt 4mo ago
>the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating Nearly 10x more people die from the cold than from the heat. "...9.43% of global deaths were attributable to non-optimal temperatures, with 8.52% from cold and 0.91% from heat." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2821%2900081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
- ryan_lane 4mo ago
  This study doesn't factor in droughts, floods, crop death (and starvation), and other non-direct effects. It also doesn't consider wet-bulb events, because it's looking at average ambient temperatures. I don't think this is climate change propaganda, but your application of this study by evoking it in a discussion about climate change feels like it.
  - SamPatt 4mo ago
    Deaths from all natural disasters have dramatically decreased over the last century. I won't bother sharing the source because you'll find some reason to dismiss it I'm sure. It's interesting you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source and yet have nothing to say about the parent comment which claims we no longer need to worry about heating due to climate change. Which of those comments seems more propagandistic?
    - ryan_lane 4mo ago
      > no longer need to worry about heating due to climate change I'm nearly positive that was sarcasm. > Deaths from all natural disasters have dramatically decreased over the last century. Because of our ability to predict them, and due to advances in scientific knowledge that allows us to more safely handle them. It's not because they've become less deadly. They're also becoming more frequent, and deaths alone isn't their only problem. They also drive loss of shelter, migrations, economic damage, etc. > you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source Yes, plenty of science is propaganda. The study you cited wasn't propaganda, but the way in which you used it was, because it's not applicable to the way you're using it. Direct exposure to ambient heat is only one of the many issues related to climate change, and one of the least deadly. As I pointed out, the study didn't include wet bulb events, so even direct heat exposure wasn't properly covered in the study in terms of climate change.
annzabelle 4mo ago
I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes while having excellent schools. Data centers are unsightly and use electricity and water, but so does literally any kind of industrial facility. They are also pretty quiet, if you exclude the ones using on site gas turbines for electricity. Property values have consistently gone up in that region for decades, and are up to $6 million an acre if there's enough contiguous land to put another data center on. Many of the people complaining about datacenters would also complain about literally any kind of development.
- majormajor 4mo ago
  The new gen of AI-boom-construction datacenters seem to be substantially different than the ones I used to go when working at companies whose software ran inside them. Those were running air-cooled rack servers, which is a whole different world from these things. The couple of the new gen I've seen have been much larger and much more turbine-happy.
- juneyi 4mo ago
  i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks
  - audunw 4mo ago
    Maybe those complaints are for datacenters using gas turbines for power. I think some of the recent ones (xAIs?) was built without sufficient power from the grid.
    - mukbangpervert 4mo ago

Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating

rokkamokka 4mo ago

Couldn't imagine living with the ~55dBA noise literally all the time

skybrian 4mo ago

It sounds like with this liquid cooling, they won’t need the fans?

michaelt 4mo ago
Some systems use liquid cooling for the GPU and CPU, but air cooling for the PSU, RAM and SSDs. With that said, by the standards of industrial sites data centres are quiet, low traffic and smell free. An industrial area that can’t build a data centre certainly can’t build a steelworks or oil refinery or leather tannery.
zie 4mo ago
They almost certainly need fans on the outside of the building to cool the 55C water back down to 45C. But correct, no fans on the servers themselves or even in the building. Except perhaps for the humans, so they can stand to work inside the building, when needed.
energy123 4mo ago
The humming are the gas turbines which also damages your health.
stubish 4mo ago
If the outdoor temperature is cool enough (maybe 30C?), you just pipe the liquid outside through a large enough loop or heat exchanger to get it back down to under 45C. Even better if you can put the loop in a lake and dump the heat there (maybe not better from an ecological POV though). The pumps moving all that liquid becomes the noisiest component.

xattt 4mo ago

Noise is a design choice and could likely be legislated away. Reject heat is different than heating from greenhouse gas effects that are “heating the planet”. No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs.

dgellow 4mo ago
> No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs. In the US
- xattt 4mo ago
  Now do heat pumps in the winter.
bethekidyouwant 4mo ago
Data centres aren’t loud it’s the gas power generating stations next to them that are loud.
Marsymars 4mo ago
> No one bats an eye when an air conditioner runs. I find their noise pretty obnoxious. Out of respect for my neighbours, when I get around to installing one, I'll be getting the absolute quietest model available.

