Hi Everyone!
I’m in the market for a new server as my old one died in a house fire. Don’t worry, the server wasn’t the cause, it was just the victim.
I’m specifically looking for the quietest AMD 9000 series based servers. I’m not beholden to any brand, just want it to be reliable. I plan on putting 10-12 NVME U.3 SSDs in the server, otherwise I would look for a mini PC type of scenario.
Any recommendations would be great as the information on loudness isn’t very accessible.
Thanks,
the one that isnt built in server rack.
if you only have a 1 or 2 socket motherboard then a full size tower.?
you get enough room for plenty of storage and the ability to use gaming grade cooling.
which you will need a lot of but will be quieter.
check out jayztwocents old water cooling vids if you want to go that way.
or look up puget systems videos if you want fin stack and fan cooling as they will have recommendations on which you need.
(? but you said server? yeah never met a quiet rackmount 
)
I am also interested in this from a “quiet” perspective. I just brought new fans today to continue my question to make my PC tower silent under full load. I have this weird desire to eventually have my workstation and full computing needs to one day be rack mounted.
Anything that doesn’t have a boatload of 10 - 15K RPM fans would be “quiet”. Sort of, maybe, well … ?
I am really surprised that nobody has really seriously looked into fan design optimization when it comes to smaller fans. I guess the market just wants as much air movement at all times, noise be damned.
That’s unfortunate. I like the idea of having everything within my server rack, as opposed to towers all over the place. I looked into OEMs with tower designs and it looks like they use similar fans as their rack counterparts.
My biggest obstacle in building my own is the lack of NVME backplanes on the market. No to mention the hardship of finding a Epyc 9000 processor by itself.
yeah the ones that are out there ain’t that cheap either.
Every time I hear someone turn on a server I think back to this episode of The Simpsons.
IIRC Fans are optimized for CFL/watt. Also enterprise servers are in environment controlled places where noise isnt an issue, because there shouldnt be people inside the server rooms.
My build thread is here:
If you went with 12 u.2 you would be using 48 channels which could be handled by a supermicro board with some cards, or maybe you would just want to get a card like this:
Though that does not look like atx, so I am not sure what case you would need to put it in. You will notice that it has 6 oculink ports with 8 channels of pcie each. You can use those with 1 foot cables to dual U.2. No backplane needed, all of the devices are served by the CPU at all times. You can also get PCIe cards which provide oculink ports.
There is a page on here which details people’s experiences with those cards and vendors:
I just got my first u.2 drive, the 6.4TB intel D7-P5600 off of amazon for $369 used.
heatsink:
I can hear it when the computer first turns on, then it goes silent. The CPU surface area is massive. That that heatsink is huge, and heavy. My case has 2 120mm fans running on low, and I can’t hear them or the cpu fan over ambient noise from 2 feet away. The exit air temperature is barely detectably warmer than ambient air.
If you get a higher wattage epyc and run it hard, you may want to get a water block to cool it, ie:
Instead I added an air conditioner to the room, which cools both me and my workstation. While it is possible to quietly sufficiently cool a server in a room that is uncomfortably hot, it makes the problem much easier if you lower the air temperature.
As for drawbacks, when the cpu is near idle, the CPU io chiplet uses 60 watts. It is fairly heavy and needs a big case.
Using the db meter on my iPhone, I measured the noise level. From 2 inches it is 52db. From 6 feet and line of sight it is 42db. My air conditioner is 65 db. My air conditioner basically did not turn off till the end of summer, which is why I considered the computer silent. But even so it isn’t bad. The bottom of the case with a 5400rpm 2.5 inch laptop drive is 56db when it is accessing that.
Put together a 32-core EPYC build for an engineering prototype. Order/received the parts back in June, but this is the first chance I have had with the hardware.
Using a Supermicro H13SSL-NT motherboard. As this is a server motherboard, ensured adequate airflow with 6x 140mm fans pushing air through a (large) Thermatake P5 case. Works well.
CPU is an AMD 9374F (SP5 socket), so there is heat to remove.
Loudest is the Dynatron J12 CPU cooler. At the time (last June) was the best I could find. Hoping there is something better, now.
Found CPU blocks for liquid cooling, but would rather not build a custom loop. Would be very happy with an AIO, but not holding my breath. Wanting to not abuse my coworkers.
Is there now a better solution for SP5?
Holy mother of hubs Batman look at the size of those things
Thanks. Already ordered a cooler slightly(?) better than the Dynatron. Now I have to explain ordering yet another cooler, even before the 2nd arrives. What I get for not checking here sooner.
Got in some early benchmark runs (of real processing). Using PyTorch we are lighting upper all 32-cores, solid (SMT off). So there is heat to remove. Might have to upgrade to the 64-core.
Not sure about the 96 or 128 core … maybe diminishing returns? Wonder if there is a cloud-instance, somewhere…
Also benchmark against an NVidia 4090 GPU, which is sometimes faster, but barely loaded. (Bottlenecking on the 16x PCIe 4.)
Fun stuff.
If you can run stuff remote I can fix you up with various systems here to try maybe can get a video out of it for real world testing
Thanks. That would be great. I do have to be careful about what gets public, so … something to figure out.
Noctua alone has made multiple improvements in moving more air with less audible noise. They are primarily for residential PC’s, but can be found in switches and other industrial applications. Servers don’t care about noise, just air movement.
For ultimate quietness, immersion cooling is the way to go, but best own a data center to make it cost effective.
“It’s whisper quiet!”
Physics gets in the way. If you are trying to move a lot of air with a small fan, it is going to be noisy and less efficient. If you want to build a quiet server, use the biggest fans you can get.
Within reason…
There is an entire thread of connected stories here … design trade-offs of propeller-driven fighters around the end of WWII. Jets going from turbojets (50s and 60s) to the high-bypass turbofans of the present (basically a big fan wrapped in a shroud). At base, most of the improved efficiency of modern airliners comes from using ever-bigger fans.
Slightly worried this might launch the “big-fan server” genre.
Oh, yeh - as example the Russian Tu-95 “Bear” long range bomber (turboprop) is arguably a better design than the Boeing B-52 bomber (turbojet and later low-bypass turbofan). The Bear is very loud (all those supersonic propeller blade-tips), but more efficient in most use of those big birds. The B-52 is sexier, slightly faster, less noisy, but burns more fuel.
Built an engineering rig meant house a lot of compute (sized for a specific application). So AMD EPYC 9374F (fastest 32-core), and one (soon two) GPU(s). Also room for an FPGA development card.
Have 6x 140mm case fans, and 1x 80mm CPU fan. This CPU fan is by far the loudest thing in the rig. (Bought but have not yet installed the Silverstone AIO SP5 CPU cooler that Wendell recommended.) This rig is in the office, so not wanting to abuse my co-workers.
