Intel Xeon E5345 Dual CPU cooling

[AlexGTR]

Hi Guys,

Work was throwing away a fairly capable server, Intel S5000VSA mobo, Dual CPU, 3GB RAM which i'm going to upgrade to 16GB, so i asked if i could have it for testing which they said yes.

The only problem is, it is pretty loud and i want it on all the time and its in my bedroom! I was going to build myself a home NAS but now I have no need to with this so if i can get it quiet it will save me a fair bit of money, it will also be used for messing about with Linux and other things using VM's.

I have upgraded the BIOS on it and the thermal settings which has quietened it down a bit but it is still to loud to have in there all the time.

I have ordered 3, 80mm Noiseblocker X2 fans for it to replace the case fans which are pretty loud, now i just need to find two CPU coolers that will fit in the case which is 2U high (around 130mm)

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Newblet]

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-...on-cpu-coolers
Add "771" (the socket for the Xeons) to the "Keyword(s)" box and filter the page. A couple of them are "fan optional" so they should be fine to work passively, which is best for you if quiet is what you're going for. I also recommend grabbing some MX-4 for the thermal paste. I don't really know anything about Xeons, if you don't want to overclock though (I assume not) then you should undervolt the processors and keep the same clock speed, so less heat is produced. According to a quick search I did, that board has 8 × 4-pin fan headers. I know you already ordered the noiseblockers, however the Noctua NF-R8s might have been a better choice, they're PWM and they appear to have the same design as the NF-S12Bs, which I've heard perform well as case fans. Also, bigger fans can move the same amount of air but at lower speeds (thus lower pitch noise and less of it), if you can use bigger fans (such as 92 mm) then you should!

[scaryjim]

Hmmm, a pair of 80W TDP quad cores will *not* be easy to cool, and will chew through masses of power - not really ideal for a NAS tbh. If you're planning on leaving that thing on 24/7 it's going to put your electric bills through the roof!

Servers, particularly rackmount servers, are not built with quiet in mind - they're designed to be hidden away in soundproofed, air conditioned datacentres. I'd be very careful about using passive coolers as you could be dumping 160W of heat directly into a small rack case, which would be pretty bad - you'd need a lot of case fans to shift all that air. My first thought was watercooling, but I don't know if there are any s771 compatible water blocks out there (although I may be possible to make a custom plate for a generic waterblock, I guess?)...

[badass]

Hi Guys,

Work was throwing away a fairly capable server, Intel S5000VSA mobo, Dual CPU, 3GB RAM which i'm going to upgrade to 16GB, so i asked if i could have it for testing which they said yes.

The only problem is, it is pretty loud and i want it on all the time and its in my bedroom! I was going to build myself a home NAS but now I have no need to with this so if i can get it quiet it will save me a fair bit of money, it will also be used for messing about with Linux and other things using VM's.

I have upgraded the BIOS on it and the thermal settings which has quietened it down a bit but it is still to loud to have in there all the time.

I have ordered 3, 80mm Noiseblocker X2 fans for it to replace the case fans which are pretty loud, now i just need to find two CPU coolers that will fit in the case which is 2U high (around 130mm)

Does anyone have any suggestions?

One thing to look out for - those are old CPU's and it's old kit. They are much better on power these days. 100W on continuously costs about £100 per year in electricity. By the time you have bought all of these fans etc you may find it's cheaper to just buy a consumer system and load it with RAM for testing after a couple of years. Get one of those watt meters and plug it in and see.

[AlexGTR]

Thanks for the advice guys. I didn't really think of the power issue!

So you reckon it would be better to not bother upgrading it at all and just build a system from scratch?

The fans wont go to waste that i have ordered i can put them in my HTPC which needs quieting down.

[scaryjim]

I think you'd have to expect that system to draw at least 100W at idle (my old Q6600/8800GTX setup drew 150W at idle), which means that running it would cost at least £100 per year for 24/7 operation. Compare that to a basic little Atom or Brazos box (or indeed an HP Microserver) - they'll draw less than 40W fully loaded. If you want a box running 24/7 quietly, get something new and low powered. You'll make the money back in saved electricity within a couple of years...

[AlexGTR]

I think you'd have to expect that system to draw at least 100W at idle (my old Q6600/8800GTX setup drew 150W at idle), which means that running it would cost at least £100 per year for 24/7 operation. Compare that to a basic little Atom or Brazos box (or indeed an HP Microserver) - they'll draw less than 40W fully loaded. If you want a box running 24/7 quietly, get something new and low powered. You'll make the money back in saved electricity within a couple of years...

LOL I am running a similar setup (E8500/8800GTX as my HTPC) although it is used for a bit of gaming as well.

I have a Synology DS211J which is a couple of weeks old but it doesn't have the processing power for what i want to do with it, even downloading maxes the CPU out on it!

I much prefer home built systems and upgrading the current server to the spec i want it too will cost around £225 how much could i build a new custom one and what are the recommended CPU's to use?


ALSO - would a homemade machine be powerful enough to be run as an ESXi Host (Visualization)?

[scaryjim]

Even an Atom would be more powerful than your Diskstation (which is run by a 1.2GHz Armv5 chip - i.e. at least two generations old!). Pretty much any entry-level CPU will do the job. I'm not sure how much more power you'd need for an ESXi host - I think Virtualisation responds better to more RAM. Also you might need to make sure the CPU supports hardware virtualisation, in which case an AMD build would probably be the cheapest option (I'm pretty sure that even entry level Sempron processors do hardware virtualisation).

[AlexGTR]

Thanks, I will price up some systems and see what its looking like.

As i live at home with my parents until i can afford to move out with the misses the power bill is on my mum and dad so i will have a word with them.

[Butuz]

It'll use more like 225w at idle so yes check with your parents first as that's gonna cost them a good few quid a month.

butuz

[DanceswithUnix]

LOL I am running a similar setup (E8500/8800GTX as my HTPC) although it is used for a bit of gaming as well.

I have a Synology DS211J which is a couple of weeks old but it doesn't have the processing power for what i want to do with it, even downloading maxes the CPU out on it!

I much prefer home built systems and upgrading the current server to the spec i want it too will cost around £225 how much could i build a new custom one and what are the recommended CPU's to use?


ALSO - would a homemade machine be powerful enough to be run as an ESXi Host (Visualization)?

How many virtual machines do you want to run, and depends on what you want to put in those virtual machines.

If it is just for playing then a Llano is probably ideal. Cheap, low idle power similar to Atom, but has some poke when you need it.

You probably want something with the virtualisation extension intructions. All the AMD stuff has that, Intel tend to fuse them off and make you pay more for them so bit of a minefield.

[AlexGTR]

The Virtual machines i would want to run would probably be - Linux/FilesNAS/Windows Server 2008