amluto 4mo ago

I’ve been to datacenters, but not the huuuge ones people seem to talk about in the context of AI. They are noisy inside (due to air cooling, which is largely avoided by the tech in the OP), but they’re entirely unremarkable outside compared to any other commercial or industrial building. Computers are not inherently loud, nor is power conversion. Power plants are all over, even in populated areas. They’re not so bad either (except perhaps coal). There is no fundamental reason that datacenters need to be especially unpleasant to their neighbors.

wolvoleo 4mo ago
It depends a lot on things like geology and some people are a lot more sensitive. It is really an issue. I don't have any datacenters near me but I can hear some heavy hums from the washing machine 3 floors up when it put my head on my pillow, for some reason it just propagates through the building physically. When I walk around I don't hear it. Datacenter noise can be the same. IMO they should be put away from habitation, there's no reason for them to be near there anyway
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  > IMO they should be put away from habitation, there's no reason for them to be near there anyway I agree, but that's a hard problem (in the US anyway). Unless you're plopping data centers in the middle of national parks, or in the middle of the desert where water is going to be a problem, you are nearly always going to be within some small mile radius of civilization. Plus the cost of trenching new fiber out in the middle of nowhere. The same reasons humans want to concentrate in a particular area (access to jobs, infrastructure) are the same things that data centers need. Once water-less cooling tech like this improves then yeah, just plopping them in the middle of the unpopulated desert becomes viable (assuming you can get the fiber out there and latency is tolerable), so long as they generate their own power.
  - dgoldstein0 4mo ago
    The climate requirements to run at this hotter temperature still probably means it'll require more active cooling in the desert during daytime /summers. Assuming we're talking about hotter desert environments like US southwest. That might make your proposal not as economical. Imo we should just solve the problems with data centers being near cities. Manage/regulate the noise and any waste (heat included, it shouldn't drastically impact the neighbors) and make them pay for any utility capacity/reliability upgrades needed. If this article is right and water usage can be nearly eliminated then it seems like the rest should be solvable? Especially if we can take the extra heat and use it for local power or heating needs.

tucnak 4mo ago

> the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating So what, winters would be no more? Snow will disappear, no more ice-men and christmas trees, and subzero conditions in general, too?

reaperducer 4mo ago
And no more food. Or at least not enough of it to feed very many people. You do eat, don't you?
- SamPatt 4mo ago
  As the earth has warmed over the last century, has food production increased or decreased? If production increased (dramatically) while temperatures increased in the past, could this trend continue?
- tucnak 4mo ago
  Christmas food?

abc42 4mo ago

Coldest month average temperature where I live is around -7C, with peaks of -35C. Climate change is not going to increase that average, more like decrease. Typically, of course, electricity price is the highest during that month too. I think we are going to need heating.

joe_mamba 4mo ago

>Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming I don't live next to one but I'd take constant humming over the constant stop/go traffic noise, honking, squeaky brakes, slamming doors and revving engines I now have on my western side of the apartment, thanks to the unemployment office the city opened on my street not too long ago. So how come constant humming is somehow an illegal nuisance, but we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine? My parents apartment have constant humming anyway thanks to the HVAC system on the roof of the nearby supermarket and white/brown noise is far more tolerable and easy to tune out than traffic noises.

energy123 4mo ago
More noise categories should be illegal or fined in dense areas, not less
- joe_mamba 4mo ago
  Agree, but data centers are no inside dense areas though.
  - energy123 4mo ago
    They're being built in the US next to people's houses with gas turbines https://xcancel.com/BrianEntin/status/2067930868191035474?s=20 https://xcancel.com/BrianEntin/status/2067930868191035474?s=...
    - joe_mamba 4mo ago
      To me that only makes clear that gas turbines are the noise issues, no data centers. Surely there exists data centers that work off the main power grid and don't have a natural gas turbine as their own power source.
drnick1 4mo ago
> we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine? For one, there tends to be little traffic at night when most people want quiet in order to sleep. Driving is also something (nearly) everyone does and benefits directly from, so negative externalities are easier to accept. It is much harder to accept a new source of noise near your home you haven't asked for and don't directly benefit from.

