I have my server here ( dell poweredge 1750). When its on, the fans are way too loud. Is there any kind of hack or tip for getting them to be quiet? I already updated the firmware, and this helped a bit, but its still very annoying. I don't care if its loud once I get it colocated but when working on it here at home, its not very practical.

I hear ya on the fans. They do get irritating, but doesn't bother me much since its in the server closet. But we use SpeedFan to monitor fan speeds. I believe there is an option for controlling the speed of your fans as well. Give it a shot. It's free, and works very well.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

If your suggestion works, you are god! I will give it a try immediately.
Thanks

I gave that program a try and it didn't work. Actually it locked up when I ran it, and I had to reboot my machine. I guess I will just have to live with these dam fans. That or sell it back on ebay and try to get a newer machine, as I hear the new rack servers are very quiet. Can anyone from the servers department make a recommendation on what 1U rack servers are quiet?

Sorry to hear it didn't work. IF you are going to collocate as you mentioned why do you care about the sound?

Because I want to make sure I can get the system working and do a test run from my home first. I want to get the learning experiences out of the way, before I ship it out for colocation.

you could always remove the fans It will get really quiet then...and eventually even quieter until it starts melting ...I really don't know of any way to make them quieter sry

Actually I already diconnected a few of them. thinking it would reduce the noise. But as I disconnected one the rest would spin up faster. Seems the system ensures the Amps drawn from the fans stays constant. It would be nice if Dell would release a fix for this. Something that would allow you to put the system in non Datacenter mode, with the fans keeping their RPMs to a minimum.

you could always hurry up and work faster get it done and ship it to us...that would stop the noise

You should really find a utility to monitor your fans...

You don't need your fans failing and overheating your system while in the datacenter. That fan speed I mentioned earlier will email us when the RPM's of a fan drops below a certain threshold. We have that installed on several servers without any compatibility issues. Not sure why it didn't work out for you. (That will also solve your fan noise problem to..Give it another try.)

Getting this thing colocated is a nice thought, but I want to get server 2008 running on this first, and make sure there are no suprizes in the process. I have three websites I am building right now, and don't have much time for playing with the server. It sits collecting dust until I get these sites done.

You think that's loud? I had a Dell R900 (4 quad core procs and 128 gb ram) in my office for a week as we installed freebsd + postgres on it. Thing sounded like a friggin helicopter. I wouldn't really get too extravagant in ways to mitigate noise, as it's not worth the risk. Only keep it on when you're working on it, and try to get it colocated asap.

I wonder if the guys at HostMySite have experienced any Hearing loss from working on servers

pfft, it's a server. Throw it in a room and keep the fans running at 13-14k RPM 24x7 so you can keep that thing cool! When I built my 1U SuperMicro dual quad Xeon server it had 2 more slots for fans. Unfortunately it only had 1 more fan connector so I filled up what I could with another fan. Air flow is a good thing. Especially if you have dual CPU sockets and a RAID card in there along with 4 drives. It can get quite toasty and more fans is always a good thing. If you're using a rackmount server on your desktop...well, you deserve what ya get noisewise