How to make a home server quiet
The text does not claim to be unique or the discovery of new methods. Just a report on the work done to reduce the noise of a home computer.
I'm tired of the clock buzzing server. For several months I asked system administrators to solve the problem with a noisy computer, but they all avoided this task.
I realized that if I want silence at home, I need to remember the good old days, spend the evening trying to dig into the computer.
My server is assembled in an ordinary ATX case, a motherboard with a dual-core Atom processor on board. Three hard disks (system, movies and personal files, backups) rotate in the server. In addition, a VPN is raised on it to access files from the outside, a torrent is running. I plan on raising another DLNA media server on it.
The main source of noise was the standard 80mm fan in the power supply. He really did howl. In addition, the fan made a noise that blew in hard drives and a tiny buzzing cooler on the processor heatsink. Here he is:
The essence of the solution is simple. It is necessary to get rid of noisy small fans, it is desirable to use 120 mm fans, slowing down their rotational speed.
')
For blowing hard drives, I put the most common 120 mm fan connected through a “retarder”.
This is an adapter with a resistor soldered into it; when connected through it, the rotational speed of the cooler drops by approximately half. A 120 mm fan, connected in this way, makes almost no noise, and due to the large blades, a slow but “dense” air flow is created, sufficient to remove excess heat from all three hard drives. By the way, I also heard about a couple of alternative ways to slow down the speed of the fans if there is no suitable resistor at hand. You can connect two fans in series. You can also connect the positive fan connector to +12 V, and the negative one to +5 V, the potential difference will be 7 V, it turns out the same thing as to feed the 7 V fan.
I replaced the power supply with a new 400 W with a built-in fan for 120 mm (although 200 W would be enough for such a weak machine, I just took what was in the nearest computer store). I came across a power supply with automatic adjustment of the fan speed, and since It works for me with a small load and almost does not heat up, then the fan turns at low speed almost silently, and it was not necessary to slow it down.
To cool the processor, I bought the first large radiator that was suitable for approximately the size of the landing pad - it was a cooler for the Ice Hammer IH-500NB north bridge. But almost any large radiator could be installed; when choosing a radiator, you just need to look at it so that it does not “hit” on large parts of the motherboard located near the processor. Yes, of course for this procedure you need to stock up with thermal paste.
On the photo: on the left - a native radiator, fasteners and a fan, on the right - a new radiator and a fan
Since the fasteners of the new radiator are designed for installation on the north bridge, and did not exactly fit the processor connectors, the fasteners had to be replaced with the available materials. It looks funny)
As a result, I replaced the rubber bands with wire in isolation, the mount turned out, although artisanal, but quite reliable, the radiator stands unmoved, pressed against the processor “stone” perfectly.
The Atom processor has a small heat dissipation, and I planned to leave the big new radiator without blowing. But the processor temperature rose to 40-50 degrees, and I decided to turn on the airflow anyway. The native Ice Hammer cooler turned out to be surprisingly quiet, and the connected through a resistor was completely silent.
The test result for a day in the normal server operation mode is shown in the screenshot. The processor temperature did not rise above 27 degrees, despite the fact that within 15 minutes I forcibly gave the load (archiving). Excellent result.
If you have a home computer with an “adult” processor such as i3, i5, i7, etc. - then you need to select a cooler with the largest possible cooling area and the largest possible fan in size. As a result, you can get a lower rotational speed and less noise with sufficient cooling. You can control the temperature of the processor, say, the same free utility CoreTemp.
As a result, I have an almost silent computer. Finally falling asleep, I no longer hear this monotonous hum)
The remaining source of low noise is three hard drives. Perhaps in the future I will be puzzled to somehow hang them on elastic bands or make some other design so that the vibration from the disks is not transmitted to the computer case (for example, the disk lying on the arm makes much less noise than the bolted to the case) . You can also think about replacing the case with something more compact. The main thing is to install 120 mm fans (including the power supply). Immediately I didn’t find interesting cases - all small cases have tiny fans.
In fact, seriously dream of a quiet home server, but do not stop water cooling ... I look at my phone with a quad-core ARM processor (which is a virtual machine, and Windows 98 is spinning on it :) and I understand how soon look like my home server. It will be a box, the size ... say, with a liter pack of milk. It will be a multi-core processor ARM, and therefore active cooling it will not be required at all. The only source of noise is one or two terabyte hard drives of 3-4. It will be possible to store all my files, access them over the network, raise a VPN to access files from the outside, put a torrent, if necessary - FTP and a web server, home media server, etc.
After all, Windows 8 already supports the ARM architecture, right? Yes, and some Ubuntu, too, probably will soon begin to support.
