Newbie: are rack-mounted or Mini ITX cases quieter?

[EvilLeprechaun]

I am looking to create my first NAS, and I'm stuck on step 1: the case. For me, noise is the primary concern (functionality is a given, and I care less about power consumption if more power will reduce the noise). The NAS is for home use, not for work.

I have a 19" 4-post open frame rack in my basement where the NAS will live, but the rack isn't behind any doors (unfortunate, but that's how it is). Right now the rack is just housing things like my router, a fanless switch, and an old PC sitting on a shelf, so noise hasn't been an issue thus far, and I'd like to keep it that way.

After reading the guides, things like ECC RAM seem like a no-brainer. I'd like to use 6 drives with RaidZ2, likely with 1- or 2-TB drives at first (because right now I care more about data protection than the amount of data being protected, and RaidZ2 gives better protection). I would love it if the drives could be hot-swappable, but that's not an absolute deal-breaker. My primary use for the server will be running CIFS for 2-3 concurrent users. Secondary uses will be backing up the files externally. If the server could transcode 1-2 simultaneous Plex streams, that would be fantastic, otherwise I'm open to making an HTPC dedicated to that task down the line.

I'm torn between going with a full 3/4U Supermicro case (from eBay, most likely) or going with a Mini ITX case. On the one hand, big case = big fans = quieter. That seems fairly straightforward. On the other, when I look up how to make a quiet rack-mounted server I see lots of people saying (effectively) "there's no such thing, rack-mounted servers are crazy-loud, get a tiny computer on a shelf if you want quiet."

These statements don't seem to agree (or maybe they do, and the "tiny computers" are just really underpowered). I imagine the excess noise in rack-mounted cases comes from niceties like big, redundant power supplies and the large number of fans required to cool lots of hot-swappable drives, but I'm just guessing. Does anyone have advice on which case I should start with? Thanks!

 

[Ericloewe]

Nothing rack-mounted is quiet. Some are bearable, some are louder than some jet engines some 20 meters away.

Rackmounts give between zero and no consideration to noise. It's just not a design criterion. Cooling performance is much more important and gets prioritized - think 5 or more 80mm counter-rotating fans at 10k RPM (Sure, they'd be throttled down most of the time, but there's only so much you can do).

 

[Rikkard]

Small rack mounted servers, especially 1U servers usually sound alot (especially those with 40mm fans), I haven't seen so many big rack cases with normal hardware inside but can't se why they should be extreme loud. They are usually designed for high performance servers/workstations drawing lots of power, and a NAS for home use usually doesn't need that kind of high performance. You dont need hardware drawin electricity in kW:s in a home NAS. So probably you could run the fans in such a case at very low speed.

 

[DKarnov]

Commercial server cases tend to be packed to the brim, and operate in thermally uncooperative environments. A business machine running lightly loaded is just an oversized, underutilized capital expense. Thus commercial servers are built to run hot and hard, and don't easily and gracefully mod down to make less irritating roommates. A 10k RPM fan near the bottom of its control range may still be spinning at 4K RPM.

There are people who, right or wrong, genuinely believe they need 14+ drive arrays, kilowatts of redundant power etc in their home system (or homelab) and are willing to accept the drawbacks of a commercial rackmount server design. There are also people who can and do get used commercial server hardware on the cheap, and again in exchange for saving some bucks are willing to accept the drawbacks. If you don't fall into one of these categories, and don't plan to, there is little reason to endure the big iron downsides.

OP, your hardware requirements sound like they'd easily fit into a Mini-ITX case - see my sig for an example system. Alternately, since looks and space don't sound like a concern, you can get a regular ATX case with good ventilation / sound quieting, and worst case tip it on its side and throw some brackets on it and mount it up as a 4U.

 

[marbus90]

The solution with the least noise might be a 4U case w/ a standard ATX PSU and low-spinning 120mm fans in the middle. 2U w/ 80mm fans might also still be quiet with your low performance requirements. You'd have to swap them by yourself of course.
Rackmound doesn't need to be equal to much noise, but you really need to pay attention to get a good mix of airflow and noise.