arjie 4mo ago

Do you? I live at 4th and Brannan and there was one just off 3rd and Brannan in San Francisco. It was shut down when hosting.com sold it off but I didn't notice it while walking by then and I don't notice it while walking by now. My GPUs at Hurricane Electric in Fremont are also completely unnoticeable outside the building. Inside, when I'm working at the cabinets it's obviously deafening. Outside you wouldn't even know. Realistically, the predominant sounds at my home are from the traffic on the Bay Bridge so it's nice when there's congestion because it's quiet. Honestly, I wish there were more urban datacenters. It's getting quite annoying having to make a 1 hr trek to Fremont every time I want to rack a new server.

toast0 4mo ago
> Honestly, I wish there were more urban datacenters. There's a lot of them in high rise buildings... but they come with high rise rent.
- arjie 4mo ago
  Imagine if one of the amenities in a high-end residential building could be a cabinet haha! That would be amazing. Doesn't make economic sense, but I'd love it. Would love to explain that to my wife. "I know that one has the pool, but we can rack my servers in this one if we live there".
  - jrnichols 4mo ago
    Something here about water usage, a small data center, and a swimming pool. Combining the three may either be awesome or tragic! I like this idea. A small cage in an apartment complex would be a huge selling point. Or even a La La Land on the corner, urban DC in the back. Winning across the board.
    - jmalicki 4mo ago
      > water usage, a small data center, and a swimming pool Swimming pool? The cooling can be for a hot tub!

SamPatt 4mo ago

>the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating Nearly 10x more people die from the cold than from the heat. "...9.43% of global deaths were attributable to non-optimal temperatures, with 8.52% from cold and 0.91% from heat." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196%2821%2900081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

ryan_lane 4mo ago
This study doesn't factor in droughts, floods, crop death (and starvation), and other non-direct effects. It also doesn't consider wet-bulb events, because it's looking at average ambient temperatures. I don't think this is climate change propaganda, but your application of this study by evoking it in a discussion about climate change feels like it.
- SamPatt 4mo ago
  Deaths from all natural disasters have dramatically decreased over the last century. I won't bother sharing the source because you'll find some reason to dismiss it I'm sure. It's interesting you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source and yet have nothing to say about the parent comment which claims we no longer need to worry about heating due to climate change. Which of those comments seems more propagandistic?
  - ryan_lane 4mo ago
    > no longer need to worry about heating due to climate change I'm nearly positive that was sarcasm. > Deaths from all natural disasters have dramatically decreased over the last century. Because of our ability to predict them, and due to advances in scientific knowledge that allows us to more safely handle them. It's not because they've become less deadly. They're also becoming more frequent, and deaths alone isn't their only problem. They also drive loss of shelter, migrations, economic damage, etc. > you claim my comment is propaganda when I cite a scientific source Yes, plenty of science is propaganda. The study you cited wasn't propaganda, but the way in which you used it was, because it's not applicable to the way you're using it. Direct exposure to ambient heat is only one of the many issues related to climate change, and one of the least deadly. As I pointed out, the study didn't include wet bulb events, so even direct heat exposure wasn't properly covered in the study in terms of climate change.

annzabelle 4mo ago

I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes while having excellent schools. Data centers are unsightly and use electricity and water, but so does literally any kind of industrial facility. They are also pretty quiet, if you exclude the ones using on site gas turbines for electricity. Property values have consistently gone up in that region for decades, and are up to $6 million an acre if there's enough contiguous land to put another data center on. Many of the people complaining about datacenters would also complain about literally any kind of development.

majormajor 4mo ago
The new gen of AI-boom-construction datacenters seem to be substantially different than the ones I used to go when working at companies whose software ran inside them. Those were running air-cooled rack servers, which is a whole different world from these things. The couple of the new gen I've seen have been much larger and much more turbine-happy.
juneyi 4mo ago
i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks
- audunw 4mo ago
  Maybe those complaints are for datacenters using gas turbines for power. I think some of the recent ones (xAIs?) was built without sufficient power from the grid.
  - mukbangpervert 4mo ago