John Doe wrote:


One thing I've noticed, apparently servers can be noisy and consume
much idle current. But some have fixes for that.

Absolutely.

A 40mm fan spinning at 6000 RPM, is not a quiet fan.
Four of those fans sitting next to one another, with
the fan frequencies being slightly off, is very hard
to take.

If the server motherboard doesn't have any "extensions"
standing out (has a purely rectangular profile), you may
be able to find a desktop-style case to take a 12"x13"
motherboard. There are a few big enough to do that.
But such cases, brand new, are not cheap. The case would
cost twice as much as your Ebay server purchase. You would
then switch the CPU coolers to taller cooling solutions,
with conventional (blow-down) fan cooling.

Note that, for Xeons, the cooling solution extends below
the motherboard. Sometimes, there are standoffs that
fit under the motherboard. And when you select a computer
case, the tray has to have holes to line up with the
standoffs. This gives more mechanical support for the
heatsink assembly above the motherboard surface. At
least a few people get a 12"x13" motherboard, then
discover the holes or mechanism on the motherboard,
doesn't have matching stuff on the tray to make the
whole thing work. I'm not up on all the details.

This illustrates the concept well enough, to at least
show there's a bit of detail down there. Each generation
can have different twists and turns.

http://www.orbitmicro.com/support/re...heatsinks.html

With a cooling redesign, you can reduce the noise level
to about twice the noise of your current desktop. The idea
is to get those 40mm fans out of the picture. They're
evil.

Computer cases suitable for 12"x13" should not be
available used for cheap on Ebay. As anyone that
owns one, is likely to hold onto it, or try to
recover the purchase price of the thing.

Nothing stops you from building a "ghetto" computer
case. You could also look for the open-frame computer
cases that sites like Anandtech use, where there is no
metal facade on the outside of the computer.

At one of the places I worked when I was younger
(before graduation), the computer fans were so loud,
you could hear them through *two* locked doors. Some
computer cooling solutions have piercing audio
characteristics. You would be very sorry to have
one of those in your house. You'd just have to turn
it off.

Paul