Server cabinet - soundproofing effectiveness?

[growse]

I'm about to move house and an issue I've got is where to put a lot of my lab equipment. At the moment, I've got it making a lot of noise on the floor of my study, which isn't a problem. However, in the new house, there's a possibility my study will have to double up as a spare room, so I was wondering about how effective soundproof server cabinets are.

I've not got a huge amount of rack-mount kit (1 1U Procurve, 2 4U HP ML115 and 1x 4U 24-disk NAS), and something like an 18U cab will probably be sufficient and leave me room for future expansion.

There's an 18U 'soundproof' cabinet out there on the web for about £800, but I obviously don't want to buy one and find out that it's not that effective. That particular one seems to be about half the price of other similarly sized options.

The alternative is to stick the lot in a regular cabinet in the loft, but then I have potential heat issues in summer, which is a headache I'm not sure I want.

What would you guys recommend? Would you say that a decent soundproof cab quietens the noise enough to sleep next to it? Should I stick the lot in the loft and not worry about heat?

 

[growse]

Turn it off when you have guests staying?

It does depend how often you have people staying and if your lab is providing any house services and isn't just a lab like you say.

Needs to be on all the time, as it also provides my mailserver and the NAS holds all my media which gets streamed everywhere.

Tempted to just shove it up in the roof and keep and eye on the temperatures.

 

[growse]

No garage?

We used to use a "soundproof" cabinet at one of my old clients, it made a substantial difference but I still wouldn't want to sleep in the same room as it, that was with 2x PE1950's.

You will never get near silence, even with sound proofing. 1U servers are very dense and run very loud.

I would find a better place for it personally.

I'm actually debating whether or not anyone has to sleep there. I'd completely forgotten there's another bedroom we can use as spare. No garage unfortunately, although I might save up and build a "datashed" at the end of the garden and stick it all down there.

I don't have any 1U stuff (thankfully) and I'll do what I can to quieten the fans down themselves. The ML115 runs fairly quiet at the moment, it's the NAS that'll make the most racket.