I'd second DKarnov's system w/ a smaller PSU again if you want to go really quiet and small.

 

[depasseg]

I have a 2U supermicro and it is quiet. It's s in my open rack in the basement. and I can't hear it running from the top of the stairs. When I was putting it all together it was on the dining room table and wasn't loud enough to bother me (or anyone) having dinner 15 feet away in the kitchen.

 

[depasseg]

To answer the question in the subject line of the message: MiniITX cases are quieter than rack mount.
To answer the intent of your message: the right rack mount (at least mine) is quiet enough that it doesn't matter.

 

[EvilLeprechaun]

Thanks for the insight everyone! Great advice all around. I'll hopefully be posting my full build in a week or so depending on free time.

 

[mjws00]

In case you think most rackmount cases are quiet. My SM 846 sounds like 7 jet fighters going to war. 5 80mm screamers and 2 40mm banshees. It is crazy loud at full afterburners. Mine will get a regular psu and quiet fans soon.

Look at the ds380, lian li q26, and node 304 for mitx goodness.

edit: changed to proper case.

 

[RXWatcher]

mjws00, do you have the 1200 watt unit like this one or one of the ones with 800 or 900 watt PSUs?

I want one with PWM fans.

 

[mjws00]

Mine is old school with dual 720's. The fans are still pwm. An external fan controller can work well for the case fans or the right mobo. The psu fans are problematic and more difficult to mod. They have a quiet option now I believe.

The other thing to remember is 24 10k drives and a server that is cranking hard needs all the air it can get in that dense space. An idling Haswell with a couple sets of greens and some ssd's doesn't take much to control. Unfortunately I want the thing near my desk so she has to pipe down.

 

[jeffreyj900]

mjws00, do you have the 1200 watt unit like this one or one of the ones with 800 or 900 watt PSUs?

I want one with PWM fans.

I just bought that exact case from that vendor. Mine will go in the basement. I'm waiting on motherboard, cpu and memory so I can't comment on how loud. 7 fighter jets going to war is an interesting description! Can't wait to see how loud it is.

 

[mjws00]

Sorry, I typoed. I have an 846 not 836. If you haven't heard the howl of these things, it will put a smile on your face. Kinda like a hotrod, or a loud diesel truck. Then you realize there is no way you want to live near it for long periods without some changes. It takes power, and makes noise to move huge volumes of air and create the necessary pressure diff for a tightly packed case to cool. They are born for racks, away from people. :)

SM has quieter psu fans now. They just aren't necessary for me, so I'm punting the redundant hotswappers for a seasonic.

 

[R.G.]

I went down the rackmount path a ways back. As noted, the design of rackmount cases is fundamentally at odds with low noise. Designers of rackmount stuff are after high density packing (to suit a rack environment!) and good cooling, and everything else is down the list.

I have now trashed the rackmount stuff entirely, including a Norco RPC450 (wanna buy a big rackmount case cheap???) and hunted through the Antec quiet line. If you can stand a big tower case, get an Antec P18x/P19x, which can be had for as little as $20 off craigslist, as the gamers that bought these things have moved on. If you are sure you only need six, possibly seven drives, get an Antec Sonata Proto. I had six 3TB drives in one, and it was nearly inaudible sitting next to my desk, only a whisper of sound.

I sucked into a Fractal Node 804 recently, and I'm glad I did. It was a little like being convinced to go on a blind date, then marrying her.

I recently posted my experiences with the Fractal. It holds up to eight drives very compactly, ten if you go frantic. It's compact (14"x 14" x12" high) and would sit nicely and unobtrusively in the bottom of your rack or on a shelf. I got mine for $70 from Newegg on sale.

I just finished the early life tests on the system, and here's what's in it:
Fractal Node 804
SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O
Xeon E3
Zalman CNPS-7000Al-PWM and/or Coolermaster TX3 (both give about 35-43C on the CPU during a scrub; Frys has the Zalman for $10; both are dramatically quieter than the stock cooler with the Xeon)
16GB unbuffered ECC RAM
7x 3TB drives
Seasonic 400W power supply (you don't need 1kW to power a modest number of drives if you don't have giga-graphics)
Tripp-Lite SMART700USB battery backup

If I were doing this from zero now, the only change I'd make is getting seven 4TB drives, as the sweet spot for drive density has moved on. That would give 16TB of usable storage in RAIDZ3. If you needed more, you could get 6TB drives for 24TB of usable.

