[geeks] You forget how quiet the Mac Pro is until...

[Mark]

On 22 Jun 2007, at 04:21, Aaron Finley wrote:

>> No.  I can beat that.  I have a stack of two IBM PC Server 704s  
>> with 12
>> (!) 3.5 HH Seagate Cheetahs each.
>>
>> Peace...  Sridhar
>
> The 1850 is extra-special 40mm hell due to the fact that they use two
> of them back to back in every location. The reason I listed the 1850
> is that the sheer volume of the high-pitched wind noise is more than I
> have heard. I find the lower frequencies of the larger fans to be far
> more pleasant.

Large fans move more air = Slower Fan speed = Low Noise. That's the  
basic principle most BTX machines work on too keep the noise to a  
minimum. Of course if you have a 4U or 6U server with a 6-disc array  
in the front, and 3 redundant PSUs, 8 or 16 (or more) CPU cores, and  
a few GB of ECC Registered RAM, all running a high-demand database  
application, or a large computation exercise that's constantly  
pulling and storing data, *that* has large fans *and* gets extremely  
loud. Large fans are often deafening when they get up to 3000rpm :)

One reason I really love my IBM RS/6000 B50 is it's very quite for a  
server. It's 2U, so the fans are all reasonably large, and it only  
has 2 disk bays that are burried about 4 inches back into the case,  
so when it's sat in a 'tunnel' (my bench has a purpose-made 2U shelf  
under the work-top for server units and SPARCstations) you get very  
little noise at the front, you just hear a weird howling every time  
you walk past the back of the bench :)

-- 
Mark Benson

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