I'm tired of the clock buzzing server. For several months I asked system administrators to solve the problem with a noisy computer, but they all avoided this task.
I realized that if I want silence at home, I need to remember the good old days, spend the evening trying to dig into the computer.
My server is assembled in an ordinary ATX case, a motherboard with a dual-core Atom processor on board. Three hard disks (system, movies and personal files, backups) rotate in the server. In addition, a VPN is raised on it to access files from the outside, a torrent is running. I plan on raising another DLNA media server on it.
The main source of noise was the standard 80mm fan in the power supply. He really did howl. In addition, the fan made a noise that blew in hard drives and a tiny buzzing cooler on the processor heatsink. Here he is:
The essence of the solution is simple. It is necessary to get rid of noisy small fans, it is desirable to use 120 mm fans, slowing down their rotational speed.
')
For blowing hard drives, I put the most common 120 mm fan connected through a “retarder”.
This is an adapter with a resistor soldered into it; when connected through it, the rotational speed of the cooler drops by approximately half. A 120 mm fan, connected in this way, makes almost no noise, and due to the large blades, a slow but “dense” air flow is created, sufficient to remove excess heat from all three hard drives. By the way, I also heard about a couple of alternative ways to slow down the speed of the fans if there is no suitable resistor at hand. You can connect two fans in series. You can also connect the positive fan connector to +12 V, and the negative one to +5 V, the potential difference will be 7 V, it turns out the same thing as to feed the 7 V fan.
I replaced the power supply with a new 400 W with a built-in fan for 120 mm (although 200 W would be enough for such a weak machine, I just took what was in the nearest computer store). I came across a power supply with automatic adjustment of the fan speed, and since It works for me with a small load and almost does not heat up, then the fan turns at low speed almost silently, and it was not necessary to slow it down.
To cool the processor, I bought the first large radiator that was suitable for approximately the size of the landing pad - it was a cooler for the Ice Hammer IH-500NB north bridge. But almost any large radiator could be installed; when choosing a radiator, you just need to look at it so that it does not “hit” on large parts of the motherboard located near the processor. Yes, of course for this procedure you need to stock up with thermal paste.
On the photo: on the left - a native radiator, fasteners and a fan, on the right - a new radiator and a fan
Since the fasteners of the new radiator are designed for installation on the north bridge, and did not exactly fit the processor connectors, the fasteners had to be replaced with the available materials. It looks funny)
As a result, I replaced the rubber bands with wire in isolation, the mount turned out, although artisanal, but quite reliable, the radiator stands unmoved, pressed against the processor “stone” perfectly.
The Atom processor has a small heat dissipation, and I planned to leave the big new radiator without blowing. But the processor temperature rose to 40-50 degrees, and I decided to turn on the airflow anyway. The native Ice Hammer cooler turned out to be surprisingly quiet, and the connected through a resistor was completely silent.
The test result for a day in the normal server operation mode is shown in the screenshot. The processor temperature did not rise above 27 degrees, despite the fact that within 15 minutes I forcibly gave the load (archiving). Excellent result.
If you have a home computer with an “adult” processor such as i3, i5, i7, etc. - then you need to select a cooler with the largest possible cooling area and the largest possible fan in size. As a result, you can get a lower rotational speed and less noise with sufficient cooling. You can control the temperature of the processor, say, the same free utility CoreTemp.
As a result, I have an almost silent computer. Finally falling asleep, I no longer hear this monotonous hum)
The remaining source of low noise is three hard drives. Perhaps in the future I will be puzzled to somehow hang them on elastic bands or make some other design so that the vibration from the disks is not transmitted to the computer case (for example, the disk lying on the arm makes much less noise than the bolted to the case) . You can also think about replacing the case with something more compact. The main thing is to install 120 mm fans (including the power supply). Immediately I didn’t find interesting cases - all small cases have tiny fans.
In fact, seriously dream of a quiet home server, but do not stop water cooling ... I look at my phone with a quad-core ARM processor (which is a virtual machine, and Windows 98 is spinning on it :) and I understand how soon look like my home server. It will be a box, the size ... say, with a liter pack of milk. It will be a multi-core processor ARM, and therefore active cooling it will not be required at all. The only source of noise is one or two terabyte hard drives of 3-4. It will be possible to store all my files, access them over the network, raise a VPN to access files from the outside, put a torrent, if necessary - FTP and a web server, home media server, etc.
After all, Windows 8 already supports the ARM architecture, right? Yes, and some Ubuntu, too, probably will soon begin to support.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/151914/
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