Making my server quieter

mysticsniper · 4 Jul 2016 at 09:15

I've got a Dell PowerEdge R410 server and it's rather noisy.

What are the best options to make it quieter? Should I think along the lines of a desktop, or are servers different?

Those little fans are really annoying

BlizzardX · 4 Jul 2016 at 09:36

If you want to stick to a rackmount unit then a Dell R710 is good value, much quieter than my R410 and R310, otherwise a custom built SuperMicro system might work better with a custom LGA1366 cooler.+

Edit: If you have a SAS card installed, it won't go quieter as fan 4 ramps up to deal with the PCIe slot unfortunately. You either need to run the SAS 6I/R embedded controller or SATA and leave the PCIe slot quiet... Then it might be ok, not quiet but ok...

My R710 on the other hand is almost whisper quiet once booted and its got 32GBs ram, HDDs galore etc.

leigh_boy · 4 Jul 2016 at 09:53

in the bios you can change the performance and that in turn reduced the fan rpms thats what i did on my r720

BlizzardX · 4 Jul 2016 at 10:03

Have to remember that these are 1u high performance servers designed for data centres; they're not designed to be quiet when running at full load. Even at 5% cpu load the drone from the system was noticeable even from under my house!

Battery! · 11 Jul 2016 at 09:20

Your not going to make it quieter.

Do you REALLY need a 1u server?

I would sell and replace with a tower.

cyber69 · 13 Jul 2016 at 11:39

I replaced a motherboard on a Dell r410 because the customer insisted it was more quieter when he first received it. Prior to that all the fans where replaced by another engineer.

They guy / young lad had it in his bedroom and was out when I visited, his mom would not let me leave so I had to put her on the phone to the Dell tech who told her straight that this was not a quiet server!

Semple · 15 Jul 2016 at 17:26

As above, servers are certainly not designed with minimal sound in mind.

If you're using it at home, i'd locate it probably in the garage or attic.

I know on the HP servers you can adjust the cooling policies which does slow the fans down - no idea if you can do similar on Dell.

I also know with the HP servers that you can't even remove some of the fans - as it treats these as failed fans. 1 fan removed causes the fans to ramp upto 100% speed constant, and 2 fans removed triggers an automatic shutdown (thermal protection). Yep i had fun testing SNMP traps years ago.

Edit: looking at your picture again, it does look like the use the same fan block. They're basically two fans stuck together to make a redundant block in the event that one side fails.