The Fractal is now across the office and it's inaudible from the desk.

 

[EvilLeprechaun]

When you say "the sweet spot for drive density has moved on," what do you mean?

 

[mjws00]

$ per TB. With consideration for the number of total TB we can fit in a given server's slots.

 

[R.G.]

The way the disk industry works, there is nearly always a "sweet spot" where you're getting the most storage per dollar, as mjws put it so clearly. At one time the 1TB drive was the lowest cost per TB. Then the 2TB, and when I bought the disks for my array, the 3TB. That was right around the time the floods killed the Malaysian disk factories, so disks got more expensive for a while, and have only recently resumed their downward trend.

4TB drives can be had for $30-35 per TB, $120-140 if you watch prices. 3TB is a bout $100, sometimes as low as $90 when a retailer is trying to move them out. The super-capacity drives tend to cost more per TB; 6TB is now about $260-290. Although I notice that *all* drives are more expensive now than they were a month ago, by $10-20.

So the way you get the most storage per dollar is to buy the mature disk technology, and that is generally at the sweet spot in price, as well as being likely to be the most reliable, as the investment in error free manufacture has been made, and the market is moving them, so the process is "well oiled".

 

[Tywin]

The way the disk industry works, there is nearly always a "sweet spot" where you're getting the most storage per dollar, as mjws put it so clearly. At one time the 1TB drive was the lowest cost per TB. Then the 2TB, and when I bought the disks for my array, the 3TB.

If you are building a FreeNAS system, don't forget to include the cost of the system in that analysis. It changes the calculus somewhat, sometimes in non-obvious ways.

 

[jgreco]

I'm torn between going with a full 3/4U Supermicro case (from eBay, most likely) or going with a Mini ITX case. On the one hand, big case = big fans = quieter. That seems fairly straightforward. On the other, when I look up how to make a quiet rack-mounted server I see lots of people saying (effectively) "there's no such thing, rack-mounted servers are crazy-loud, get a tiny computer on a shelf if you want quiet."

RACK MOUNT SERVERS ARE SUPER QUIET! (screaming above the din of the full rack)

No but seriously, it depends on the chassis. I've got some old (199x-era 1st gen ATX) Antec 3480B's that we recycled for ESXi nodes here. A pair of quiet 120MM fans provide basic system cooling and a Kingwin STR-500 fanless 500W supply, running a Supermicro X9SCM-F board, 32GB RAM, and a Xeon E3-1230 runs about 45 watts idle consumption, 90-100 under full load. There's a massive oversized cooler on the CPU to help it not need to run its fan at high speed as well. This is now three or four years old and it is still very competitive.

But in general rack mount servers are very loud because:

1) Low power rack mounts are usually 1U, and 40MM fans scream as a matter of policy/pain/whatever.

2) Larger (2U +) racked servers are usually high power compute nodes, and so they also require lots of cooling.

If you are building a FreeNAS system, don't forget to include the cost of the system in that analysis. It changes the calculus somewhat, sometimes in non-obvious ways.

That almost sounds like a quote out of my hardware sticky. ;-) Always look at the total cost per usable TB you actually GET, which includes the overhead for parity drives and the server itself, rather than just looking at the cost of disks. Many people have learned that 4TB drives are actually cheaper than 3TB drives even when there's a price premium on the 4's. I think we're hitting that point with the 6's again as well.

 

[Tywin]

That almost sounds like a quote out of my hardware sticky. ;-) Always look at the total cost per usable TB you actually GET, which includes the overhead for parity drives and the server itself, rather than just looking at the cost of disks. Many people have learned that 4TB drives are actually cheaper than 3TB drives even when there's a price premium on the 4's. I think we're hitting that point with the 6's again as well.

I remember reading it in your guide and thinking "written like a true systems engineer" :p