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Comment by mctx | Hacker News Reader

The main problem with my rack is the noise - I live in a flat and there's nowhere but the living room to put it. I've seen a few noise cancelling designs around, but they're all too expensive.

I wonder if I could build a simple noise cancellation system with an FX-LMS algorithm?

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I have six IBM 2U servers in my home rack (36U). They're really well-designed and the noise level is not too bad even in the room with the rack, but there is also a 1U SuperMicro server in that rack with two Tesla cards and it is so loud as to be quite annoying anywhere in the house. I keep it turned off unless I'm specifically working on it, which isn't how I'd like it to be. The lesson I learned is that bigger servers (4U would be even better) have bigger fans and run more quietly. Also IBM servers aren't as loud as Dell and Dell servers are quieter than SuperMicro. I'm thinking the next addition might be a cluster of Raspberry Pis.

If you can replace the dinky fans servers usually use with 120mm units, you can all but solve the noise problem. It would be totally custom, yes, but probably easier than sophisticated noise cancellation.

Does your experimentation require you work on blades and not on virtualized environment?

They're 1U and 2U servers on which I've installed ESXi. I love it - I can run a VM locally then transfer it across, then if I'm travelling I can chuck it onto VMWare Fusion on my laptop.

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